Because Blue, a so-called smart card with an embedded chip and special features, is designed to boost convenience and security for Internet shoppers, the new commercials buzz with youth, technology and a quirky brand of optimism. One ad includes revolving heads of Generation X-ers talking about a future in which people "live to be 200 but look 30." Others featurerocking amoebas or waltzing precision instruments.

Rock promotion

"We are trying to attract a different audience," says Alfred F. Kelly Jr., president of the American Express Consumer Card Services Group. "This is clearly not the traditional advertising for American Express."

To drive that point home, the company has even borrowed some of the guerrilla-marketing techniques usually reserved for hip-hop clothiers or art-house movies. Earlier this month, American Express sponsored a live "Central Park in Blue" concert with rock 'n' roll icons Sheryl Crow, Sarah McLachlan and Eric Clapton in New York. The event, which was "trimulcast" - on television, radio and the Internet - was publicised by teams of young people motor-scootering around Manhattan in black cycling pants, silver helmets and reflective goggles. The crew helped pedestrians swipe cards in hand-held machines for free concert tickets issued at Blue information kiosks nearby.

The Blue advertising campaign, developed by WPP Group's Ogilvy& Mather, underscores the rising stakes in the battle for the Internet card business. It is a fickle and relatively young market, targeting 25 per cent of Americans who currently use computers and sophisticated consumer technology, and the next 25 per cent or so who are learning to use such goods, says American Express.

Blue has all the functions of regular credit cards but with better financial terms than most, including no annual fee, zero interest for the first six months and a 9.9 per cent fixed rate thereafter. It also comes with software that, when installed on a personal computer, automatically fills out troublesome, Internet shopping forms. But to glean Blue's new encryption benefits - provided by the card's embedded memory chip - Blue requires members to use a home card swiper, which is supplied for free by American Express.

While analysts praise the campaign for grabbing the public eye for rivals Visa USA and MasterCard International, which are actively developing their own Internet shoppingplans, it is still possible that the whole category could flop. Analysts say the card swipers may be too cumbersome to attract widespread use, and there are lingering questions about whether e-commerce will ever grow enough for American Express and rivals to make a big business out of it.

Another risk is that the campaign's touting of Blue's security benefits may send the wrong message - planting the seed that other American Express cards are somehow unsafe for shopping on the Net. American Express, after all, isn't abandoning any of its other cards because of Blue.

"I'm already an Amex card holder," says David Gagie of the Auriemma Consulting Group. "They're saying that I shouldn't be using that on the Internet."

Kelly of American Express says the Blue campaign wasn't meant to diminish the unique functions of other American Express cards. But he concedes a few customers may cancel other American Express cards now that they can have Blue. But "I would rather be cannibalising myself," says Kelly, "thanhave the competition do it."

So how does a company like American Express go about changing its image? The new ads focus on the card itself. Blue dumps the Roman Centurion soldier, whose profile was at the centre of most American Express cards for the past 40 years, and on traveller's cheques for a century before that. In his place are the concentric circles of a blue compact disk bordered by white. The card has "a different, modern, more hip feel," says Kelly. "We wanted to break out."

Precision instruments

One Blue television ad starts with blue and white amoebalike creatures which boogie, divide and multiply to a rock beat, ultimately evolving into the Blue card. The message: The card will evolve as the company adds new functions to it ("evolving credit," the ad says).

Another ad recalls the movie "2001:

A Space Odyssey" with precision instruments bending and twisting the card to strains of classical music. Message: Blue is flexible. Unlike the company's charge cards, which have to be paideach month, the balance on Blue debt will carry over.

American Express is bombarding its audience with these messages, running the ads not only in newspapers, magazines and on television, but also in sports clubs, subway cars and restaurant table-top menus.

In addition to advertising on sports and general-interest TV programs that are traditional American Express venues, the company also plans to pitch Blue on somewhat edgier Fox Broadcasting shows to reach a younger audience, including "The X-Files," "Futurama" and the new sci-fi drama, "Harsh Realm."

-- The Asian Wall Street Journal