AMEX Blue amoebas (commercial, 2001)

Someone at AMEX apparently noticed that amoebas bear some kind of relationship to their Blue card, so a bunch of them getting together to make up an image of a Blue card.

Blue was AMEX's attempt to make a younger, hipper revolving charge card (credit card). They had made their start helping people manage their traveling expenses. Remember their traveller's checks business and Carl Malden? Then they emphasized business and business travelers but now want to move into the lifestyle market, aka get everyone to use their cards every day.

The Blue card was originally clear with a blue center, but AMEX had trouble with the cards not being accepted in some readers, so they became white (about the color of the background in this commercial) with a blue center at least for a while.

The end of the commercial emphasizes the consumer features. In this way they indicate it is a totally different card from what you might think of AMEX as offering (although it is similar to Optima). A normal AMEX card was not a revolving credit card, you put bills on it and you had to pay them off at the end of the month. There were no interest rates because there was no interest, you couldn't carry a balance. Those cards made money for AMEX based upon transaction fees and annual fees.

Blue is a revolving credit card. This is the traditional type of card where you can carry a balance month-to-month as long as you pay interest on it. The taglines reference this with "pay over time" and "evolving credit". Evolving credit was presumably also a tie-in to the amoebas.

AMEX also put a "smart chip" in the card. This made it a smart card (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_card) and American Express planned to use this to make transactions more secure, which would reduce fraud and increase their profits. They also offered a free smart card reader with your Blue that connected to your computer. This was to be used to facilitate secure internet purchases. This was a great idea and already is used in Japan with Sony's FeliCa standard and various "fast pass" contactless smart cards in the US. However, at this time, the system really didn't take off (even chip and PIN was years off) and so the smart card capabilities of Blue were rarely used. Blue went contactless later.

This spot was aired during a late January, 2001 episode of Junkyard Wars on TLC.

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Howto & Style

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• commercials
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• ads
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• advertisement
• spot
• 2001