20 May 2004
Diners Club to introduce "Plutonium Card"
Charge card competition gets "extreme"
DENVER, Colo. -- Faced with customer migration and falling revenues, Diners
Club International announced today that it will introduce a new credit
card for wealthy clients. Unlike cards marketed by VISA and
American Express to their high-end clients, Diners Club spokesperson Amanda Kelsterton
said, "Diners Club is bypassing merely wealthy clients and seeking
clients who travel extensively and have extreme purchasing power."
When asked about the name for the card, Ms. Kelsterton said, "We wanted
to make an elemental leap over the 'silver,' 'gold,' and 'platinum,'
cards that are being offered by our competitors."
A
Plutonium Card will carry an annual fee of $6,300 and will earn its users points that can be exchanged for items such as
a diamond tiara or an entry level Gulfstream G100 for 5,100,880 points
each. At the highest redemption level of 66,030,125 points, a customer
can exchange his points for a Scottish castle or a Boeing Business Jet.
Not to be outdone, Travel Fox has learned that American Express will
soon introduce a new credit card which will carry a "minimum" purchase
limit of $115,000 per month. That card, called "The Kryptonite Card,"
will be available only by invitation to 600 of the wealthiest
clients of the company.
Meanwhile CADA Partners, a relative newcomer to the credit card business
from Winnipeg, will be following a different path in its search for new
customers. Later this year it will begin marketing cards to two heretofore largely untapped
groups of customers:
the debauched and the smarmy.
Jenna Jameson, spokesperson for the "Sin Card," said that applications for
it will be stuffed in the September issue
of Hustler magazine and be distributed on the Las Vegas Strip by the
same fellows handing out cards for "escort services" and who will be
outfitted with "IT'S IN TO SIN" T-shirts.
The "Sleaze Card," on the other hand, will be marketed primarily through advertising in
magazines. The first ads should appear in the October issues of Power
of Attorney, Today's Politician, and Used Car Salesman Digest.
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© 2004 Applied Psychology
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