It isn’t all that surprising that more negative stories commanded the headlines - as with the campaign - but this one caught our attention (and it wasn’t because of a cool Fintech rollout).
We briefly highlighted the story in our most recent post highlighting the content marketing of 15 banks over a one-week period. The card's popularity alone is newsworthy...but add to that the fact that Chase hasn't spent a dime on marketing the card. This really is a defining, viral 'gotta have one' moment for a bank product.
Before you dismiss this as a really big bank buying a customer segment story, let's step back to define what they did. They asked a standard set of questions, really:
Check, check, check, check, check, check AND check!
While some media coverage is referring to this announcement as "ratcheting up a high reward credit card arms race", it’s hard not to at least admire the fact that Chase currently owns the defining product for this lucrative segment. Wouldn't we all like to be in that position at one point in our careers? Exclusivity, hyped-up product packaging and a swell of social media promoters extending the story! We’ll pretend Chase knew it would be this popular and intentionally didn't secure the necessary quantities of metal stock for the card to feed the messaging too. Does it matter?
As we have said numerous times before, you don't create differentiation by copying others' good ideas - though assuredly more than a few will try to jump on this bandwagon. Instead, look at this as your opportunity to stop thinking about reasons to avoid innovation...pick your institution's road to unique opportunity and commit to bringing something new to life for your bank customers.
Or, just follow the news cycle and call a management meeting to find a way to update your cross-sell scorecards. Your call.