A farewell to plain-vanilla cards.

The days of offering only traditional bank cards--and using Marketing 101 techniques to get them into consumers' wallets are over

Just like kids in a candy store, credit cardholders today have a variety of flavors to choose from--everything from cobranded to affinity, rebate to reward,

no-fee to low interest rate. One estimate puts the full range at more than 30,000 varieties. The only way for banks to make "flavor of the day" is to add a unique or memorable value beyond the initial convenience of the card. That's because today's savvy consumers, taking note of the numerous offerings they receive by mail almost weekly, have decreed that plain-vanilla cards are a thing of the past. Players in this oversaturated market, in turn, are distinguishing themselves in various ways to attract and retain the most profitable among the consumers.

"Everybody recognizes that consumers have more plastic in their wallets than they probably want or need. But no one is going to cut back in the product offerings," says Anthony deLeon, associate partner, Andersen Consulting Group.

That's at least partly because bank card profits are up. Despite the crowded marketplace, card profits last year rose 29% over 1992, reaching their highest level since 1990, according to a 1994 study conducted by Synergistics Research Corp. While credit cards accounted for only 5% of the banking industry's $3.7 trillion in assets, they provided 10% of the industry's record $43.4 billion in profits, the study found.

So instead of fewer cards on the market, bankers can expect to see, yes, an even more segmented approach to targeting consumers with card offerings in the future, deLeon explains. "We may wind up with even more cards out there, but the card approaches will be more focused on specific groups and subgroups of the population."

Bankers themselves agree. "The major issuers have realized that they've saturated the market to the point that all they're doing is stealing from one another," says Bob Bouza, senior vice-president, $200 million-assets Key Federal Savings Bank. This trend is forcing banks to target offbeat market segments with even more unusual product offerings and promotions.

"Strange but true" cards

According to a 1993 study conducted by the Bank Marketing Association, 35 million affinity cards and more than 30,000 affinity card programs exist in the United States today. The most popular and widespread types of affinity cards are university and alumni cards.