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Barclaycard U.S., which traditionally has hidden its brand behind the star power of its affinity partners, is tiptoeing closer to the spotlight, reports American Banker, a CardLine Global sister publication. The unit of United Kingdom-based Barclays PLC, which specializes in issuing cards for affinity and cobrand partners, including U.S. Airways, Barnes & Noble and L.L. Bean, long has relied on those brands to get the cards into consumers' wallets. But now, after a year of internal development, Barclaycard U.S. is trying to make more consumers aware of its name "in a really subtle way," says Michelle Bottomley, the unit's chief marketing officer. Those steps have included creating a Barclaycard U.S. Web site that advertises all of its partner cards, substituting the brand name for the legal name "Barclays Bank Delaware" on the back of its cards and at the bottom of cardholder statements, and adding the card unit's name to the electronic display on Barclays' office tower in New York's Times Square. "We hope that, as our cardholders and our customers start to see us as a trustmark on the back of the card, they begin to look for us almost as the 'Intel Inside' of the partnership," Bottomley says. Still, ubiquitous advertising campaigns with jaunty jingles are unlikley, at least for now. "We're not doing any television advertising or any mass communication about the brand," Bottomley says. Such a careful approach to increasing brand awareness is difficult to pull off, but if done correctly, "a very subtle but powerful viral buzz … can be very effective," says Joseph I. Rosenbaum, a partner and the co-chairman of Reed Smith LLP's global advertising, technology and media law practice and a former senior counsel at American Express Co.
