Have you seen the promos for the “Shine the Light” contest by American Express and NBC Universal?

The campaign, which invited the public to nominate and vote for the “small business story that most inspires them,” wrapped today with the announcement of the winner: Sacred Wind Communications, a telecommunications outfit based in Albuquerque that is working to wire Navajo lands with telephone and Internet access. The company will receive with $100,000 in grant and marketing support.

“Shine the Light” is a great example of a campaign that was not overtly marketed to women as the target audience, but nonetheless capitalized on a number of marketing principles and tactics that appeal to them:

1. You decide: The entire contest was driven by public input, from nominations to voting for the winner – the principle of putting women in CONTROL in action.

2. iVillage: This women-oriented online entity, which NBC acquired in 2006, was responsible for creating the online community platform; it also hosted the campaign web site (http://shinealight.ivillage.com) and promoted the campaign heavily.

3. All-female judging panel: Coincidence or not, all three judges were women: Talk Show Host and Entrepreneur Ellen DeGeneres, Fashion Designer and Entrepreneur Diane von Furstenberg, and MSNBC’s Small Business Expert JJ Ramberg. They winnowed the nominees to three finalists.

4. Social media: The corporate sponsors of the contest offered promotional tools like widgets and badges on the campaign web site that people could easily use them to CONNECT and spread word of mouth through their networks on Facebook and MySpace.

The campaign smartly tapped into the growing trend among women entrepreneurs, who make up the fastest-growing segment of U.S. small businesses. What’s more, businesses owned by women of color are growing three times faster than all U.S. firms, according Center for Women’s Business Research.

When Lisa and I were promoting The She Spot, one perceptual hurdles we had to overcome was the notion that, if a campaign doesn’t hang out a big banner marked “women”, it somehow doesn’t “count.”

Shine a Light proves that you don’t need to call out your target audience in boldface to hit the mark. In fact, there are many instances when doing so isn’t the strategic thing to do. The winner of the contest, for example, wasn’t a woman. That wasn’t the point. It was about getting brand exposure among the audiences that mattered most.