Affinity card market grows

Press, 20 March 1989, Page 34

Affinity card market grows

NZPA-Reuter New York Elvis Presley, whose image graces everything from cheap ashtrays to artworks by Andy Warhol, now appears in full gyration on a credit card.'

There is a growing market in the United States for affinity cards — credit cards marketed to groups of consumers who share an interest in an activity or organisation.

Customers receive a card with the appropriate image, such as a wilderness scene for an environmental organisation, and a percentage of the fee and revenues from the card goes to that group. The Presley card, offered by Memphisbased Leader Federal Bank for Savings, shows a young Elvis performing against a backdrop of a Wurlitzer jukebox, with the Master Card logo in the lower right comer.

Part of the annual membership fee and card revenues will be given to the Elvis Presley Memorial Foundation, which supports homeless children and provides scholarships to young musicians, according Mr Jack Soden, executive director of Graceland, Elvis’s museum home in Memphis. Presley, who died in 1977 aged 42, gave millions of dollars to charity, including the proceeds from a television special to the Kui Lee Cancer Fund, and funding the entire War Memorial in Pearl Harbour.

“Affinity-card marketing started in the early 1980 s when the response rate to credit cardsolicitation was dropping to 1-1.5 per cent from 3 to 6 per cent,” said the director of the affinitycard marketing division of Master Card International, Mr Steve Bartell. There were some 1600 different card programmes, ranging from cards designed for boating enthusiasts to others

which direct money to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

"Affinity cards are one of the bright spots in the issuing side of the market right now,” said Mr Kurt Peters, editor at “Credit Card News.”

They accounted for just under 10 per cent of the 175 million to 200 million Master Card and Visa cards now being used in the United States.

“The phenomenon has been really strong for the last three years,” he said. The American Automobile Association has run an affinity card programme through Master Card for 10 years. “The AAA is the granddaddy of them all,” he said. Master Card has issued 3.3 million AAA cards, by far the most of any affinity group.

For the Elvis card, “we’re getting about 1000 applications a month, mostly from traffic through Graceland,” said the Leader Bank’s executive vice president, Mr Brad Champlin, who conceived the Presley card and developed it with Soden. The bank had not started full marketing. “It’s still in test, we’re refining our audience,” he said.

Mr Champlin said there had been a high female response, “particularly (those) between 25 and 35 years old and in their forties.”

Leader offers other affinity cards, including one that directs proceeds to Leßonheur Childrens’ Medical Centre in Memphis. But Mr Champlin said none gets the response the Elvis card does.

“I paid my bill in a restaurant recently and the waiter took 20 minutes to come back with my card,” he recalled. “He told me he couldn’t get it back from the kitchen staff, who all wanted to have a look.”