• by Aaron Baar , March 2, 2009

It's no wonder that American Express is retrenching its strategy, and Visa is launching a new image-building ad campaign: The perception of credit card companies in the U.S. is dropping swiftly.

According to YouGovPolimetrix's Brand Index, the Buzz Index for all four major credit card companies--Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover--has dropped steadily since the beginning of the year. Given the economy, the drop is not particularly surprising, says Ted Marzilli, senior vice president and general manager of YouGovPolimetrix.

"A lot of people are having their credit limits reduced or their cards canceled," Marzilli tells Marketing Daily. "There also may be a backlash because these are companies that encourage [personal] deficit spending."

In the survey of 5,000 consumers, American Express suffered a 10-point drop in buzz score, which measures positive versus negative perceptions, over the two-month period. American Express was the only one of the four brands to have a negative buzz score as of Feb. 24.

"In the most recent couple of months, American Express announced it would be having layoffs, and that never helps a brand," Marzilli says. "The average consumer may not have as much of a history with American Express as Visa and Master Card, which also helps those brands."

According to a story in Monday's Wall Street Journal, American Express- -after launching more typical debt-carrying credit cards to average consumers--is retrenching its strategy and going back to targeting affluent consumers with charge cards that are paid off every month.

Discover Card, which usually has the lowest buzz scores of the four major credit card companies, started to make some positive gains toward the middle of February, and ended the period with a higher buzz score than AmEx. The company has recently been heavily running a television advertisement that showcases its Spend Analyzer tool available to Discover Card holders. Given the times, the message would likely play well with consumers, Marzilli says.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Visa--which had the highest buzz scores of all the credit card rankings-- announced Monday that it would launch its first-ever global marketing campaign with the tagline "More People Go With Visa." The effort is intended to encourage people to use their Visa cards in place of cash or checks for their purchases. In a press release about the campaign, the company's Chief Marketing Officer, Antonio Lucio, made a point of saying the campaign was "not about spending more, it's about using Visa for those things that are important to you every day."

While the campaign--which breaks in the U.S. on Wednesday--is not a factor in Visa's buzzmetrics, Marzilli says the message will be one worth checking in later surveys. "They're betting that the message they want to have come through will come through with consumers," Marzilli says. "If people misjudge the ad or judge it as saying something it's not, then there's a concern."