The New Currency of Marketing w/ Raja Rajamannar (CMO of Mastercard)

0:00The way we have been doing marketing till now is not going to work tomorrow. It's actually already not working well today. So how do you reinvent the marketing function?

0:15Hey, Raja, welcome to the show. How are you? Wonderful. Thank you very much. Very excited to have you on board today, you know, on the show. I know that we have a lot of knowledge in this space, you know, been 20 years, right, with Mastercard and, you know, many other amazing brands in the past. Raja, what we usually do, we look, you know, and understand a bit more about the guest. in a way that we call the map. Basically, it's divided in three main sections. One is the mission. So what do you aim to achieve with your work, right? Achievements, anything that you are very proud of. I'm pretty sure that in your career, you had like great achievements.

0:49And it also could be in your personal life. Anything that you're really proud of to share with us. And the last is the piece or the purpose. Why do you do what you do? My name is Raja Rajamannar, and I'm the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer of MasterCard. Firstly, in terms of my mission, as it pertains to my work, is number one, to really help marketing as a whole craft find its rightful place. You know, early on in my career, when I got into marketing, at that time, marketing was by far the number one field that all the best students will go to. But today, marketing is rated somewhere way down, even below areas like accounting and nursing, which really makes me feel sad because it is such an amazing function.

1:34How could you actually put it so low? So my mission is really to bring the glory and the gravitas of marketing back. And so for me, this is quite an important mission because this is something which I would want to look back in future and say, I have done something for this craft and I have left a legacy for future marketers to succeed in a big way. So that will be my mission. When I look at my accomplishments, for me, you know, I've been blessed with a number of opportunities throughout my career. And one of the big things for me by way of a tangible outcome was the book that I have written. So when I have written the book called Quantum Marketing about three years back, it's about reimagining and completely re-envisioning what marketing would be like, what marketing should be like.

2:26Because the way we have been doing marketing till now is not going to work tomorrow. It's actually already not working well today. So how do you reinvent the marketing function? And how do you do it? So this is what I call as quantum marketing. And that book has gone on to become a Wall Street Journal bestseller. It has been published in 11 languages so far, and it's doing extremely well. And it's being taught at more than 300 universities around the world. To me, this is one of the most meaningful accomplishments in my career. And also for me, one of the very important aspects is how I can leverage my professional environment for social good.

3:07So I believe that marketing is not only a force for growth for the companies, but it is also a force for good for the society. So when I look at some of the initiatives, I feel very good about it. Like, for example, a partnership with an organization called Stand Up to Cancer Foundation has actually discovered eight drugs so far for cures of different types of cancer. And these have been FDA approved. So it's an amazing feeling to say that the business work that I'm doing is also contributing to societal good, whether it is for protecting the climate and the environment where we have got an initiative called Priceless Planet Coalition, or it is the Stand Up to Cancer Foundation partnership we have for discovery of new drugs.

3:53or it is a partnership with the World Food Program for feeding 100 million children meals from the underprivileged society, how they are actually being fed in their school, which increases school attendance and so on. So a number of these kind of initiatives is what gives me the biggest joy. And these I would consider as my accomplishments, as opposed to simply winning some advertising awards or marketing awards. And of course, it's always good to be recognized by your peers and be called as global marketer of the year or the most innovative CMO, our most what they call tech-savvy CMO. All these kudos are good and being inducted into the Forbes Hall of Fame is good.

4:33But these pale in comparison to the real difference that you make in the society. As far as my purpose, what drives me in life is, I think, something which my mother has taught me when I was growing up as a young kid, that you are blessed. Every one of us, not just me, every one of us is blessed with some gifts. Those gifts, we have to bring them to life to really rise to our complete potential. And for me, that's a real lifelong learning. On the one hand, to learn more so that I'm enabled better to contribute, to create, to discover, to achieve. And the other aspect of it is in terms of how can I help others, whether by mentoring other CMOs or people who are aspiring to be CMOs.

5:19And I do a number of those at this point in time. and I have been doing, I go and teach at colleges like Harvard Business School and Wharton, Northwestern and London Business School and so on. So I want to make sure that the future generation has got the right knowledge. So this is the kind of thing, which is for me, the purpose that drives me on one hand to accomplish my peak potential and number two, how can I help other people accomplish their peak potential? That's amazing. Great message, you know, and also thank you for highlighting the importance of, yeah, you know, of course, you know, words are important, but there are more important things in life, right?

5:54Than just like, you know, business related things. So, and also it's great also to hear, you know, what you're doing for marketing and saying that you want to, again, you know, make marketing great again, you know, because you know, we also that changed like in many different things. And during this episode, we're going to talk about the future of marketing. But before doing that, many times you have to look back, right, in the past and what happened before to understand the present and the future. So in your own opinion, like in the past, let's say 20 years, I know that 20 years, it's a lot, right?

6:21For marketing, 20 years in marketing, like 200 billion, right? In any other, you know, like careers and, you know, branches of business. What do you think that has been the most exciting development in the field of marketing in the past 20 years? Is there anything that pop in your mind? Yeah, I think, you know, in the last 20 years, one of the biggest positives which happened is, I would say actually two, number one is the launch of smartphones. So in 2007, when Apple launched iPhone, that has really changed the trajectory of smartphones, where people have become always connected, always on. Plus they have got into social media platforms, which really changed their entire behavioral pattern.

7:07There are good things and there are bad things too. But social media and mobile devices, connected devices have totally changed our lives and therefore marketing. That's the single biggest, I would say, in the last 20 years changes. And now that gave birth to mobile marketing, influencer marketing, social media marketing, location-based marketing. So there are lots of new fields which came so much so that Today, a vast majority of money that is spent in marketing is spent on channels that did not exist 20 years back. That is a level of development. Now, in the last two to three years, there has been a tremendous amount of advancement of AI.

7:54AI has been around for a long number of years. Even at MasterCard, we have been using AI for more than 10 or 11 years. And even within marketing, they have been using AI for almost six years now. So AI is not new. But the advent of Gen AI, generative AI, has changed the field into a different dimension, into a different level of momentum altogether. And that is, to me, the combination of Gen AI and AI, the single biggest disruptor and transformer of marketing at this point in time. even bigger than mobile, even bigger than social, even bigger than digital. Digital happened actually in late 1990s.

8:35The entire aspect of internet and everything that is a gigantic shift. AI and Gen AI are going to be by far the biggest at this point in time. And because of that, you know, how do you think that AI is playing a role when it comes to content creators and influencers, right? Because you just said that, you know, there is Gen AI, right? So basically generating images, videos, you know, other type of content. And then we have also optimization AI, right? So basically just a helper, right, for people out there to do anything from, you know, coming up with titles, ideas for their next YouTube videos, right, to how should I structure the script for a TikTok video and so on.

9:11So because of that, right, there is still this sort of like, you know, conundrum about is the AI good? Is it bad? Is it a mix? It is just, you know, a tool for us to use. So specifically when it comes to things like storytelling, right, and targeting ideal consumers and marketing in general uh and specifically for content creators right and influencers that are listening today and also for marketers that work with influencers how do you see the role is it like something that can help is it something that is gonna disrupt completely do we have to adapt because of that so gen ai can help hugely it'll disrupt the process of creation is going to be disrupt big way the good thing is because gen ai will be available to everyone and it's so affordable,$20 a month.

9:58Every small company, large company, every big creator, every small creator, everyone can afford it. Therefore, Gen.AI is going to be universal, number one. Number two, when it becomes universal, it becomes some kind of a leveler of competition. Meaning since everyone has the same technology available, the technology itself cannot be a differentiator, but it is your original creativity and your original innovation that is going to be the differentiator. So I keep saying, when technology levels competition or competing field, it is your creativity which will set you apart and ahead of everybody else.

10:37And that is absolutely true. So to me, for example, I'm a content creator or I'm an influencer. Today, I think of everything myself. But with Gen.AI, it gives me ideas. It gives me initial scripts, which then I will adapt and advance it to make it my own. It is a creative thought starter. So it's a thought starter for creativity. It's not a substitute for my original creativity. It'll never be a substitute for original creativity, at least for the next God knows how many decades, till artificial general intelligence comes up. But that, I believe, is way, way away from us in terms of timeline. But at this point in time, this is such a humongous advantage.

11:17Even, for example, take as a brand marketer. If I want to give a brief to my agency saying that here, I want you to do this particular thing, Gen.ai is able to create for me outstanding briefs that I can read the brief based on my thought. And then I realize, you know what? This brief is going to help the agency to come up with their creation much better than the original briefs that I would have given them. So right from the stage of brief creation to organizing your thoughts, to structuring your thoughts, to enhancing your thoughts, Gen AI is going to be one of the most powerful tools. But the tool, you have to remember it is still a tool.

12:00It is not a substitute for human beings. It increases efficiency. It increases creativity, increases productivity, but it is not a substitute. But if you don't know how to use AI, then somebody who knows how to use AI is the one who is going to take your job. Hello! Is your brand ready to amplify its reach? Well, the Influencer Marketing Factory is here to do just that. We are a global influencer marketing agency helping brands ignite their growth. From influencer identification to campaign strategy, handling legalities and agreements to managing shipping and logistics, we have it all covered.

12:37We work with hundreds of brands across different verticals from Fortune 500 companies to DTC brands. And we don't just stop there. With detailed ROI analysis, we help brands like yours measure success, transforming impressions into actionable conversions. You can find us at theinfluencermarketingfactory.com or just search Influencer Marketing Factory on Google. I totally agree. I've been seeing, you know, when we surveyed more than a thousand creators in the US, it was exactly like that. They are not seeing AI as a substitution to them because at the end of the day, you're following another human being because there are other human beings, right?

13:12Because of their values, because of their trust. And then many of them told us, yeah, I use AI to help me sometimes in like supporting me with new ideas, right? I can't be stuck with something in my head. I need that title. I need the script and so on. They're not seeing that like, oh, it's still in my job because at the end of the day, again, if you're watching a YouTube video, you're watching for that person in front of you, right? And yes, maybe they use the AI to get some support during like, you know, across like, you know, all the work that they have to do or thinking about also sometimes video editing, right?

13:42There are AI tools that removes all the and all the silence. And that is just, you know, big help. At the end of the day, you would have to do it like manually and takes like hours while now it takes, you know, minutes to do it, right? So it's a big support there. And something else that I wanted to discuss with you, it is also, you know, AI, of course, is something important, smartphones, all the hardware components. But then there is something else very crucial these days. There is all the emotions and the feelings, right? Especially for new generations that they care so much about brand values and what is behind the scene of a brand, you know?

14:14And so before getting there and talking about the fifth paradigm of marketing that you talk in your book, let's do even a step back, right? So you already mentioned that before in 2021, you wrote this book, Quantum Marketing, Mastering the New Marketing Mindset for Tomorrow's consumers. First of all, let's start with that. What is quantum marketing? I'll start with what is quantum physics, that it'll be easier to understand what quantum marketing is, right? In the old days, when physics was the science of studying the phenomena in the nature, understand how they work, and then formulate them into theories and concepts that you can then leverage for application.

14:49Now, these were like laws of gravity, magnetism, electricity and so on. However, when technology advanced enough for humanity to look inside atoms or to look into outer deeper space, classical physics just was not able to explain the phenomenon. It completely failed. So a new branch of physics was born, which actually questioned everything about classical physics and said, you need to look at the universe in a very different way and how it works in a different way. And that was called quantum physics. Now, quantum physics is the basis for a lot of things that we do today, whether it is nuclear power, satellite communication, interplanetary travel, whatever, telecommunication.

15:33A lot of things are driven by quantum physics. So in just the same way, when I look at classical marketing, if you look at classical marketing, interestingly, most of the theories of classical marketing were framed more than 60 or 50 years back. At that time, there was no internet. There was no mobile. There was no social. There was no AI. There was no gen AI. So what happens is, as a result of you need to ask, are these fundamental truths that don't change with time, or do we need to reinvent marketing? Now, when I looked at how marketing was at this point in time and how it is being practiced.

16:11Everything from insights generation to purchase funnels to behavioral economics to loyalty programs, everything in marketing is actually we got it wrong. And we need to reimagine and reinvent these theories and frameworks. And that new way of looking at everything is what I call as quantum marketing. The sheer quantum of change is humongous on the one hand and on the other hand it is a quantum leap of hypotheses and quantum leap of theory theorization which basically means existing theories don't work you need to have new theories and that's what quantum marketing is all about so quantum marketing is to marketing what quantum physics is to physics you know it's funny you know and i mean it's very deep and also funny at the same time for me when i think about these because you're totally right or whatever when i was starting on books and many times i was looking at things in all these theories from as you said six years ago, they were on principle correct, but then they were not applicable anymore in, you know, in these days world, right?

17:14Because certain dynamics, even just like psychologically speaking between people, right? They were so different 56 years ago compared to now. And so many times if you're a student, right, you'll start studying certain theories that again on paper, yeah, they make sense, but then you cannot apply them, you know, if you're going to do a, you know, a real job in the real world, right? So that is quite interesting to see there. And, you know, to go back on what I was saying before about, you know, the fifth paradigm of marketing that you talk in your book. Very curious, you know, because this podcast, it is for, you know, brand marketers that work with a lot of Gen Z and also millennials, right?

17:46And we know that new Gen Z consumers, they, as we were saying before, care about brand values and also the purpose, right? To go back about the purpose of the brand. So in your own opinion, how can brands these days establish trust and appeal to new generations when it comes to, again, showing them that a business is more than just a business? There are people behind that. There are values. There are actions and purpose. So is there anything that comes to your mind that you would recommend to brand marketers out there to help on these? Absolutely. So people still keep saying that attention is the new currency of marketing.

18:23I say no. It is not attention. It is trust, which is a new currency of marketing. What we need to really understand is that particularly the younger generations, like the millennials, the centenials, the gen alpha, these people are much more socially conscious than, for example, my generation, which is baby boomers. right they are more socially conscious which means that they don't want brands to simply put advertisements or they don't want the brands to simply do what the product is supposed to do which means if you are a financial services company you just don't provide me financial services only you also have to do something good for the society you have to do something good for planet.

19:13You had to do something good for the entire community as opposed to just marketing your product. That's very important. Second aspect, people are not idiots. If brands are trying to be sort of exploitative, people will reject that brand. It will not build trust. Companies have to be very transparent, whether it is for data collection, how they are using consumer data, or it is about not practicing deceptive practices in marketing and be very transparent, open, no bait and switch. So there are so many things that happen today in the world of marketing that consumers are very put off. And they feel that marketing is a manipulative and a con game.

19:58That's unfortunate because that's not what marketing was meant to be. Marketing was meant to be a noble profession. But because there are practices which are far from noble and are deceptive, marketing is being seen as a deceptive profession, which is sad. Now, marketers who realize that building trust is the most important thing and that trust is the new currency, they will have to be transparent, number one. They have to be very upright, upfront, forthright. Number two, their practices have to be ethical. Yes. They have to operate with integrity. Number three, they have to do something good for the society.

20:34It's not simply enough to do a fantastic product until it. You have to do beyond the product of the society. Like I was telling you, we were, as MasterCard, we were getting involved in cancer research. We were getting involved in saving the planet through Priceless Planet Coalition or feeding Portugal. That's not our core business, but we are doing it because you have to do something good for the society because you are in a position to do that good for the society. That is very important. So these are the three things. On the one hand, you operate with transparency. That's the first thing. Number two, you have to have integrity and ethics in how you practice marketing.

21:14Don't follow deception. Don't be manipulative. Don't maneuver your way. Just because you can exploit a consumer, don't exploit. Third, do good for the society. These are not some theoretical, philosophical topics I am saying. this is real practical actionable things that every marketer can and should do this should be the manifesto feel for every brand out there right every day like for marketing team and not only read it every single day going back to each point and see are we actually doing this right and uh and because of that is there anything else i just like uh you know last question for you today is there anything else that you're very excited again like you know you've been in the marketing for a long time.

21:56You've seen it shifting. We went through, you said, like, you know, the smartphone and now we have AI. Is there anything else that either many people are not looking at yet that you believe is going to be a big changer? Like, is there something that you're very excited? Could be also mainstream. I'm very curious to know if there is something there in addition to what we already discussed might be very interesting for marketers out there listening to them be like, oh, I should really look into that because it's going to be the future of marketing. Yes. So, you know, first and foremost, there is a tremendous amount of advancement in the world of technologies.

22:27So you have got, for example, augmented reality is around the corner. You need to understand what augmented reality is or how you can deploy it so that when augmented reality scales in the marketplace, you need to be able to leverage it appropriately. Yes. Gen AI, we are still seeing first level of gen AI probably an year and a half back. Today, we are fourth and the fifth generation of Gen AI. And you've got things like multi-model inputs and outputs, which is amazing. It's advancing. All this in just 18 months. And every single day, something new is happening. You've got blockchains that you need to understand because they are vertical.

23:06Trust me. Autonomous driving vehicles are going to come, which has a profound impact on marketing that people may not realize today. It's very important for you to keep at the back of your mind that autonomous driving vehicles are going to change the field of marketing in a significant way. You don't realize that. There are so many new technologies that are coming that marketers have to stay ahead of the game. And the way they can do it is by learning. Marketers have to invest time and effort to learn. Fortunately today, a ton of learning that is out there is available free of cost. Whether you go to TED Talks or whether you go to Coursera courses, there are many fantastic programs which are completely free of cost.

23:52In the olden days, learning was expensive. Today, the opportunity to learn is extremely widely available and it is totally within your reach. If you have an internet, you can learn. Anything that I'm talking about, right? So people have to invest time. Look at this way. At this stage in my life and in my career, I spend about five to six hours every single weekend trying to learn something new. And if I can do it, anyone else can do it. So I would strongly say that marketers have to invest time and effort in learning and investing time in themselves because that will make them better marketers, that's what will make them succeed into the future.

24:35That's, first of all, a great message. And also very interesting when you talk about all the other technologies that we might not think as directly impactful on marketing, but actually they will. So maybe at the beginning, we're not seeing that yet. But you say autonomous vehicle and then blockchain and many others, as of now, we're only changing part of society. But later on your scene, they're going to change all the marketing, right? How we know it right now. So I'm quite curious to see what is going to happen there. Raja, this was fantastic. Thank you so much for joining me today, for sharing all your knowledge.

25:09I recommend we're going to put, of course, you know, the link to your book and any other resources for people to know more about you, what you wrote so far. And again, thank you for taking the time for us today and to tell us what happened in the past and what is happening now and what to look at for the future of marketing. Thank you, Alison. and really appreciate having me on your podcast and hope it will be a good success. All the very best to you. Thank you so much. This was the Influence Factor by the Influencer Marketing Factory and I'll see you next week.