Bad Marketing Can Be a Sign of Trouble

While you can't short this idea, because Visa isn't a public company, this news spells, at least to me, that Visa is hurting and offers general lessons for investing. First, nobody changes their ad slogan when things are working, or working well. At best, business is plodding along and needs a kick, but usually when marketing types are up to this kind of stuff, you can bet that business is bad. Second, they are replacing a successful (legendary actually) slogan, which rules out the mitigating possibility that they are just correcting a previous boneheaded move. Tossing out an icon is hard to do (unless you are George Steinbrenner), and is a good indicator of deeper problems. Third, the new slogan, "Life Takes Visa," is essentially identical to American Express's recently launched slogan of "My Life. My Card." So the fact that Visa honchos chose to go with, and spend good money on, a slogan that is indistinguishable from a key competitor's slogan should tell you that there is a dearth of brainpower firing the pistons at Visa currently.