Amex Runs Admin Professionals Gift Card Sweep from within LinkedIn

Research cited by American Express has found that 49% of administrative professionals do not feel they get the appreciation they deserve for what they do around the office, and in fact that more than 60% will not receive anything for “Administrative Professionals Day”, formerly Secretary’s Day, celebrated this year on Wednesday, April 27.

To rectify that injustice, American Express on April 1 launched a sweepstakes that lets office workers use their LinkedIn social network accounts to nominate their favorite admin professional and then rely on their contact lists to take that nomination viral. The administrator with the most nominations by midnight April 26 will receive a $2,500 gift card from American Express. Of the remaining nominees, all who received at least two nominations will be eligible for a random drawing to award 100 $25 Amex gift cards.

Users who want to enter someone they know for the “Recognize & Reward Giveaway” must go to www.foreverythingyoudo.com, a microsite that contains the rules and explanations, as well as a list of the most recent nominations and to an order page for Amex gift cards.

To actually make a nomination, users must sign into their LinkedIn account (or create one if they’re not already a member). There they can nominate any of their first-level contacts for the grand prize by submitting an explanation in 350 characters or less as to what makes this administrative professional a worthy award winner.

Nominators can then use tools to share their nomination with social contacts on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and other social networks. Nominees can decline to participate, and users can issue up to 10 nominations in a day and can submit a total of 30 nominations for the promotion period.

A wall on the “For Everything You Do” microsite shows all the nominations received, including quotes from the nominators’ submissions. Visitors can sort that entries by most recent or by highest rated, and can click to read all of an entrant’s nominations. At press time the leading contender, with 12 nominations, is Zabrina C, an administrative specialist for Dell in Oklahoma City.

American Express has run this sweepstakes in the past, but this is the first instance of a gift-card issuer running a social media campaign within LinkedIn, says Vanessa Capobianco, American Express manager for public affairs.

“This is the second year that we’ve hosted the ‘For Everything You Do’ program,” Capobianco says. “Last year it lived only on the microsite, and we had strong engagement with that program. But we wanted the program to become more viral and to encourage sharing among co-workers and employees. So we decided to migrate it to a platform that would truly allow employees to recognize their fellow workers. LinkedIn provided that ideal platform.”

To publicize to “For Everything You Do” sweepstakes, Amex is running online ads both on LinkedIn and in other locations on the Web and marketing the contest to card members through email.

One interesting element of the campaign is that not only the nominators but the nominees must also be part of the LinkedIn network. That suggests that the network has grown beyond its executives-only roots to include lower-level office workers in the companies represented among LinkedIn’s membership. In fact, in March the social network for professionals announced that it had reached the 100-million-member mark. More than half of those come from outside the United States, where LinkedIn now numbers 44 million members.

According to a post in the LinkedIn blog, 17.8 million of those members belong to LinkedIn groups, built around industry verticals and general business topics. Those groups see 1.5 million new members join each week, and 1.2 million posts every week.

Last year, American Express posted the results of a survey done among members of the International Association of Administrative Professionals. That study found that 79% of administrative professionals said they would rather receive a monetary reward of $25 to spend any way they wish, compared to 20% who would opt for a $40 floral arrangement or 1% who would chose $20 worth of candy. And 88% of those surveyed said they would choose to get a $50 gift card, as opposed to 12% who would like to celebrate Administrative Professionals Day with an extra $50 in their paycheck.