CardMarketing 2.0

A person I've never met before sent me a link to a random blog entry on serendipity the other day. I've always been fascinated by chance, contingency and – how Nietzschean of me – throwing the dice, so I read it and it made me think. Well actually, that's not entirely true. It didn't so much make me think as feel, or rather, have a feeling.

I had a feeling, and that's all it was, that there was something in this serendipity malarkey, something contrarian, unpredictable that companies, card issuers, could learn from — and somehow incorporate into their marketing strategies to rejuvenate and reinvent their relationship with cardholders. It was one of those gorgeous feelings you have when you know you're onto something, but haven't quite got there yet (Wittgenstein alluded to it in his Philosophical Investigations but more on that another time).

Even as I write I'm not sure where this is heading, but the basic thrust is that card issuers should be giving people more than just cards. Why? Because cardholders expect that of them. A card is what they expect to receive in the post when they've applied for one, generally preceded, a day or two earlier, by a pin. But this is all so predictable, it's all so dull. Cards are dull because, like every other product out there, we know what we're getting.

Now I'm not saying that card issuers should start sending applicants return tickets to a Cotswolds Cheese Rolling event when they apply for a platinum AMEX, or a two-year subscription to Horse & Hound on the back of a debit card application, but maybe they should start integrating chance, randomness, serendipity into their dealings with cardholders?

Why can't issuers let their hair down and play a little? Because that's what people want — they want to play, they want to smile, they want to have fun — they want something different, out of the ordinary. They want to exclaim 'Wow'.

If you're still reading, here's an example of how an issuer could wow a cardholder with serendipity and light a major viral fuse in the process. If this happened to me, I'd talk about it to family, friends and – for the sake of serendipity – strangers in the street until I drew my last breath. Now isn't that what effective marketing's all about?

Gerald, 28, single, a web programmer, applies for a credit card with a $2000 limit via your website, www.bankofchance.com. He doesn't earn a great deal so that's about as much as he'll be getting. Gerald is just another cardholder from the mass ranks of average, non-Titanium-carrying cardholders who don't feel like they mean much and rarely settle their balances in full at the end of the month. So what do we do? Out of the blue, we send Gerald a weblink via email that opens up a vodcast from the CEO of the Bank of Chance personally inviting him to come and collect his card – AND pin if you can believe it – from a lavish restaurant near Bank of Chance HQ. You see Gerald, you're a valued new cardholder and the post, dammit, just ain't good enough. Later that week, a branded Porsche 911 picks Gerald up from his flat, neighbours, flabbergasted, looking on, and drives him off to a top restaurant in town where he eats lobster, drinks Cheval Blanc, eats Chateaubriand, drinks Pétrus, has a good laugh and a chat with the CEO after which, slightly worse for wear, he is driven off home where he sits down in front of his rig, logs on to one of the many online social networks he belongs to and starts banging on about the crazy, totally random day he's had courtesy of this amazing bank....

You get the message. Now, who's for peppermint tea?