Strong Value Proposition through Social Media Tools: A Case of American Express

Introduction

Today, social networking for an individual is not just about swapping pictures and music, or discussing the trivial details of a night out, a TV show or a sporting event. Social media is increasingly becoming the space where professional life happens. For example, the recent decision by Facebook to update user profile pages to offer a ‘LinkedIn style’ professional view, suggests that social media, on the whole, is becoming a medium for work as well as play. The global phenomenon of social media is having a significant impact on every sphere of personal as well as professional life of an individual as social media tools are being used by an individual for seeking public opinion on a general or specific issue, Exchanging thoughts and feelings, Sharing an experience about product, place, people and service, Job seeking & Recruitment, Scheduling any event, Brand Promotions and consumer feedback etc. Looking at the popularity of such social media tools and their impact various companies like HUL, P&G, American Express, ICICI Bank etc, across segments are seriously working on multiple innovative ideas to make themselves easily accessible to the end customers. Further, social networking has changed the one-way relationship between consumers and the mainstream media. social networks provide men and women with the ability to take their stories to the public without waiting for the media to run with it and are even getting the media to follow them(Luscombe 2010). There are many social media tools but what is more important is to identify your objectives and choose the right set of social media tools.

Further, knowing that social media is a very fluid and dynamic phenomenon, there are many questions which come to mind like what is social media? How is it impacting the business? Can it really influence people and change their perceptions about goods and services. Whether social media can play a strategic role in marketing? In addition to this, look at collaborative, interactive, vibrant and dynamic web 2.0, which has resulted not only in sudden unique change in the consumer perceptions and decision making and but this has resulted in significantly enhanced marketing efforts in the form of various marketing campaigns including viral marketing by organisations. In sum, Social media presents potentially attractive opportunities for new forms of communication and commerce between marketers and consumers. As advertisers typically want to find some way to follow their target audiences, many new media opportunities are presented to advertisers.