Twitter Canada and Amex Canada launched Twitter’s first-ever branded Scenario Thread earlier this month to promote awareness of American Express’ redesigned suite of Aeroplan cards.
Last month, Amex launched a campaign featuring Will Arnett preparing to return to his “happy place” as the ability to travel returns. The campaign supported Amex Canada’s suite of Aeroplan cards and marked a return to marketing around travel rewards.
Working with Twitter, Amex extended the campaign with the “Scenario Thread,” where users answer a series of questions, with the goal being to help Arnett get ready to travel and find his “happy place.” With every travel hiccup that comes his way, Arnett’s Amex Card is shown to be there to save the day. The Thread then leads to an immersive AR experience that transports audiences to Greece and Japan. The AR web-based experience was developed and led by experiential agency BT/A.
It was launched on Oct. 6 with a high-impact, full day Trend Takeover and Spotlight video about the Thread at the top of the Twitter Explore tab, helping to maximize awareness and conversation. The thread itself will continue to be available until Nov. 3.
The companies say the Takeover was a success against Twitter benchmarks – over 10 million impressions and two million video views – and the thread itself continues to see strong engagement.
“This is all about helping brands find deeper engagement with audiences on Twitter,” says Jamie Michaels, head of the Twitter Next brand strategy team in Canada. “Scenario threads take people on an online journey that’s fun, informative and unexpected.”
Amex says it had strong focus group engagement for the broader “Happy Place” campaign prior to launch, and used the opportunity to develop further content with Arnett that provided both “surprise and delight” moments as well as utility.
Michaels adds that the approach also allows brands to bring in other relevant info; in Amex Canada’s case, it was paired with useful travel content and info about how Amex cards can be used to address common points of stress during the travel process.
