Today's Best Brands Aren't Marketing, They're Creating Movements

Housing prices were imploding. Financial institutions were in a nosedive. The Great Recession had just gotten underway, and was showing itself to be what it would become– a tectonic shift in our economy that would eliminate 7,030,000 jobs in the 13 months between September 2007 and September 2008 alone. In the midst of all this awful news, a group of executives atAmerican Express AXP +0.92% got together with CEO Kenneth Chenault to share their concerns.

Their anxieties were not about their bottom line. Instead, they talked about what they and their company could do to help small retailers, who were especially vulnerable in the downturn. From their conversations came a new brand movement called Small Business Saturday. (Luckily, they didn’t go with their first idea, Small Business Tuesday.) Small Business Saturday is now in its sixth year, and research suggests it has made a lasting impact in inspiring people to shop small. The Saturday after Thanksgiving has been made an official day by Congress, and on the most recent day in 2015, more than 95 million people spent $16.2 billion in America’s small businesses. read more here,http://goo.gl/qe5tU8