Dive Brief:
- American Express launched a global campaign and new brand platform called "Powerful Backing: Don't Do Business/Don’t Live Life Without It," which focuses on how people balance work with their personal lives, per news made available in an email to Marketing Dive.
- The campaign centers around a series of different work-life vignettes, including a dad helping his daughter with her homework from an airport lounge and a mom turning a business trip into a family vacation. The campaign includes TV and digital video spots, along with mobile, social media, podcasts, connected TV and outdoor media buys.
- The ads will run in more than 20 podcasts, within the file-sharing tool WeTransfer and on live-streaming TV platforms like Hulu. The TV spots will be placed during popular morning shows, prime time and late-night programming, as well as during the NBA Playoffs and the MSNBC show "Your Business with JJ Ramberg."
Dive Insight:
American Express is attempting to cut through the clutter to better reach busy, business-focused consumers — and millennial-aged parents, in particular — who live "blended lives" that closely link work with the personal. Including heavy media buys on channels like podcasts zeroes in on an on-the-go, mobile-focused lifestyle that fits this mold.
Podcast advertising is a growing business for marketers that was projected to reach $220 million in revenue last year — an 85% increase over 2016,— according to the IAB. The trade group's report also noted that NPR found that 75% of its listeners took action on branded messages delivered via the format.
Mobile is one of the key drivers of marketers' continued investment in digital formats like podcasts because it's one of the best ways to reach consumers who spend considerable amounts of time on their smartphones. Mobile accounted for 54% of all digital ad revenue in the first half of 2017, a 40% increase over the year before, a study by the IAB and PwC found.
