American Express Plum Card - AMEX: How Good Is Your Corporate Marketing Memory?

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Now I know why American Express named The Green Card The Green Card. It was my dad said because it gave people permission to live way beyond their means - kind of like a Visa - which was the name another company stole from my dad who created The Green Card - and by extension - why MasterCard can't run in the same pack. It's brand name is not a Visa or a Green Card. So how good is your corporate memory? So Plum Card; What are the origins of your brand names? What's your brand story? What is there that I want to recite in the manner of a beloved nursury rhyme?

Now American Express is launching The Plum Card (playing the old colors and flavors trick again) with advertising attempting to create demand by daring me to guess who else has one. Tell me there's some mastermind CMO or CEO behind this one! Is it a card for all the wanna be interior designers who benefit from purchasing things wholesale? Or it a card for the great retail public who don't really have a clue what trade terms are? Let's just dumb everyone's financial terpitude another notch. The Card bills/positions itself as a "Trade Card" with 2% cash back. Will they let me buy furniture less 60%? That's TRADE TERMS! This company isn't working in your best interest! As Casey Stengle said, "Is this as good as it gets, or is this all you got?"

Visa Revamps Life Takes Visa Campaign

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Wishful thinking.

McCann-Erickson's slogan is "The Truth Well Told." But they are not Visa's agency. Remember Dudley Moore's campaign for Volvo? "They're boxy but they're good."? Well here's a new potential future truth. Due to fallout from the continuing credit crunch caused by habitually over extended Americans, Visa has decided to revamp its "Life Takes Visa" campaign. The new campaign's tagline will be "My Credit Addiction."

My father invented The Green Card for American Express shortly after America went off the gold standard. That's when Americans never spent more money than they actually had. He called it the green card because he said it gave people "permission to live beyond their means. Just like A VISA!" The copy cats haven't fallen very far from the tree in all these years. In a carefully crafted well executed plot to grow the economy credit wielding retail consumers are the new serf. Dark Ages revisited anyone? Thanks Lee. Nice word play. Never have so many fallen so suceptible to the truth of so few.