Barclaycard and a visible success

It has now been about eight years since I looked after the Barclaycard brand. Time really flies.

I fondly remember my marketing and strategy roles for the UK’s first credit card. Barclaycard by virtue of the plastic payment card was (and is) a much more tangible, interesting proposition than most other financial services for both consumers and those marketing the benefits.

Inevitably Barclaycard has been challenged by bad debts and recently announced a decline in year on year profits. That said, with a £761million profit achievement and increasing margins the brand and business remain very robust.

Back in 200o the Barclaycard marketing team were understandably concerned about mobile phone companies. Looking ahead we envisaged consumers would be happy to use their mobiles to make payments and could see a scenario in which a combination of trusted global brands and no requirement for plastic would make credit cards redundant.

A decade on and Vodafone is now the world’s biggest brand.  But despite this, I suspect any current Barclaycard concern is very comfortably outweighed by an excitement for shared opportunities.

Barclaycard, for example, has recently announced a partnership with Orange in which customers will be able to use their mobiles to pay for goods at retailers by waving their handset against a reader. What is interesting, ten years on, is that mobile phone payment and credit card branding are far from mutually exclusive. Part of iPhone’s differentiation has been the embracing of brands – providing owners with visibility and commercials benefits via application buttons.

Prompted by a mailing for Barclaycard’s new Freedom reward scheme I had a look at some of the brand’s recent innovations. The breadth of initiatives is undoubtedly impressive, but what caught my attention is the way the visibility of Barclaycard is increasingly not dependent on the plastic card. I have no idea if this is the result of an explicit strategy, but it is, I believe, a very important benefit of new developments.

The recent reward scheme is a cracking example. Consumers can view their reward balance on a retailers’s chip-and-PIN terminal screen and also their paper receipt – a positive, frequent reminder of the brand’s reward benefits.

Consider also, the small payment device developed for the likes of plumbers and electricians. This Barclaycard branded gadget attaches a chip-and-PIN card reader to the back of a trader’s iPhone and combines it with a downloadable application which includes a cash-accounting tool. Arguably an attractive and timely alternative for soon to be gone cheques.

The translation of Barclaycard’s “waterslide” advertising campaign into an iPhone game is yet another example. It  achieved 3 million downloads in just 13 days and was (and perhaps still is) the most popular free branded advertising game in the history of the iTunes App Store. It became the number one free iPhone application in 57 countries delivering remarkable brand visibility and engagement.

So in summary, high levels of brand engagement frequently achieved away from the credit card.

Of course, the card retains a role and Barclaycard continues to innovate in this space – consider the 4 million contactless credit cards issued or the CodeSure Card which has a keypad and LCD screen embedded into it.

All in all, it is clear from my nostalgic review that the Barclaycard brand’s reach has been rapidly expanded and in doing so has avoided some of the pitfalls I envisaged a decade ago. It is difficult for me to appraise commercial prospects but the visibility the brand is gaining away from the card and traditional advertising does look very valuable.