Beyond "Priceless" // Mastercard's Next Chapter with Jill Kramer

20:11Jim Stengel:Well, I think you're a pretty amazing leader. Thank you. Oh, really? Thank you very much. I'm so happy we're doing this interview. Me too. It's the best. Now, you have this mantra, early, dirty, often. It's early, ugly, often. Oh, okay. Early, ugly, often. It's even better. Isn't that hysterical? So what's the origin story of that? I read it somewhere, and I had worked on an account for a very long time at BBDO, and I would watch what would happen to ideas and work because we were taking the work in the wrong direction. And what would happen is everybody has a fingerprint that they leave on the concept, And then it would get to whomever was the actual decision maker who would say, oh, no, I wanted this.

20:50And you'd be like, that's what we did in step one. So it's a very simple question of why don't we just invert the process? And I noticed it at Accenture. I mentioned Roxanne. Everyone would be perfecting things before it got to Rox. And I was two doors down for her. So I'd be like, immediate reaction, love or hate? We're going this way. And you calibrate at the beginning. You have no expectation of perfection. You don't even have expectation of being a quarter of the way there. You're just gut checking. You're just getting a human and emotional reaction to the direction you're going in. And for me, it does two things.

21:24Number one, it really stops wasting people's time. And once you have that permission and that validation of reaction, then you let people do work and know they're not wasting their time. And the second thing that I think it really does is it keeps leaders involved. in a way where people actually, they're actually making what the company is making instead of just seeing it finished, having no idea of where it came from. It's dangerous if you get too far from the actual craft of what we do. And so I think it works for both the people who are doing the work, they're empowered, but also the leaders, they're involved.

22:01Jim Stengel:How do you actually do that? I mean, we used to do when I was at P &G, show the brief for a new initiative or a new piece of work to the highest boss in the chain who will have, and just say, are you aligned with the brief? Yep. And then what happens? You probably go away for weeks, if not months. Yeah. And I have a brand new agency team that I'm working with now. They don't know me at all. Right. And that was my thing with them is like, so what we do is we gut check really, like these are the territories. At different stages. Yeah. And again, it's involvement, it's deep caring. They know I care about where they're going.

22:36And by the time as I'm seeing the work, I'm seeing it evolve. I'm seeing it get better. I'm like, oh, I liked these three territories and you went here. Freaking brilliant. I love that. Like there's so much more passion in working that way. But my the team is still fully empowered. They're doing everything. I'm not going to worry about anything that gets made from the new work I've been seeing because we all hurt each other. We know what we love and why. And there's incredible talent and capability and trust that it will actually get made in that way. But if they made it all and they were so invested in it, and then I saw it and said, oh, gosh, I really wished you had turned left instead of right.

23:15That just demoralizes everybody. And it takes the energy and the heart out of the creative process. Now, I was explaining this actually to the leadership team at MasterCard. If you don't get that early check-in by the time they do the work, and they've fallen in love with something and you have to go a different direction, you've lost all the energy. You've lost the battle.

23:37Jim Stengel:Yeah. I remember when I started working with Widening Kennedy years ago, Dan Widen said to me, we have to make things. And if you let us, if we sit on something too long, it gets stale. It does. So he said, just this is the way we work. I hope you can adjust, but we see something, we make it. Yeah. And it can be made rough, but we do it for reactions. and he's right. If you sit on ideas and then nothing happens with them, they get stale. So it's a different, a bit of a different concept. The point is the same. Agree in a direction, make something, get a reaction, make it better. What we do is to create, to make something sit on a shelf for so long.

24:19It's just, it's completely in opposition to what we believe in. Yeah.

24:23Jim Stengel:Now we're here at Cannes Lions. You just flew in this morning. It's your first one as CMO of MasterCard. You've been in the job six months. So I suspect your agenda is full this week. I know you have a family holiday at the end of the week, but you probably have a very busy schedule. What in that busy schedule are you most looking forward to? I am so excited. The first time I was at Cannes, I was on a jury, the inaugural B2B creative jury. And I am forever changed by the process of watching other people advocate for other people's work. Like it was the best. Ironically, a MasterCard project was in that, was assessed in that jury.

25:05Little did I know. But what I'm really looking forward to this year is seeing people learning a lot, but also refilling that creative bucket, seeing some of the best work in the world. I have time reserved to do nothing but walk, walk around and learn and do that with the team from MasterCard who's here, the team from our agency partners who are here. And I think it's a good time. We will go into planning and I want to be challenged. I want to see the best work in the world and I want to make sure our brand can go there.

25:35Jim Stengel:Wow. So how will you do that? Will you walk in the Palais? Will you go to certain presentations together? Yep. All of the above. So we have different people doing different tracks. Also, we have a portion of the business that is here because MasterCard also has marketing services and MasterCard Commerce Media. So I'm spending time with them. As I mentioned with you, I will learn. I want to hear what our customers and other CMOs and marketing and advertising leaders say back to them. So it'll be that side of my brain. It'll be what we're looking at doing and what's the feedback and the reaction and learning I get.

26:13And then the last part will be the pure creative immersion and just the enjoyment of that process.

26:18Jim Stengel:Do you go to the awards at night? Yeah, I'm going to go to a couple. Last time I didn't get to. And this time I'm going to go to some because it's just such a happy place. It's fun. Yeah, it is. It is. And you see work, right? Yeah, you see work. You see work.

26:38Jim Stengel:One of the things I have learned from years of talking to the best CMOs in the world is this. The question is never just whether your creative is working. The question is whether your infrastructure can keep up with it. Because a brilliant campaign still has to travel through an ad stack, through data, through decisioning, through supply, through measurement. And every hop in that journey is a place where value leaks out. Most platforms solve one piece of that, a data company, a DSP, a measurement vendor. You stitch them together and pay a fragmentation tax in performance, in speed, and in accountability.

27:10Jim Stengel:Infillion built something very different. demand, supply, data, measurement, and creative connected in a single composable platform. The highest performing opt-in attention formats via Infiliens proprietary tech in the industry, agnostic identity resolution solutions, and now Catalina, 130 million U.S. households of verified purchase truth running as live signal through every campaign they execute. No black boxes, no hops, no fragmented vendor relationships to manage. The only company I know of that can take you from the first moment of attention to the final proof of action for any vertical on any screen without leaving the platform.

27:49Jim Stengel:Open, composable, agentic. That is Infilion.

27:57Jim Stengel:Now, two themes, of course, this year will be AI and creators, right? There's a lot happening with creators in Cannes, and that started two or three years ago. So when you think about this new brand you're responsible for, MasterCard, and I know you do a lot of partnerships. We'll talk about that in a minute. But as you think about AI and what you've learned and you think about the creator space, what is your feeling about what both of those mean for MasterCard? I mean, these are mega areas, and you're already all over AI, I'm sure. But what do you think its potential is to help your brand? And then we can talk about creators after that.

28:35Okay. So starting with AI, obviously I learned a lot about this at Accenture. The beauty of AI is the sheer, I'm a big data geek. I love to really immerse myself. I love when an agency presents like the insight part of the brief. And what I'm already seeing is there's more depth to that than we could have ever, ever achieved before. So I love AI for the mining, the synthesizing, the hypothesizing that happens in the insight phase. I think it could be some of the best things that ever happened to us. And then I think you've got it on the other side when it comes to the personalization. I think it was Julia White who was at an event that I was at where she said, this is what we always dreamed of and could never get to.

29:20So those are the places that I love, love, love to see AI. I like to see less of it in the actual creative process because I do think that's a very human craft. I was just talking to your team about like writing and how important writing is. Writing is like therapy. Writing is sharpening thoughts. I think that everyone coming up in this business needs to really be an excellent writer and an excellent communicator. Don't, you know, freelance that out to a tool. So I think there's that part when it comes to the craft. When it comes to the business, I mean, if you think about MasterCard, the number of transactions we process, the number, the fraud, you know, risk prevention, fraud prevention risk we have.

30:04I mean, that's all AI enabled. It always has been. Obviously, agentic commerce and what that means, agent pay, agent pay for machines, all the things we've been announcing. It's just a whole new era, but it's still that agent is acting on behalf of a human. It's always going to be human desire. It's always going to be human brand loyalty. It's always going to be human satisfaction and relevance that we solve for at the end. So lucky for us, new challenges, but the actual craft of what we do remains unchanged, and that's making a connection with the human being. So that, for me, is the AI space.

30:42Jim Stengel:Yeah. What about creators? So creators, this is what's so interesting, and I didn't really think about it until I heard you say those two things next to each other. You wouldn't have a lot of those creators if it wasn't for AI. Yeah, that's right. So AI isn't the death of creativity. It's an enabler of creativity. Those creators are a way to find, I mean, the relevance equation and the ability to go to someone through something they authentically love, that you had to squish people into groups and even if they didn't quite fit. But those creators allow you to participate in communities. And one of the things I love about the MasterCard brand is it's a big brand.

31:22A lot of people talk about our sponsorships. Absolutely. But we actually activate at a very community level. We're very local. And that takes a lot more effort, but it is so worth it. And that's what I feel about creators. If you as a brand work with them in the right way, if you learn from them, if you understand their community and what they stand for, you can, you can, it's a two-way street with creators. And I think that's an amazing place to be, but it does require you figuring out budgets, sponsorships, media, all of those things in a completely different way. And as you and I were talking before, it is one of the places where you have to start with a clean sheet of paper.

31:59If you try to incrementally work your way into the space, it won't work. You'll feel like you're, like you're just dipping a toe into the, into the ocean. So I think there's an amazing, if you are a brand, and not every brand is and not every brand has to be, where relevance is absolutely required and where that community participation is core, then a creator universe is a beautiful thing.

32:25Jim Stengel:Do you think it's a big opportunity for MasterCard? I sense passion in how you're saying. I do think it because at the end of the day, you know, MasterCard comes down to trust. Do you trust, you know, being in an exchange situation of your value and your values with someone else, with an entity? Do you feel totally like connected to the ability to participate in that community? And then finally, what agency are you going to be promised? Like, that's the scary part about smaller communities. It's, is there anything risky about this? And so I think MasterCard's participation breeds trust. It breeds confidence in a way where you know that your control or your agency is not being taken away.

33:12So I love the ability to bring those qualities that are very inherent to our brand to different communities and different ways people want to connect with each other.

33:21Jim Stengel:Now, your career, I mean, many years in the ad agency, almost nine plus years in Accenture, now MasterCard. You know a lot about building cultures of creativity. Yeah. You've seen a lot in clients. You've built them yourself. We're at this festival of creativity. One theme in my program here, the Simo Accelerator, is always how do you build a culture of creativity? And we had Tor from Apple come in last year and talk about building a culture of creativity. He's done it in the agency side and now with a very big client. How do you lead to build a culture of creativity? What sorts of things do you do?

33:59Jim Stengel:What sorts of things do you value? You know, how do you measure it? How do you know your organization's creative and working to their potential? It's actually one of the hardest things, not actually to have one, but because talking about it almost puts you in a box before you even begin. So one thing, and it just comes from being at a new place, I've actually started asking the question, oh, well, we want to be really creative in the space. And I'm like, okay, help me. It's like, you know how people use the word brand and they actually don't. It's like, tell me your different definition of creative in the space.

34:34And then on the flip side, I've been making a point of saying that's the most creative thinking I have seen. I was on a call last Thursday. It was a data call and it was, I won't bore you with it all, but we looked at every project MasterCard has done in the last six months? Where's our centers of gravity? Where's our investment going? And the team was talking about it and what they saw and what they learned and the views they took. And they like, then we looked at it this way. Then we tilted it on its head. And I'm like, that is absolute, like that was the most creative walkthrough. And because of that, they had four things they knew they wanted to do.

35:13Like that to me is strategic creativity. Then you're going to have someone who's going to come up with the how they want to do it. Maybe they'll have an investment or a partnership or an executional idea. But creativity takes so many different forms. And in my very early years, sometimes I knew as an account person, I was being ridiculously creative, like the way I would get the creatives to feel motivated when I knew the client was actually saying things that were highly demotivating. So how do you as an account person translate that? Like incredible creativity on your toes in the moment. But that wasn't called creative then.

35:49It was the work product of the creative teams. So you were inherently not creative. So I think the opportunity is to name the creativity, celebrate the participants in it, and then celebrate the work. Now, when it comes to whether it works or not, that's when you do go more empirical data. And sometimes the work may not have driven the KPIs you thought you were looking for. But I hope people give themselves permission to look at But what happened around this because we did this idea that actually opens up the next door?

36:21Jim Stengel:Who have been some role models for you in building cultures of creativity? You've worked with and around a lot of people. Well, I did work a lot of years at BBDO and I was just talking about David Lubar's. I think that the way he empowered teams, the way he synthesized ideas. And he was a robot creative leader. Yes, just fantastic to have worked with him. And I speak to other people who he he has forever changed their view. So I know it's not just me. And then, of course, I've had the privilege of working with David Droga and so many other people at Droga 5. What I love about David is he is more humble than I ever.

37:01He always surprises me with his humility. And I think it's because he's always in pursuit of the next idea and he builds teams who do that. And somebody once said to me about David that he would be shocked if you didn't buy his idea because he believed in it that deeply. And that I think I learned a lot from him around that incredibly deep belief. If you don't believe in an idea to the absolute depths of your soul, why are you bringing it forward? And so I think both of them were great role models for me.

37:32Jim Stengel:Yeah, yeah. Now, advertising has played a big role in MasterCard's business model and history. Obviously, the role of advertising shifting. This festival is a lot about that. What do you think the role of advertising is for the brand going forward? I mean, it's a hypothetical question. I do still think it plays an important role. And let me explain that. It's not because you have to be traditional in your approach to advertising. But I think anytime you assume one part of the equation is irrelevant, you limit your thinking. And I think that the real job, we are inherently, we observe humanity in many ways.

38:16And I'm not a big fan of big, you know, like declarations that something is in and something is out. Because the minute you think something's out, it's coming right back. I do think you do have to look at as you play with investment levels or or executional levers, what is happening to your ability to tell your story and reach different people and what you're talking about and who you're trying to reach is going to drive very different types of things. So, I mean, like it's all advertising at the end of the day because you're you're trying to reach someone and have them create, prefer you, prefer your brand, your product over others.

38:59The way you do it may change, but I just think that the mix will change. We're playing around right now with a little bit of what those mixes might look like going forward.

39:10Jim Stengel:Yeah. And it's really interesting. I had a CEO at P &G years ago who said every brand, even though they may not have any ad budget, should make an ad. Yeah. It clarifies who you are. It really does. Trying to tell a complex story that simply. Yeah. And really, where is what we create not at the end of the day an ad? Yeah, that's right. I think too many people assume advertising means a 30-second TV commercial. Right.

39:49Jim Stengel:Hi, everybody. I'm Andrea Sullivan, the CEO of Vive. And we have produced the CMO podcast with Jim Stengel for many years. And I'm sitting in his seat right now. It's so exciting. I wanted to tell you a little bit about one of our programs. It's called Vive by Vayner. It's a 12-month program that's designed for C-suiters and founders. and we want to help people to grow their businesses, but also to grow themselves. And so we bring in people from Shark Tank to talk to our founders, but we also focus on wellness. We want to make sure that people are leaning into becoming their best selves, their best and happiest selves.

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40:32Jim Stengel:how to grow your business and grow yourself, check us out at vive.co. That's V-Y-V-E dot co. We'd love to talk to you.

40:47Jim Stengel:Let's flip into the creative brief. Okay. So I want to go back. When did you discover that advertising and marketing were for you? You want to know the truth? Yeah. My first job out of college, I was a receptionist at an ad agency. It was the only job I could get. And it was a small... Nope. Spokane, Washington. Oh, my. Right. Small, independently owned. I moved there in order to be with my husband who had just gotten a job out there and not my husband yet, which I don't recommend that you move across the country and change your entire career path. But I'm still married to him today. But you I watched the people and because I was the receptionist and people actually came into the office, then I learned how people wanted to be recognized.

41:30some people, it was very important that they were known, whether you answered the phone or greeted them at the door and other people were quiet. It was the beginning of understanding that all of your audiences are not the same and all the people within even a given group are not the same. So I ended up participating in a new business pitch because they were shorthanded. Well, actually, first I filled in for someone on maternity leave as a production manager and I realized how hard that was. Then I participated in a new business pitch and I just loved the it because to me, it was the culmination of I loved it when you knew your stuff like you knew it.

42:08You had done your homework and I was the absolute most junior, least qualified person on that pitch. But I had done the media study piece and that was all they answered questions about. And I ended up asking all the questions. And after we won the business, I was given the account. And it really formed my belief that you don't need to know everything, but you need to know what the client needs you to know. And there's no shortcuts on that. You have to do your homework. You have to do your work. And I never left. I never left. I had actually gone to school for broadcast journalism. And that was what I thought I was going to do.

42:45But I never left marketing and advertising once I started.

42:49Jim Stengel:Wow. Why has it been so right for you? Because it's people oriented. And it is a very generous profession. Like I talk about that all the time. I mean, you give your ideas, your personal beliefs to others. You literally, if you do your job well, what began as your idea becomes someone else's. And it's not the pride of ownership. It's actually when they take it away from you that you know you've succeeded. So that's just what makes me happy. And I've always liked giving the gift more than getting the gift. And I think that's what you do all day long. So it's very human. You work with really emotional, smart people, and you get to give great ideas away and hopefully watch them work.

43:34Jim Stengel:Yeah, that's a beautiful thought. So we talked about partnerships and you have a lot of them as this brand. Which one of all the partnerships you have are you looking forward to sort of taking to the next level? I'm sure you want all of them that are right to thrive. But is there one in particular you think, oh, that's going to be fun to do the dive and come back up again? We're a mid-dive right now is with McLaren, our partnership with McLaren. It's newer. It's big. It's got incredible brands associated with it. And the audience it reaches. And again, McLaren and MasterCard. Yeah. What a partnership.

44:11Like women, Gen Z, like it's got all of the right ingredients, but also Zach and that team has a really nice personality about it that's very fit for purpose. So part of that's personal learning. But part of that, I think, is when you combine the two brands and their personalities and their cultures and then the other brands that are around it and the constantly growing interest in the sport, which I know nothing about right now. that's a really interesting place for me personally. And I think it's got continued upside for MasterCard.

44:45Jim Stengel:What's the first brand you remember making an impact on you as a young girl in a creative way? It was definitely in the toy space. I was saying Mattel, Barbie, like those are the biggest things because I have a sister and we would ask for gifts like that connected to each other. So like we'd be making the whole home and pool and car and universe and then everything else, you know, it's really, it was less a brand, but it would be in the music space. It was always a very musical household that I grew up in. My parents always loved Broadway. And like our first record player, I could remember exactly what that looked like.

45:18And recently, my son found his first iPod. We were cleaning out boxes. And I think that that would be the other piece. Of course, I don't remember the brand, unfortunately, of the record player back then. But those would be...

45:34Jim Stengel:We hear Barbie a lot on this show. Yeah. You know, we hear Barbie, we hear Nike, you know, you hear a lot of McDonald's. Yeah, it's hard not to, but like those earliest memories of playing with my sister and. And Barbie was Barbie. You couldn't get another doll. No. It had to be Barbie. Yep. So you heard a lot about in the last, well, in your onboarding, how Raja is remembered, right? He was there 13 years. Who knows how long you'll be there. But how do you want to be remembered someday when you leave this role for something else? Well, I think MasterCard is on its business strategy has expanded so dramatically.

46:08I hope that I will have been privileged to work with the team into a space where we're able to we help the world see MasterCard in a more expansive way beyond the gut reaction of what you know about the brand. Helping brands expand. It's not easy. And when you're the more iconic it is, the harder it is. Yes, absolutely. I will be very proud of that.

46:32Jim Stengel:Yeah, that's good. Who's been the most inspiring person in your life? My dad. And I feel bad saying that because so is my mom, but my mother, I don't know if you know this, she has multiple cirrhosis. She's the strongest person I know by far and stubborn in the best possible way. My dad finds joy in everything he always has. I was just at his house yesterday and he was, how many ears of corn could he fit in the pot without having to go to a bigger pot? 88 years old and having the time of his life. So he is my inspiration. teacher. Oh, wow. Both of my parents are teachers. What they teach, what subjects?

47:05My mom was an elementary education and my dad was high school, which is hard. And then eventually went into administration. So you become like the vice principal or the principal, which all the kids love to hate. And when you're the nicest man in the world and he literally is, that's an odd place to be. But he does everything with kindness. He always assumes positive intent. And I watch that every day. I'm privileged to be able to have watched it this long. And I'm thrilled he's still with us. But he is my inspiration.

47:33Jim Stengel:Now you're leaving Cannes and going on a family vacation. Family vacation. Right. What are you most looking forward to in your family vacation? You know, my kids are both married now and the six of us, we call it Kramer XL. Two more coming too, right? Yes. Are we allowed to talk about that? Yes. Baby's on the way. We're just like the puzzle with the right pieces. All so different, but it just works. And we laugh a lot. And I look forward to just laughing all week long and a lot of ice cream. Okay. Ice cream and laughter. It's good. It's good. You can't go wrong. This has been so fun. I loved every minute of it.

48:05Thank you so much for having me.

48:06Jim Stengel:And have a great week. Have a great summer. All the best in the role. You're going to be great. Thank you. I hope so. I hope so. I will give it my absolute all because it deserves nothing less. That's great. That's a wrap. Thanks. So good, Jill. Wow. That was my conversation with Jill Kramer. Three takeaways from this one for your business brand in life. The first one, earn trust first. When you're stepping into a new role or leading a team you've worked with for years, trust comes before transformation. Jill talked about the importance of listening before leading, taking questions before making changes, and giving people permission to embrace the past while helping build the future.

48:44Jim Stengel:Leadership isn't about having all the answers on day one. We all know that. It's about earning the right to lead over time. Second takeaway, creativity is definitely a team sport. One of my favorite ideas from this conversation was Jill's catchphrase, early, ugly, often. The best ideas don't appear fully formed. They become great through collaboration, feedback, and continuous refinement. And perhaps most importantly, creativity isn't reserved for creative departments. Great ideas can come from strategy, data operations, or anywhere people are encouraged to think differently. And third takeaway, keep humanity at the center.

49:20Jim Stengel:Jill has spent much of her career helping organizations embrace new technology, and she's excited about AI, but she's equally passionate about protecting the human side of marketing. AI can certainly uncover insights, personalized experiences, and make us more effective, but it can't replace curiosity, empathy, great writing, or the emotional connections that make brands meaningful. Technology will continue to evolve. The human craft of marketing should never change. That's it for this week's episode of the CMO Podcast. As always, I would be grateful if you shared our show with your friends, along with subscribing and leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

50:02Jim Stengel:The CMO Podcast is a Vive Original Production.