CardMarketing 2.0

The world is a crazy place. I'll rephrase that. People are crazy. In fact, I'll rephrase that, too. Cats are crazy. Wtf? Get to the point, man — spit it out. OK, here goes...

Business Week ran an article a few days back on a fantastically named off-the-wall blog, I Can Has Cheezburger, which publishes, and allows its visitors to publish, images of lolcats and other lolimals — rodents, hens, goats, whatever else had the misfortune to be spawned in nature's wretched womb — doing hilarious things, or maybe just ordinary things but with hilarious captions.

I rarely find much to laugh about in life but for a few short-lived seconds, on seeing the screengrab below of a cat staring at a fan, I was happy.




What's most interesting about the I Can Has Cheezburger blog from a card marketing perspective is the phenomenal traffic that has resulted from pure banality (a tail-twitching 500,000 page views a day from between 100,000 and 200,000 unique visitors). I wonder whether the key to successful online marketing is to not be clever, but to be simple. Man, not that you need reminding, is a simple creature at heart.

There's also a screaming opportunity here for issuers with a card customization program. How about a card design competition based on hilarious lolimal or lolwhatever pics? Dammit, you could even create a whole new card — call it lolcard. Talk about traffic, they'd leave the local iPhone queue for a card like this.

Let people bring a smile to their own, and the check-out girl's face when they're buying that ready meal for one! Accelerate to ramming speed!