I like the new Diners Club international marketing campaign, I thin kit’s really well done. It’s available on YouTube in multiple languages. Here’s the South African version of the ad, the diference being a mention of winning 1 million South African Airways miles and displaying the URL for the South African website.

The ‘belong’ theme is common, travelers will recognize it for sure. The theme of a credit card connecting you to your values and using your money to accomplish things that matter is, umm, hardly new. (Mastercard, anyone?) And yet the images and language appeal to a more upscale demographic. Yet the benefits of the card really aren’t positioned the way that American Express positions Platinum or Centurion. So intellectually I’m a bit skeptical of the commercial. And yet it resonates.

Here in the U.S. you can’t apply for a Diners Club card at the moment. So I’m actually thankful that I have one, dating back years and years, because it’s my default card when American Express isn’t accepted — because despite the substantial devaluations over the years it’s still the best rewards program with Mastercard acceptance in my view, and I love the primary rental car insurance coverage.

I’m hoping that Bank of Montreal’s acquisition of Citibank’s North American Diner’s Club franchise will reinvigorate the card, rather than leading to further cuts. I imagine they might want to, you know, actually let people apply for the card at the very least. Developing…