Elements of Credit

Dimitri Mendeleev was a Russian scientist, who came up with the periodic table. A periodic table is a table which arranges all the nature's 118 elements in an orderly manner ....till dinner time when the kids come and make a mess of it. That's just goes to show what the Russians are capable of , when they do not skull Vodka (i.e. between 3 AM and 3.30 AM on Wednesdays). When they do drink Vodka however, they produce some phenomenally boring movies for Doordarshan (e.g" Life cycle of the Siberian tapeworm" ) and invade central asian countries. I can imagine Stalin swigging a few and ordering his shivering Komissars

"Let uz shoot mizziles at Uzbekistan"

"Da........ but we already shot at it yesterday"

"Izzit, dan let uz shoot Turkmenistan"

"Da Vee Kan but we already have it for 4 years"

"Dammn, then let us shoot "Adventures of Vladimir at the Potato farm". Heaven knows, Doordarshan needs it".

Cutting to the cheese again, unknown to Mendeleev however was the fact , that his table was going to be a huge catalyst for one industry....albeit a hundred years later. I am referring to Credit cards. Credit card companies who started with the Silver card (To those who have arrived) and later moved to Gold (To those who have really arrived) and to Platinum (To those who have arrived again) and now to Titanium (To those who have arrived again and left) and finally Iridium (To those who have arrived again and left and would like to arrive once again but are in 2 minds if they arrive again will it be the Platinum card or will it be considered as arriving again and again). Wonderful chaps ....these marketing guys.

That is what is called differentiation and in the process forgetting the original purpose of the credit card. The marketing speak would be "We are not selling just a card but a lifestyle". A lifestyle, which is spilling over to some kind of surreal scenarios

Silver - You can get access and discounts to more than 5000 restaurants in the world

Gold - You can get access to Airport lounges, Golf Clubs, Royal palaces and ladies toilets

Platinum - You can get handcarried by 4 bankers into First Class airplane seats while a personal concierge will breastfeed you Dom Perignon Champagne.

Titanium - You can get access to a round the clock personal back scratching service by a concierge (who BTW has a Gold card of his own), a personal gold threaded underwear

Iridium - You can get a free replacement heart , lungs and some common sense to realise that 90% of the times you get offerred things, which you will never need.

Sometimes I wonder if the banks really are no differrent than these new fangled coffee shops or the so called wine bars , where snobbery is a sport and pretension is a skill. Ever since they started , by offering it by invitation (only to realise that it is not enough of a market) then later on steadily diluting the idea to such ridiculous extents that the whole exclusivity idea looks rather silly. In order to maintain a balance between that verdigris of exclusivity at the upper end and a mass market which is reality, they just keep on attaching new lifestyle elements (Pun intended) to have these exclusive credit cards. In Singapore on one hand you have these super duper Iridium cards and on the other hand the same company's bankers will thrust Gold credit cards in to your pockets with unsolicited alacrity, in what technically can be called as hit and run incidents. I am sure that the banks will say that they have their reasons which sounds the same as Gillette saying that it has it's reasons it will keep on coming up with twin bladed, 3 bladed, Quattro bladed razors etc untill a point where razors are going to make your cheeks so smooth that after your next shave, when the mob of Playboy playmates try to plant juicy kisses on your cheek, they are going to lose their grip and fall over your shoulder to their deaths. Infact, Gillette has already lost theirs.

At the rate at which more and more exclusivity is being stamped out by these banks, a day will arrive when they may not run out of ideas but surely they will run out of elements. Will having a lifestyle is going to make people use their credit card differently ( "Hey finally got my Iridium card so now I can record my mp3 songs on it ") or is it going to change their lifestyle ( "Let me see I have a Platinum card so may be I will try driving blindfolded in reverse to office today"). How many of us use the card differently just because it is Silver or Gold or Platinum. For majority of the population, a card is a card is a card and for the minority who do live beyond their means, will continue to do so regardless of Gold, Silver or Platinum. Will the banks come clean with their marketing stables and just have a couple of credit cards. Nope.... as long as there is a steady supply of aspirational naivete in mankind, we will keep on having new cards and that day is just another 114 cards away when we have the final of these Ununhexium cards.