I remember receiving an invitation about ten years ago when I had a company that was charging a lot for travel on a suite of cards ultimately under my patronage…laughed and threw it in the waste bin when I saw the fee, but in retrospect wish I had taken advantage of the card when it had some really great benefits.
Today it seems like the Platinum, which I have, has arguably more features than the Centurion (5X on travel vs. the Delta status, which would be interesting to me).
AMEX has been a great company over the years and should be capable of getting an attractive package of benefits for very upscale frequent travelers done right. I put a lot of my spending on the Chase SR because of the dining and travel rewards. Too bad AMEX isn't figuring out how to capture that market with a more compelling product. If I were involved in the marketing group there I would be trying to figure out how to capture that demographic because I have a feeling that a lot of the people here pining for this invitation might get one if AMEX figured out how to earn a consolidation of their spending. My point being there seems to be a large untapped and potentially very profitable market between the platinum which is now a quasi mass-market card and the Centurion which seems to be a status symbol card instead of the very compelling suite of high-end travel benefits it started out as. There's a market for this.
The current thread on getting an invitation reminds me of the Groucho Marx quote about not wanting to join any club that would accept him as a member. It's really kind of silly. No disrespect, of course, but where is this company in actually doing the customer focus groups to figure out how to create and market the right products? It would be ultimately more profitable than giving the black card to, say, Rhianna to flaunt.
(I have no idea how AMEX determines the invitations now, and whether I would accept it if I got one…but I put about 250K of spend collectively on my several AMEX cards each year and if AMEX had the right data analytical tools, I'm sure would consider me part of the target market…I guess I'm saying don't read too much into the invitations since it's not at all clear to me they're being done in any organized fashion).