• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, January 23, 2012

Thank God, SOPA has been pushed back. Otherwise, American Express Vice President-Global Media Strategy Shari Forman might be having conversations this morning with Michael Jackson’s estate, or whoever it is that actually owns the right to all those old Beatles songs now, because during her opening keynote at MediaPost’s Social Media Insider Summit down in Key Largo this morning, she just plagiarized John Lennon and Paul McCartney, but uttering her “favorite” line:

“Money can buy you likes…,” she said, “but it can’t buy you love.”

Okay, so it was more of a paraphrase than a direct lift, and it wasn't said online but at a MediaPost event, and whoever owns the Beatles’ song rights, probably couldn’t enforce that copyright, but it Forman’s line did make me think about the new paradigms being created by social media. In the case of American Express, she says, it’s all about the brand, not the social dollars you spend to attract people to it, per se, but how you can use social media to get them to love your brand – or love it even more.

Sure Amex is buying up lots of real estate – and fan bases -- on Facebook, Twitter, and even FourSquare, LinkedIn and YouTube, but the real goal, she says, is about enhancing a cardmember’s relationship with Amex.

The social media strategy is focused exclusively on American Express cardholders, but she says the financial services marketer does not require any of them to “like” anything in order to opt-in to social media offerings or features. That’s because Amex doesn’t want to game the system and influence participation. It just wants its members to participate with the brand through social media.