Credit card club and student credit cards
If celebrities do not entice you to join their student credit cards club, there is marketing strategy B: appeal to emotional attachments to nonprofit charitable groups. People can support their favorite causes and organizations (colleges, sororities, environmental groups, religious associations, political causes) by joining special "affinity" student credit cards programs that remit monetary donations (less than 1.0 percent of annual charges) based on the volume of the member’s purchases. By exploiting our social craving to establish personal identities through group association, affinity student credit cards provide the cardholder with instant recognition. Like customized bank checks or souvenir T-shirts, consumer student credit cards have become individualized billboards that convey social or political statements through pictures of virtually any activity or object of interest. These include a favorite pet (send your pet’s picture to First USA), leisure activity, hobbies, professional association (American Bar Association), professional sports team (NFL), museum ( Smithsonian), favorite magazine ( The Nation), and even your city (D.C.’s Jefferson Memorial).
The most extreme version of this marketing strategy manipulates our sympathy for innocent children and the vulnerable elderly. For example, Visa with its literacy initiative, which features celebrity spokesman Danny Glover, sends a financial donation (less than 1.0 percent of member charges) to reading programs for disadvantaged children. Another Visa promotion shows a picture of a young child alone with his teddy bear; the caption entreats cardholders, "Use your Visa card and make it all better." Similarly, Visa’s "homebound elderly" program seeks to influence our spending habits by appealing to concern for indigent senior citizens. Who could not justify a student credit cards purchase that might benefit needy children or someone’s helpless grandparents?
The industry’s marketing exploits our materialistic impulses through "co-branded" student credit cards with corporations that woo us with free airline travel (American Airlines), consumer products ( General Electric), automobile down payments (General Motors), gasoline (Shell), telephone calls (Sprint), groceries (Giant), sports memorabilia (ESPN), and, of course, cash (Discover). Some offer special sweepstakes programs inspired by our cultural penchant to gamble and receive something for nothing. Visa’s 1998 "magic of plastic" promotion registered 16,000 winners, who received free purchases when their student credit cards transaction was processed at a randomly selected "magic" second of the day. Likewise, Discover’s 1999 "cash back bonus countdown" awarded $100 to 2,000 winners; four others received $25,000, plus a final grand prize winner $1 million during the millennium countdown at Times Square in New York City.