Gustavo E Perez

Visa Signature relaunch

Affluent consumers were expected to make up over 90% of 2013 growth in credit card volume. We knew it, and so did everyone else. The competition among premium cards was fierce, but one brand had a big leg up thanks to years of reinforcing the privileges of membership: American Express. Growing our Visa Signature business meant shifting share from AmEx, beating them in the category they created. 

What made that task even more difficult was the place from which we started. Visa had always been more “everyman” than high-end. Even though Visa’s premium card, Visa Signature, was in more Affluent wallets than any other brand, it was practically invisible – a second “fallback” card hidden behind their AmEx. In fact, most customers had gotten theirs by default, having chosen a card based on their bank or other factors. They didn’t have a relationship with Visa Signature, and the brand didn’t mean anything to them. We knew that an increase in awareness of the brand and its benefits leads to an increase in brand equity and engagement, which drives usage. We used this model as our path.

While affluent dual-cardholders had loads of extra benefits available to them, nothing seemed all that personally relevant. This was exacerbated by premium cards’ bad habit of simply listing off their benefits, as if customers should want them just because they were offered. What Affluents really wanted were ways to make the experiences they personally cared about better.

Visa Signature had always used customer input as the driving force behind its benefits. But no one knew it. Our research indicated that when customers knew the benefits had come from people like them, they saw them as more relevant and were more likely to use their Visa Signature, even above their beloved AmEx. Our story of listening was born.

Visa Signature: Your idea of what a card should be.

Make listening obvious, make it easy, and message everywhere that mattered

Breaking through AmEx’s territory meant ensuring that consumers really saw, understood and experienced the difference. So we made it obvious that we had listened and why that actually mattered. We made it easy for consumers to see and experience the benefits available to them. And we went one step further: giving consumers a way to tell us their ideas for the future.

We used awareness building television, contextual media, outdoor signage at strategic pain-points and encourage social dialogue to prove we were serious about listening to our cardholders and offered them the benefits they wanted.