In its third year, Small Business Saturday has become part of the American lexicon alongside Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Our team has worked with American Express to continuously grow the program, and through extensive planning, has found ways to outperform benchmarks of success each year. In 2012, our team reinvigorated a successful integrated marketing and public relations campaign that communicated the macroeconomic importance of small businesses while driving home calls to action for both consumers and small businesses.

If year one was about creating the day and generating awareness, and year two was about getting small businesses to embrace and own it, then year three was about getting entire communities to band together in support of the day. That meant evolving Small Business Saturday into a truly grassroots initiative by leveraging strong 'buy local' partners and empowering communities with meaningful tools and resources. The biggest challenge was to prove that it worked; we opted to do it through sales figures and new research.

Through targeted research, hard-hitting media relations, strong partnerships and a genuine understanding of the small business space, our team produced unprecedented PR results, in addition to the more than $5.5 billion spent with independent merchants on November 24, 2012.

The continued success of Small Business Saturday demonstrates the importance of a well-devised, fully-integrated public relations campaign. In just three short years, Small Business Saturday has become the ceremonial kick-off to the holiday shopping season for small business owners and consumers who love them.

-Media: Using our research findings as a jumping-off point, we began outreach roughly three weeks before the day. By offering data, several spokespeople and small business owners to tell their stories, we provided national and regional publications with the necessary ingredients for coverage.

-Social Media/Online Tools: While the Small Business Saturday social channels are active year-round, our team stepped it up in the weeks leading up to November 24th. We used posts to drive traffic to shopsmall.com where consumers and business owners could participate by: Entering the FedEx 'Shop Small' gift card giveaway; Registering American Express cards to receive a $25 statement credit for shopping small on November 24th; and Signing up to receive free, geo-targeted advertising on NYTimes.com and other websites

-Events: Nearly 50 local Chamber chapters hosted events on November 24th in addition to more than 60 other grassroots events that popped up in cities across the country.

-Unprecedented Media Results: Media outreach resulted in more than 15,000 placements reaching more than 2.6 billion total audience (increasing more than 51% over 2011 and 470% over 2010).

-Awareness and engagement among consumers and business owners: More than 3.2 million Facebook users 'liked' the Small Business Saturday Facebook page and more than 213,000 tweets were sent in support of Small Business Saturday in November, many leveraging the hashtags #smallbizsat and #shopsmall.

-Public Support: President Obama declared his support for Small Business Saturday by shopping small on November 24, and elected officials in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. championed the day as well.

-Increased demand for goods and services: The increased awareness translated into higher spending. U.S. consumers who were aware of Small Business Saturday spent a total of $5.5 billion with independent merchants.

-A Global Movement: Following the U.S. success, the U.K. has created its own Small Business Saturday