CardMarketing 2.0

I have written before on chance, randomness and serendipity — and how much fun it would be if issuers could integrate these concepts into their marketing. Well, one issuer has made a stab at this recently, and it's a good start. I'm talking, of course about Chase (which is usually the case whenever I'm covering innovation and clever goings-on in the cards space).

Shopping for blinds is something no man should suffer, is a truly desperate fate, but my excuses — and there were many of them, believe me — had run out. So, there I was, on the last Sunday of September, being led around Peter Jones like a corpse on a skateboard, having to cope with alien terms like 'fine perforation' and 'twizzle'.

The amount of money spent on online advertising in the UK during the first half of 2007 was up 41.3% year-on-year, taking the sector to a half-year high of £1,334.3 million. This compares to £917.2 million last year, and means online now accounts for just under 15% of total UK ad spend. At this rate, it's predicted to reach a potential new high of £2.75 billion by the end of 2007. The figures were released today in the biannual internet advertising spend study commissioned by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

If you've got a lunch or coffee break spare, check out this podcast on web 2.0 and the financial services industry. OK, you'll have to put up with an aussie drawl — the stars of the podcast are Charis Palmer, editor of Brisbane-based Online Banking Review, and Simon van Wyk, founder of Hothouse, an Oz-based web company — but the content is good to firm. Beats talking to Brenda at the coffee machine. (I love the aussies really, but it's rugby world cup time and nobody wants the men in gold to win that — again).

Chase Card Services took a chunk out of the opposition in mid-September with the launch of its next generation Freedom card, the only credit card offering triple awards that are automatically adjusted based on an individual's spending patterns. It's an intelligent card intelligently marketed by an intelligent and modern-thinking issuer.

Simple but strong piece by Janel Landis, a director of search marketing at Florida-based multi-channel marketing agency, Sendtec.com, on search and DRTV. She drives home how important it is to balance TV advertising with search engine marketing, that is, to make sure that when people collapse in front of the Dell...

Creditcovers.com, the place you go to design a skin for your credit card (and subvert one of the key icons of consumer capitalism in the process with a humorous picture of some 'tits' or 'ass'), has teamed up with Zug.com, the world's self-proclaimed funniest website to create the world's funniest credit card cover.

I am starting to go insane. Would somebody out there please write something, make a comment on a Card Marketing 2 post, any post, even if only to say how poor, unimaginative, barren it is. A blog is meant to be a dialogue, a place to share ideas and thoughts, and to maybe generate new ideas and thoughts.

Allowing people to customize their credit, debit and gift cards with images of their own is a rapidly growing trend across the banking community globally, and a reaction to the rampant consumer demand for personalization. It's not just about satisfying consumer demand, either...

The TechCrunch 40, which took place on Monday and Tuesday of this week in The Palace Hotel, San Francisco, was an opportunity for 40 of the world's hottest start-ups, selected on merit, to announce and demo their products, and potentially win $50,000 cash.