By leveraging trust – at scale – from leading lifestyle brands, the credit card companies can keep the customer at the center of everything they do
Listen to the full conversation with Elizabeth Rutledge on The CMO Podcast
I just came across a really interesting podcast featuring Elizabeth Rutledge, CMO of America Express. It’s from this past summer, but still highly relevant and in many respects still of the moment. As publishers adapt to the challenges presented by the search landscape and zero click environment, they’re pushing back — recognizing the need to build trust with readers through original, high-value content instead of the “sea of beige” content associated with generative AI.
In a marketing landscape that Rutledge describes as an “incredibly complex macro environment,” she says that American Express must constantly reaffirm the brand’s enduring mission, which is rooted in service, security, and trust. The core of this remains simple, Rutledge says: “The customer is at the center of everything that we do.“
While American Express has a long history of delivering on the service and security pillars of their mission, trust in this competitive and media environment might require extra effort — especially as credit card issuers amplify their bona fides as lifestyle partners as much as payment facilitators. This requires trust across more dimensions than are typically under the direct control of a payments processing company.
This is why American Express — and its competitors — have leaned into exclusive experiences. Delivering a customer-centric brand means mastering the art of scaling and personalizing curated experiences around key passion points like travel, dining, and sports. But scale is relative — only so many people can attend an F1 race, the U.S. Open Tennis Championships, or the Aspen Food & Wine Classic.
So how can card issuers, including American Express, build lifestyle trust with all Card Members, even those who may not be able to attend marquis events?
Content marketing: The bridge to consumer confidence?
Rutledge highlighted in the podcast that the most important skill set for the modern marketing organization will be achieving a “balance of that human connection and technology. I think that’s the skill set that’s going to be most important going forward, that balance.” This means utilizing technology to better understand Card Member intent and then delivering high quality, original, human created content, to the right place at the right time.
Not coincidentally, this is where modern content marketing can offer a solution. Such a program might involve a combination of original, bespoke content and some licensed from trusted brands that have high credibility with cardholders and prospects:
- Alliance with trusted lifestyle brands: Licensed content allows a credit card issuer to instantly bridge the trust gap and move beyond the transactional by providing something of genuine value to customers and prospects in the form of third-party expert reviews, destination guides, and dining features across owned platforms (email, app, web). This complements existing platforms, like Resy for American Express. (And by the way, it’s not lost on us that American Express used to own such lifestyle brands as Food & Wine and Travel + Leisure…)
- Trustworthy bespoke content: High-quality custom content targeted at specific audiences — like American Express Card Member segments — lets you tailor your lifestyle messaging to exactly what your Card Member data and that of a publishing partner reveal to be of most current interest. People Inc., for example, has proprietary data from our hundreds of millions of lifestyle brand interactions that can be used to inform content program design and deployment. This could include creating specialized dining guides, travel itineraries, and short-form video series informed by proprietary data.
For credit card issuers, strategically aligning with brands who already have authority in niche areas — and then using technology to personalize — is a winning combination.
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Author Bio
Robin Riddle is the Chief Strategy Officer at Content Solutions. He works across B2B as well as B2C and specializes in financial services, insurance and healthcare. Prior to his time here, he led content marketing businesses at both The Economist and The Wall Street Journal. A passionate advocate for the value of content marketing, Riddle is also heavily involved in industry issues and speaks at many events on the intersections of content marketing, native advertising and AI.