The art of marketing — for good | Raja Rajamannar

0:06You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hugh. Today, a conversation about what marketing is for and how to do it well in our highly competitive environment. Raja Rajaminar is the chief marketing officer at MasterCard. He sits down with TED curator Whitney Pennington Rogers to share how the art and thinking behind marketing has evolved over the years and how he's reimagined it for the current context.

0:40Well, thank you so much for being here with us today, Raja. It's exciting to have you here. Delighted to be here. Thank you. You are the chief marketing officer for MasterCard, which is a fintech company, as we all know. But the way that you and your team position MasterCard out in the world is far different from what I think anyone would expect from a fintech company in terms of the way it looks and the things you care about. And I know a lot of this has to do with your philosophy around marketing. And so would you share a little bit to start about the way you approach marketing, the way you think about it?

1:11So when I look at marketing, why does it even exist in companies? So there are three reasons. Number one, it is the manifestation of everything that the company stands for its values, which all get embodied in the brand. So it's about brand building, nurturing the brand, protecting the brand. That's the first one. Second, to advance the business. Because we are not, at the end of the day, just a creative function that makes the brand look good. It has to make a difference to the business. That's number two. And third, with all this intense competition that is so widely prevailing, how do you establish platforms that will differentiate your brand, differentiate your company, and keep it ahead of the game?

1:55So these are the three primary reasons why marketing exists. But the way I look at marketing is also a little different in the sense that it's not only doing something good for your company, but it also does something very good for the society. So we call it doing well by doing good, or marketing is not just a force for growth, but it is also a force for good. And that really changes the entire texture through which you look at marketing, and the kind of difference it can make is absolutely fascinating. And I know you published a book called Quantum Marketing, which sort of encapsulates a lot of this.

2:34So how do you define that term, quantum marketing? See, it's fascinating. If you look at all the theories and principles of marketing, they were formed more than six decades back. At the time, there was no social media. There were no mobile phones. There was no Internet. Forget about artificial intelligence. and one of my quests had been to say that when marketing rules were formed then, the theories of the principles, are they so timeless that they remain constant with all the changes happening or are they actually going to change? And that led me down this whole discovery where I said, actually the principles which were done there are not like magnetism or electricity, which don't change with time, but they actually have to be changed in the context of marketing.

3:23And in the area of marketing, like classical marketing, there are many things that are done today which are completely ineffective, they're useless, and in fact, they're even counterproductive. So from that perspective, I have come up with this whole construct called quantum marketing, which is about challenging every single aspect of marketing from its foundations and then reimagining for the current context and also try to tease out some of those principles which will remain into the future irrespective of what happens in the environment. So go more to the foundational principles of marketing the way they should be than the way they have been.

4:07Okay, well so when we started off, you started talking about a couple of these principles that you find really compelling. And one of them was connected to purpose and this idea of how purpose can motivate your decisions in the marketing space. So how does purpose fit into your vision for marketing and how it influences your choices there? So, you know, firstly, your purpose can be purely to make profit. Okay, so it can be anything from a purpose-drivenness. It is the reason why a company exists and what objectives does it want to pursue. It's a direction. It's a north star for a company. What you find typically is for most companies, if the purpose is all about profit, the equation becomes so ineffective.

4:54As opposed to looking at the larger good as your purpose, profits will automatically follow. So what you bring first and what you bring next is the key point out here. And when you're trying to do something genuinely good for the society, genuinely good for the planet, you earn the kind of trust from consumers, which is absolutely invaluable. And it becomes one of the biggest differentiators for your company or for your brand. And that, in turn, drives your profitabilities and your profits. So therefore, when I look at the entire aspect of purpose, it's important that every company needs to know what exactly it is doing beyond merely peddling their products and serving advertisements and marketing campaigns.

5:37And in MasterCard, could you share some examples of what that's looked like for you? Because there's a lot of ways in which you've implemented this. Yeah. See, one of the things we have done right here in New York is, you know there was the situation amongst a transgender population where when they go through the transition many times when they go with their card the payment card the name on the card does not match with what a person expects based on the new look of that individual and many of them sadly were even being denied service as a result of which they get suspicious looks. Your name says it's Carla, but you're looking like Carl and what's happening and so on.

6:21It seems to be probably a small problem for those of us who don't go through the situations, but we really empathize in what they're going through. You say, man, we have to really do something about it. And so the solution that MasterCard came up with is called true name card. So you put the name on the card that you think that you would want to be called by, based on your new identity. Whether you have gone through the legal processes to change the name or not is a different issue. All we want is, what do you want to be addressed? It might seem such a small thing, but the amount of difference it makes is humongous to these individuals.

7:00And the moment we wanted to launch this, there were a lot of companies, we don't issue cards ourselves directly. it happens through the banks. And banks were worried. They said, this might be a little controversial. Maybe it's the right thing to do. Is that segment big enough? And it took one bank in Canada to start this whole process. And then it was like opening the floodgates. And now this card is available, true name card, in more than 28 countries around the world and one of our most profitable products. Now, we didn't start with the objective of profit. We started with solving a real problem and being purposeful about it, which sort of makes a huge amount of difference.

7:39I'll give you another example. I actually keep thinking about it. So when I was growing up, my grandmother, she was blind. And me and my sister would hold her hands and help her navigate through the house. And even when she was sitting in front of a dining table, we had to show her where the glass was, what items were where. and fast forward I went to a South by Southwest conference and I was coming out and one of my finance colleagues has come out and said Rajat how come we don't have a card for a blind person how does a blind person pay their card how do they distinguish one card versus the other card I said man I should have thought about it I actually grew up seeing somebody who was blind in my own family.

8:25And when we started working on this, and what a simple solution that we have come, but what an effective solution was. A small notch on the side of the card, when you touch it based on the shape of the card, a shape of the notch, you know what kind of a card it is. For example, if it is a credit card, it's like a half hexagon, the shape of the notch. If it is like a gift card, it's like a V. And if it is a debit card, it's like a C. So the shape of the notch will tell you what kind of a car it is. The position of the notch will tell you whether you're holding the car the right way up. Because when you go to your terminal, how do you know which way is the right one and which way is the wrong one?

9:03And finally, if it has a notch, it is a MasterCard. So with one single stroke, a small innovation, it is a big step forward. And we launched it. And the interesting thing is the moment it got launched, it really took the world by fire, so to speak. Now we have got it in more than 35 countries around the world, this particular card. And the kind of feedback that we have been receiving, not just from people who are blind, but even from moms of kids who are blind. And it's very deeply moving. They say, you know, this is going to be a game-changing thing for my kid because it gives them an independence.

9:41And for a blind person, independence is very, very important. So what we have been trying to do is to look at these kind of product innovation or creating new platforms. And without making it a monologue, if I can just mention one quick thing about, you know, recently this happened in Poland. When the war broke out in Ukraine, it has resulted in the largest human migration in Europe since World War II. And these people, they were all flooding the country, away from their country and getting most of them into Poland. And Poland as a system and infrastructure was getting totally overwhelmed. And it was getting very chaotic because people are all over the place.

10:20They don't have opportunities and so on. So what we did was a brilliant solution, I would say, even if I have to say it myself. The point is, this solution is a simple app that is powered by AI. It asks the refugee coming from Ukraine, tell us something about yourself, your educational background or your experience, your qualifications, the kind of job you're looking for, the family size, the situation of your kids, and so on. Based on that, it will identify opportunities in the entire country and tell you in this small place, whether it is Krakow or Poznan, wherever, there are three jobs available that you can apply straight from this particular app.

10:58This is the compensation that you can expect. Here's the cost of living that you have got. There's the kind of schooling for your kids and so on. And you can also search real estate right through that app. What happens is in one single small app, you have really helped this person find opportunities and land with the right opportunities. Now, the beauty is one out of five Ukrainian refugees who settled in Poland settled using this app. So much so that the government of Poland said this is the app that they would like to adapt as their own. And equally, United Nations Security Council has invited MasterCard to go and talk about how there could be public-private partnerships that will tackle the migration crisis that's happening around the world.

11:46So when you start doing these kind of things, on one hand, it's profoundly meaningful, fulfilling and gratifying to the employees of the company. But also it does make a difference, competitively speaking, because your brand, people will start loving it. Well, that's extraordinary. And I think one thing that's really interesting, too, is it's clear how this can be applied to companies, but there's also ways in which you can take this learning, these thoughts, and apply them to yourself as an individual and sort of how you think about marketing yourselves. And so in these last few seconds, if you could share a little bit about how you might be able to apply some of this on the individual level.

12:20See, I think an individual, I actually talk about the other way around, which I normally say is imagine a company to be a human being. What would you want this human being to be known? What should be the name? What should be the personality? How should they dress? How should they conduct themselves and so on? What you're asking is the exact opposite of it, which is also a very valid thing. If you're an individual, how would you go about marketing yourself, right? Time and again, it has come very clearly to light that simply having the best product will not make you a market leader. You should know how to market yourself.

12:59You should market yourself based on authenticity, meaning you cannot fake it. If you are faking it, you can fake it and get away for some time, but people will see through you sometime down the line, on the one hand. Number two, how do you want to be better than the other products that are out there? Just like in a company, as an individual, how am I going to be better performing so that I'm able to gain more market share, which means I'm able to advance faster and better than somebody else, or realize my own objectives. Most importantly, and we call this at MasterCard decency quotient, am I being a decent person, or am I being ruthlessly competitive just to get by and get ahead?

13:40And in the short term, being ruthless and being totally self-centered might help, but actually, in reality, the decency quotient will give you enormous advantage over medium and long term. So for me, the parallels are pretty striking. Whether you come from an individual and project them onto companies or you start with the companies and project onto individuals, the strategies are extremely similar and very parallel. Well, I feel like we could talk about this forever. There's so much more we could dive into here. But thank you so much for sharing this, Raja. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you very much for having me.

14:12Much appreciated. Thank you. Thank you.

14:43and Alejandra Salazar. It was mixed by Christopher Faze Bogan. Additional support from Emma Taubner and Daniela Balarezzo. I'm Elise Hugh. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feet. Thanks for listening.