Prepare for a quantum leap in marketing: Raja Rajamannar, CMO of Mastercard

9 minute read 20 Oct 2021
By Janet Balis

EY Americas Marketing Practice Leader

Transformation leader in media and marketing. Innovator. Digital native. Change agent. Passionate advocate for women and gender parity. Influencer. Mother.

9 minute read 20 Oct 2021
Related topics Consulting Digital Innovation

Disruption to marketing begs for a new playbook that reimagines everything from data to the talent agenda.

In brief

  • Many companies and the marketing community as a whole are not sufficiently prepared for the magnitude of shifts in first- and third-party data usage to drive growth.
  • The onslaught of rapidly changing technologies requires marketers to dramatically reimagine their approach to defining and executing marketing strategy.
  • Marketing leaders must prioritize the talent agenda to evolve their teams to a set of attributes that better aligns to the new skills that will be required to thrive in a dramatically evolved landscape.

Raja Rajamannar, Chief Marketing & Communications Officer at Mastercard, recognizes that the acceleration of technologies reshaping the consumer and business landscape has moved far beyond anything that can be described in incremental terms. His new book, Quantum Marketing, rewrites the playbook in dramatic new ways, contemplating how we must navigate growth in a world of disruption. “Classical marketing theories are already failing — failing badly,” he said. “You need to really approach marketing from a completely different way. You have to reimagine marketing.”

I discussed the new science of marketing with Rajamannar as part of our Forbes video series. Here are three key takeaways from our discussion.

1. Balance the risk and growth agenda in your data strategy

Rajamannar talks about the balancing act of managing risk-related issues like privacy and security with the sheer power of data in the growth agenda. “When you have a powerful tool like data, that power comes with responsibility,” he said, “so put on your marketer’s hat, but also put yourself in the shoes of a consumer.”

Urgency is of paramount importance, despite the delay in browser changes, and Rajamannar recommends focusing on the gravity of the data strategy issues because, “ignorance is bliss will not suffice as a strategy.” That said, he also points out that the responsibility for solving for a post-cookie world does not rest solely on the shoulders of individual companies. “Collectively, as a marketing community, we have to come up with a solution because I don't believe any single company can come up with a solution that would be applicable to the entire industry.”

2. Reimagine the marketing playbook more fundamentally

Just as classic physics ceased to explain the science of outer space and brought about quantum physics, traditional marketing approaches have become similarly insufficient to describe what must be accomplished around the growth agenda in the current landscape. As he talked about “quantum marketing,” Rajamannar highlighted quantum changes he made in his own organization, Mastercard, to challenge the status quo and prepare for a world connected by new data and technologies. Rajamannar asked: “There are so many risks that marketing has got in front of it — how come we don’t look at all the risks as one function?” He reimagined the risk function within marketing, which proved prescient when the COVID-19 pandemic’s unique combination of crisis and volatility arrived on the scene.

While the newly imagined function didn’t predict the health crisis, it proved highly effective for developing an effective response. “I think smart marketers who are future-focused; they will actually have risk-management as a discipline,” Rajamannar said.

3. Prioritize the talent agenda to drive the growth agenda

While data and new technologies are high on the agenda for marketers, the agenda around people is of paramount importance to have an organization prepared to lead marketing in a world of quantum shifts. Re-envisioning the talent agenda requires visualizing a future of quantum marketing and understanding the attributes that will be required to thrive, including business leadership and human values.

Rajamannar highlighted, “Human values are coming back in a brilliant fashion, particularly as the new generations are coming — they’re much more socially conscious, they’re much more ethically focused.” He continued, “So you need good human beings who are in touch with the basic values and practice those values. And if we were to really put the right kind of an effort and the right kind of contribution, all of us can collectively move marketing into the next realm, and I cannot wait for that.” He alluded to a business-driven marketer who is far more multidimensional and strategic than more traditional roles may have contemplated.

Summary

“There is a tsunami of new technologies that are going to come at us,” said Raja Rajamannar of Mastercard. “They’re going to hugely disrupt people’s lives. And therefore, marketing will inevitably get disrupted.” To make that disruption a positive for your organization, it is critically important to reimagine the risk and growth agenda, beginning with data strategy, the overall playbook for marketing, and the talent agenda — to be better prepared to drive business outcomes over marketing objectives.

About this article

By Janet Balis

EY Americas Marketing Practice Leader

Transformation leader in media and marketing. Innovator. Digital native. Change agent. Passionate advocate for women and gender parity. Influencer. Mother.

Related topics Consulting Digital Innovation