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Brief
1. To drive usage of the Top Treats site.
2. To develop a compelling marketing campaign that drives spend throughout the entire dining industry from casual all the way through to fine dining.
3. To engage American Express Cardmembers by providing a new Card benefit, ultimately driving increased spend and raising awareness of where to use their card.
Overall, this campaign aimed provide additional value to American Express Cardmembers whilst also testing out new, previously untested digital and social media territory.
Strategy
As the leading online restaurant booking site in Europe, with three million people visiting the website each month, toptable was selected by American Express as the perfect partner with whom to launch an innovative online dining initiative. As a strong, respected brand that appeals to American Express Cardmembers, toptable provided exactly the right kind of positive brand association.
In a first for both parties, the Top Treats initiative used toptable’s new web services Application Programming Interface (API) to build a dedicated co-branded micro site, demonstrating the brand’s engagement with the full spectrum of digital marketing tools and technologies. Through the micro site, American Express Cardmembers were able to access exclusive deals and content from over 4000 restaurants on the toptable website.
In addition, for some key casual dining brands not currently featured on toptable, bespoke web pages were created and integrated into Top Treats, displaying their own exclusive offers to American Express Cardmembers.
Since the aim of Top Treats was to target and engage an audience of Cardmembers that love to eat out, American Express started off by finding the most passionate and influential food bloggers to provide restaurant reviews for the new Top Treats website. Most well known bloggers have built up a loyal audience so their opinion is incredibly valuable in terms of attaching credibility to a dining project and their involvement was designed to drive regular traffic to the site.
American Express also added its unique rewards proposition and a monthly prize draw to the campaign to further enhance its compelling customer offer. The campaign also raised awareness of where cardmembers could use their card via a bespoke ‘Cards Welcome’ page which highlighted a range of restaurants brands which welcomed American Express.
Top Treats was also supported by a comprehensive on and offline communication strategy which included the blogger campaign and a new partnership with O2 Mobile. The initiative was promoted through toptable’s website and email marketing channel, targeting over half a million toptable users a month. The B2B strategy included a merchant direct mail, providing bespoke Top Treats Point of Purchase material, to place in their establishments.
Available from 1st September until the end of 2010, Top Treats deliberately coincided with the London Restaurant Festival.
Execution
o Blogger engagement
American Express invited six key food/lifestyle bloggers to review a restaurant featured on Top Treats. They blogged and tweeted following the dinners, encouraging others to investigate what Top Treats has on offer.
Two of the bloggers were given prizes so they could run a competition for their readers, offering a Top Treats experience for two. The reviews were then posted on the Top Treats website with hyperlinks back to their individual blogger sites to encourage traffic through to their blogs.
o Mobile Marketing
American Express partnered with O2 to create a Top Treats app that allowed Cardmembers to visit the site through an i-phone, making the service as easy and accessible as possible.
o Competitions
Online competitions were set up to win dinner at Gordon Ramsay’s restaurants with websites such as MarieClaire online, ThisisLondon.com and various other consumer online websites.
o Direct Marketing to Cardmembers
American Express targeted Cardmembers in a number of ways including Direct Mail outs, targeted online advertising, emails and billing stuffers.
Results
The campaign exceeded the expectations of both parties, in terms of visits to the micro-site and the number of bookings generated. As a result the campaign is being extended across Europe in 2011, with the American Express French and Swedish teams developing a similar capacity.
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