I saw the wall posters at Bloor station. The black background splattered with bright colors was catchy and made me look at the ad pretty intently. The tag line “we see you as a person, not a number” was catchy. Initially I did not realize the names had been written using numbers but when I did, it seemed like a really novel idea. What really got me thinking were the possible reasons behind launching this campaign ? Why this campaign now ? What is the strategic intention behind doing this ad ? What sort of customer value is AMEX trying to provide ?
Credit card regulations became stricter in 2009….[click here]
and forced credit cards to give more information to consumers. A lot of public talk was centering on how credit card companies cannot be trusted and that they intentionally did not give enough information to the consumers to keep them in the dark. Speaking from a personal experience, I saw a lot of my friends and family put credit card companies in the same league as crooks and murderers.
Olivia Chow, MP [NDP] also came out guns blazing against the credit card companies and wrote about a list of 11 ways credit card companies rip people off.
Why I think this campaign was started……
was to win back customer’s faith. The financial crisis last year [which continues unabated till now and if my accountant is to be believed will do so till the end of 2010] has left a lot of people in unhappier conditions. Times are tough and money is tight. The consumer spending train has been halted significantly. Credit card company’s like Visa, Mastercard and AMEX had a rough time during the last quarter of 2008 all the way to the first quarter of 2009. See attached comparison chart below:
but things are picking up again. The days ahead seem to be favorable for these companies to gain their profit margins and analyst have predicted strong EPS for VISA, MASTERCARD, DISCOVERY and AMEX.
People will spend freely once more…..
and therefore the credit card companies, in this case AMEX, have to ensure that any negative publicity that has been attached to their brand names and business models need to be neutralized. Their strategy includes repairing any damage done to their relationship with the spending population and in order to provide customers with the perceived value of ‘we care about you more than we care about the money you spend on us’, focussed marketing campaigns will need to be undertaken.
Other card companies should/will soon join in…..
with AMEX and start their own re-bonding efforts with the customers.
How much success they have is a question that is probably worthy of being studied with advanced statistical and behavioral financial and economics studies. It is my feeling that the new mind set that emerges, atleast for the next year or two, will be a lot more conservative when spending.
A word about the campaign design
- Color combination = A+. Very attractive and eye catchy.
- Using numbers to spell names = A+. Creativity at its best.
- Perceived message [by me as a customer] = C+. It seemed to me that I was being told that regardless of how much we care for you, we will still associate something as personal as your name with numbers because at the end of the day, we really associate you with what you spend on us - but we still proclaim to not care about your numbers. The message seems a little contradictory.
