This week, we distill insights around Amex Eync on Twitter - which enables American Express card members to sync their card to their Twitter account and tweet special hashtags to get credits & make purchases.  100+ thinkers and planners within MSLGROUP share and discuss inspiring projects on social data, crowdsourcing, storytelling and citizenship on the MSLGROUP Insights Network. Every week, we pick up one project and do a deep dive into conversations around it -- on the MSLGROUP Insights Network itself but also on the broader social web -- to distill insights and foresights. We share these insights with you on our People’s Insights blog and compile the best insights from the network and the blog in the People’s Insights Quarterly Magazine, as a showcase of our capabilities. We have further synthesized the insights to provide foresights for business leaders and changemakers — in the ten-part People’s Insights annual report titled Now & Next: Ten Frontiers for the Future of Engagement, now available as a Kindle eBook. For more, see: http://peopleslab.mslgroup.com/future-of-engagement

1. crowdsourcing | storytelling | citizenship | social data
Amex Sync on
Twitter
People’s Insights Volume 2, Issue 14

2. Volume 2, Issue 14,
April - June, 2013
Future of
Money
Amex Sync on
Twitter
100+ thinkers and planners within MSL-
GROUP share and discuss inspiring proj-
ects on social data, crowdsourcing, story-
telling and citizenship on the MSLGROUP
Insights Network. Every week, we pick up
one project and curate the conversations
around it — on the MSLGROUP Insights
Network itself but also on the broader
social web — into a weekly insights report.
Every quarter, we compile these insights,
along with original research and insights
from the MSLGROUP global network, into
the People’s Insights Quarterly Magazine.
We have synthesized the insights from our
year-long endeavor throughout 2012 to
provide foresights for business leaders and
changemakers — in the ten-part People’s
Insights Annual Report titled Now & Next:
Ten Frontiers for the Future of Engage-
ment.
People’s Insights
In 2013, we continue to track inspiring
projects at the intersection of social data,
crowdsourcing and storytelling, with a fo-
cus on projects that are shaping the Future
of Citizenship.
Do subscribe to receive our weekly insights
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3. 3
What is Amex Sync on Twitter?
In 2012, American Express introduced Amex
Sync on Twitter, which allows card members to
sync their card to their Twitter account and earn
credits by tweeting special hashtags. In early
Source: abcnews.go.com
2013, American Express introduced a new feature
to this program, which allows card members
to make direct purchases by tweeting special
hashtags.
Blogger Adi Robertson highlights the significance:
“The results here are functionally similar, but you’re not just doing some advertising in exchange for credit —
you’re putting an actual purchase history online and asking American Express to charge your card through
Twitter.”
Thinkers, bloggers, marketers and American
Express card members note that this move
further streamlines the process of shopping
online, and speculate upon the role financial
institutions and social networks will play in the
future of ecommerce. Several have also shared
privacy and security concerns over merging their
banking and social media accounts.
How it works
Card members sync their accounts online at the
American Express website, and then follow
@AmericanExpress to find out about the latest
credit offers and purchase offers from American
Express and its partners.
CNN’s Heather Kelly explains the process of
loading credit offers:

4. Volume 2, Issue 14,
April - June, 2013
Future of
Money
Amex Sync on
Twitter
Source: twitter.com/AmericanExpress/favorites
Source: sync.americanexpress.com/twitter
Source: twitter.com/sirradiodude (spotted on TechCrunch)
Source: Amex Sync On Twitter - American Express
“On Twitter, you tweet the hashtag for an offer and
then go make the purchase in person or through a
separate online store. The discount is then applied
to your American Express account within eight
weeks.”
Card members must use their synced card when
making purchases at partnering stores.
Social Commerce Today’s Paul Marsden explains
the process of making direct purchases through
tweets:
“Amex cardholders sync their Amex card with
Twitter at sync.americanexpress.com/twitter. Then,
when Amex/Amex retailers offer deals (published
in the @AmericanExpress Twitter feed), cardholders
can buy them by simply tweeting the deal’s special
hashtag – e.g. #BuyAmexGiftCard25.”
To prevent accidental purchases, Amex requires
a second, confirmation tweet. TechCrunch’s
Natasha Lomas notes:
“Payments are made by tweeting a purchase
hashtag, and retweeting the confirmation tweet
from Amex within 15 minutes of receiving it. The
product will then be shipped to the account billing
address synced with Twitter, and payment taken
from your synced Amex account.”
Irresistible launch offer
American Express launched the new feature
with an irresistible offer - buy a $25 Amex gift
card for $15. Bloggers and online media spread
word about the offer, as did card members who
tweeted to avail of it.
Discounts are an increasingly common – and
effective – way for brands to promote their online
& mobile payment initiatives. For instance, in
mid-2012, Starbucks made headlines for selling
a record 1.5 million $10 virtual gift cards on daily
deals site LivingSocial at a discount of 50%.
Strategist Jeremy Jacobs attributes this rise
in real-time and impulse sales to increased
connectivity on mobile devices:
“Putting the right offer in the right context in the
right time frame is so much easier now than it ever
was before, so consumers are responding by being
willing to say, no matter where I am at – whether
at home watching TV or at my kid’s soccer game – I
can make this purchase right away.”
In addition to the $25 Amex gift card, card
members could also choose to purchase other
items, such as an Amazon Kindle Fire HD or
Microsoft Xbox 360, at discounted rates.

5. 5
Source: fastcompany.com
Source: support.foursquare.com
Commitment to social
In addition to Amex Sync on Twitter, American
Express also engages card members on
Foursquare and Facebook.
As Mashable’s Todd Wasserman reported:
“Last July, the brand launched a program called
“Link, Like, Love” that tailored deals to you based
on your Facebook “likes.” (For instance, if you
“liked” Whole Foods, you might see an offer on your
Facebook dashboard.) The brand also linked with
Foursquare last June for a national program that
rewarded users with a loyalty card-like credit when
they checked in.”
Other social American Express initiatives include the Social Rewards campaign in 2011, which, as
AdAge’s Beth Snyder Bulik noted, encouraged “customers to think about spending rewards points in
less traditional ways” and share their experience on Facebook:
“What’s the most memorable thing you’ve picked up with Membership Rewards points -- great trip, cool
gadget? Do tell!”
Bloggers and thinkers, like Fast Company’s
Austin Carr, believe that American Express’
social media partnerships and initiatives help
differentiate the brand as a modern-day social
company:
“With the [Twitter] partnership, AmEx helps fortify
its role as the credit card for the social media
generation.”

6. Volume 2, Issue 14,
April - June, 2013
Future of
Money
Amex Sync on
Twitter
Source: techcrunch.com
“Social spending”
Similar to the Social Reward campaign, Amex
Sync on Twitter encourages people to talk about
their spends on their social networks, resulting in
free promotion for the offers and brands involved.
As Mashable’s Todd Wasserman noted:
“For AmEx, the move may be less about boosting
a fledgling ecommerce platform and more about
promotion; With each hashtag, users give a tacit
endorsement to the program and, by extension, the
AmEx brand.”
Source: adweek.com
This same philosophy is shared at
PayWithATweet.com, a service which allows
people to exchange their virtual items for a tweet
of endorsement:
“In today’s world the value of people talking about
your product is sometimes higher than the money
you would get for it.”
Some thinkers, like Red Ant CEO Dan Mortimer,
note that the purchase-with-a-tweet feature
streamlines the shopping experience, but doubt
that convenience is the only criteria for online
shoppers:
“Shortening the payment cycle for impulse
purchases through social is certainly an interesting
field and should definitely be followed closely by
certain retailers. The timing of the announcement
by Amex, one week after Twitter is hacked and loses
250,000 passwords is certainly very brave as is the
assumption that consumers want to make all of
their purchases public and traceable.”
Ecommerce implications
Marketers note the Amex Sync on Twitter
program presents ample opportunity for
measurement which can help Amex develop its
program further, glean insights from consumers
and share this back with partners.
Some, like Paul Marsden, believe the program
paves the way for American Express to enter the
ecommerce field:
“The Amex pay-by-tweet initiative is part of a broad
industry move for financial services companies to
get more intimately involved with e-commerce.”
Fast Company’s Austin Carr remarked:
“AmEx aims to be the connective tissue between
merchants and consumers on social media that
will provide a mix of offers, data, and branding to its
members.”
Consequently, several thinkers believe the
program can help Twitter establish its validity as
an ecommerce platform.
GigaOm’s Eliza Kern pointed out:
“Most of Twitter’s monetization efforts so far have
come through marketing and advertising, such as
promoted tweets which now cost up to $200,000
a day, but this partnership that allows purchases
through tweets could move the company toward
e-commerce opportunities as well.”
WSJ technology reporter Shira Ovide shared a
similar view:
“Marketers for the most part devote a small chunk
of their advertising budgets to Twitter, partly
because it’s tough to prove a tweet or an ad on
Twitter leads to a sale. Being able to directly show
consumers seeing a Twitter message and buying a
product may prove that connection.”

7. People’s Lab is MSLGROUP’s proprietary
crowdsourcing platform and approach that
helps organizations tap into people’s insights for
innovation, storytelling and change.
The People’s Lab crowdsourcing platform
helps organizations build and nurture public
or private, web or mobile, hosted or white
label communities around four pre-configured
application areas: Expertise Request Network,
Innovation Challenge Network, Research &
Insights Network and Contest & Activation
Network. Our community and gaming features
encourage people to share rich content, vote/
comment on other people’s content and
collaborate to find innovative solutions.
The People’s Lab crowdsourcing platform
and approach forms the core of our distinctive
insights and foresight approach, which consists
of four elements: organic conversation analysis,
MSLGROUP’s own insight communities, client-
specific insights communities, and ethnographic
deep dives into these communities. The People’s
Insights Quarterly Magazines showcase our
capability in crowdsourcing and analyzing
insights from conversations and communities.
People’s Lab:
Crowdsourcing Innovation & Insights
Learn more about us at:
peopleslab.mslgroup.com | twitter.com/peopleslab

8. For People’s Lab solutions, contact
pascal.beucler@mslgroup.com