Preview Mode Links will not work in preview mode

CMA Connect


Mar 19, 2024

In this episode of CMA Connect, Alison Simpson, CEO of the CMA, welcomes Raja Rajamannar, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer and President of Healthcare for Mastercard and author of Quantum Marketing. Alison and Raja delve into mastering time management, key trends in this golden age of marketing, inclusive design and the skills marketers need to future-proof the profession.

00:00:03:06 - 00:00:32:22
Unknown
Welcome to CMA Connect, Canada's marketing podcast, where industry experts discuss how marketers must manage the tectonic shifts that will change how brands and businesses are built for tomorrow, while also delivering on today's business themes. With your host, CMA CEO Alison Simpson. 

Alison
If you listened to our earlier episode with our board chair, Kerri Dawson, you absolutely know that future proofing the marketing profession is a top priority for the Canadian Marketing Association.

00:00:33:00 - 00:01:03:23
Alison
We're very focused on helping marketers understand and manage the tectonic shifts that will fundamentally change how brands and businesses are built tomorrow, while also ensuring they're delivering on today's business needs. Today's guest is ideally suited to help us future proof marketing. Here's what he had to say about the current reality for marketers. "This era is driven by exponential disruptions, good and bad, in consumers' lives caused by a deluge of emerging technologies. And the resulting changes in the consumer landscape

00:01:04:01 - 00:01:34:03
Alison
call for marketers to tap into the dynamics of the new paradigm and reinvent their entire approach." So it's my pleasure to welcome Raja Rajamannar to our podcast today. He's the Global Chief Marketing and Communications Officer and also the President of Health Care for MasterCard. Now, that would be more than enough to keep most of us busy. But Raja somehow found time to also write Quantum Marketing, which is a Wall Street Journal bestseller and must read for every marketer focused on the future.

00:01:34:05 - 00:01:58:13
Alison
Raja is renowned for innovating for some of the world's top brands and businesses, and he's been recognized with many awards throughout his career. A few recent ones include Business Insider's twenty five most innovative CMO's in the world, WFA Global Marketer of the Year, Forbes Top five World's most influential CMO's, and the Campaign Power 100. Raja, thanks so much for joining us today.

00:01:58:15 - 00:02:23:14
Raja
Thank you for having me here Alison. Much appreciated. 

Alison
Now, I'm actually not going to start with the marketing question. When I think about your massive dual global mandate at MasterCard plus your different board roles and the fact that you found time to write a book, it's abundantly clear that you've mastered time management. So please let us know how you prioritize and determine where to focus your time to drive the greatest impact.

00:02:23:16 - 00:02:51:14
Raja
The first thing is, I start with the premise that you cannot manage time. You manage yourself not the time. And time just keeps going on, right. You cannot bend it, cannot stop it. You cannot accelerate it. The key thing is, as one of the authors has written beautifully, the title of the book is 4000 Weeks. That's all our full life typically is, about eighty years.

00:02:51:16 - 00:03:19:18
Raja
And in that kind of a 4000 week timeframe, you need to be crystal clear on what you really want to spend each one of those precious weeks. You can while away time on social media, endlessly scrolling, and that can actually keep you busy and entertained and occupied for a few hours every day? Or you can choose to educate yourself how to spend time and build relationships with people or write books or do something for the community.

00:03:19:19 - 00:03:43:05
Raja
It's all up to you. So the first thing is, what do you want to focus on? Where do you want to put your efforts? So that's number one. Secondly, I would say that there are a lot of things that we'd like to do, but we don't have to do ourselves. You can delegate effectively both in your work situation as well as in your personal situation.

00:03:43:07 - 00:04:03:11
Raja
So, for example, there are a lot of people I know who are very hesitant to give access to their emails, to their assistants, or to their chiefs of staff. But if you give access to them, they can make your life so much more easier because they scroll through everything that is unnecessary that doesn't have to take up your time.

00:04:03:17 - 00:04:24:23
Raja
But you need to have confidence in yourself to say, Look, there is nothing there that is hidden that will come to bite me back. So long as you're open, operating with an open kimono, that's fantastic. So I think there are some work related work, as I would say, is not just work at the business context, but work in the personal life as well that you should be having to delegate.

00:04:25:01 - 00:04:47:02
Raja
That's number two. So don't be everything yourself. You can't just do everything yourself. And there's so many things that you would like to do. Number three, I would say, is that you need to be really conscious of not wasting time on things that don't matter. A lot of times we sort of get... I'll give you a beautiful example, the CEO of MasterCard.

00:04:47:05 - 00:05:11:00 
Raja
Right, the current CEO or the previous CEO too. So I'll talk about current CEO, Michael Miebach. He says okay, I'll have a 15 minute monthly meeting with you. That's all that I have with him. Fifteen minutes on a monthly basis. But those are power bank 15 minutes and I don't have... And the fact that I know that is only 15 minutes, I prepare myself extremely well,

00:05:11:02 - 00:05:30:03
Raja
the key points, and not be anxious to sort of keep filling up the time, with all kinds of things and to update him about everything that I'm doing. The point is you do that exactly the thing with your team members, with your colleagues, with vendors. People are hungry for your time, but you should realize that this is your time.

00:05:30:05 - 00:05:58:14
Raja
You have to manage yourself, and your schedule, and your meetings based on your time. So now things like this, maybe actually one day I should write a book on this. That's a good idea. Thank you. Something useful for me from this podcast already. 

Alison
I would definitely read that book and I know many of our listeners would as well. That's such great perspective, especially investing in communities and relationships, there's so many studies around what makes for a rich life and a long life.

00:05:58:14 - 00:06:34:21
Alison
and those are absolutely core to that. 

Raja
And in fact, if I can just start one point, in terms of productivity, I find that meditation is one of the best productivity tools. It increases your focus. It increases your clarity of thinking. And somehow you can become much more creative to come to solutions. And I find that that is an incredible way to manage your time, because even, for example, for somebody who is traveling around in various timezones, jet lag is a reality that you have to deal with.

00:06:34:23 - 00:06:55:01
Raja
Meditation actually helps you to relax, to get your body reset. And then all the focus and creativity and everything really is at a peak. And I say that that's something which is to be wholeheartedly embraced by people who are looking for productivity tools. Many people look at meditation, God, I have to spend half an hour or 15 minutes on meditation.

00:06:55:01 - 00:07:17:17
Raja
I don't have time. But actually, meditation makes time for other things for you because you do things more efficiently. 

Alison
I've tried to meditate before. I'm a morning runner, so that's become my form of meditation. But you've given me pause and I will absolutely try meditation again. Now, Raja, you kicked off the year on a really inspiring note with a LinkedIn post that highlighted that this in many ways is the golden age of marketing.

00:07:17:18 - 00:07:43:09
Alison 
You also acknowledge that classical marketers have lost a lot of ground in recent years, and you now see tremendous opportunity for marketers to reclaim their territory in 2024, which is absolutely music to our audience ears. So what trends would you say are making this year the start of the golden age of marketing? 

Raja
There are multiple things. So firstly, if you look at the technologies that are very, very groundbreaking, right?

00:07:43:09 - 00:08:12:02
Raja
In the past you had Internet, you had mobile, you had social platforms. Each one of these or a television or radio, they are all significant technological innovations that disrupted people's lives completely, transformed. And made them into a very, completely different kind of thing. For example, if you look at the pre 1996 era and post 1996 era, when you look back you say how could I have even lived without Internet before?

00:08:12:04 - 00:08:36:07
Raja
Right? Internet has changed our lives dramatically and that opens up opportunities for marketing where you say, Hey, now I can reach consumers directly in real time, almost 1 to 1. I can be precise in my targeting. I can be very accurate in my measurements and so on. And that's how digital marketing was born. Same thing happened when mobile and social media came in 2007.

00:08:36:09 - 00:09:01:07
Raja
The point is, today, unlike the previous paradigms of marketing, there are 24 new groundbreaking technologies that are coming up. Whether it is AI, or it is augmented reality, virtual reality, blockchains, 3D printing, 5G telecommunications. Already 6G is coming. It's around the corner. There are so many things that are actually happening at the space and proper technology perspective.

00:09:01:09 - 00:09:43:15
Raja
Each of these technologies is independently capable of disrupting people's lives and businesses. The confluence of these 24 technologies is going to result in an unprecedented level of disruption. We haven't seen it yet. That's one part of it. But why is it good for marketing? Technology is a great leveller of the competitive field. In the past you had to be a big company with deep pockets to be able to invest in technology. Today, even if you are a tiny company with very modest marketing budgets, you can still access exactly the same technologies that a very large company is able to use. For $20 a month

00:09:43:15 - 00:10:21:11
Raja
you can actually access the likes of ChatGPT, which are very powerful from a marketing perspective, probably we can discuss about that. So what happens to that kind of a context is that we have to realize that technology is going to be available to everyone. So you cannot distinguish and differentiate yourself based on technology anymore. Same is true for data, but the data privacy and regulations on one side and extreme collection of data on the other side, there is going to be a lot of anonymized and tokenized data that will be available for marketers across all industries and all companies large and small.

00:10:21:12 - 00:10:53:17
Raja
If that is the case, what is going to distinguish one company from another company is its creativity and innovation. That's where marketing comes in. And we as marketers can actually advantage our companies by differentiating them, making them more relevant, making them more compelling to our target audiences. And that's something which is, I think, a dream come true. So today, for example, a lot of companies, particularly on the technology side, give a lot of importance to products, and their product is superior to marketing.

00:10:53:19 - 00:11:21:11
Raja
It's ironical. When I was practicing marketing all these years, product was an integral part of marketing. It's the first P of the four Ps of marketing. But today there is a separate Chief Product Officer. There is a separate customer experience officer. So it's got fragmented. Now a product is very, very easy to replicate, particularly given the technological advancement, and the speed in terms of go to market is actually rapidly rising.

00:11:21:11 - 00:11:52:19
Raja
So with the result of which, other people can replicate your products with equivalent or better functionality in a heartbeat. So if you want long term disruption, if you want long term differentiation at a competitive advantage, you have to connect emotionally. The emotional connection is what marketing is all about. It's about emote... generate the right emotions, engage consumers in a very compelling fashion and hold them close to you as a brand.

00:11:52:19 - 00:12:15:14
Raja
That is what will give you the advantage compared to your competitors. And so marketing is going to be really the function that will drive companies. And therefore this is the golden era of marketing. 

Alison
That's so well-said and technology as a great leveller is relevant globally. It's particularly relevant in Canada because 80% of our economy is driven by small and medium sized enterprises.

00:12:15:14 - 00:12:38:12
Alison
So the fact that they can compete in a way that they haven't been able to in the past is a wonderful opportunity. Now, in looking at the tectonic shifts, do you still think the four Ps of marketing hold true? And it's more how they will be brought to light? 

Raja
I feel that the entire framework for marketing has to be changed.

00:12:38:13 - 00:13:02:12
Raja
And I had a conversation about this with my guru, who is Philip Kotler. If you think about it, the four Ps of marketing were formulated by Philip Kotler more than 60 years back. In 60 years, the world has transformed so dramatically. And that's what was the genesis of me writing this book. And I started asking myself, Are those still relevant?

00:13:02:13 - 00:13:29:08
Raja
Is it like gravity, magnetism? These are things which don't change. They are very fundamental. They are foundational. They remain all the time. But is that true for marketing, or are things changing? So if you look at every single aspect of the marketing value chain, the concepts are no longer valid, the processes are completely inaccurate, and what we are doing is totally irrelevant.

00:13:29:10 - 00:13:51:23
Raja
And I'm not saying it flippantly or just for effect. I'm saying it because I mean it. And I can tell you, let's take a couple of examples. Now, if you look at something like loyalty, the industry collectively spends about a billion, about $1,000,000,000,000 in RND every year, $1 trillion plus. There was a research report that came from BBC.

00:13:51:23 - 00:14:20:17
Raja
It was published in BBC. And when I read it, what I found was that the research said it was being done amongst people who are either in a marriage or they were in a live-in  relationship. They asked them, How many of you have cheated on your partners? And the number was an astounding 70%. And a further 15% said that if they are sure they will not get caught, they don't mind straying.

00:14:20:19 - 00:14:49:02
Raja
Now, I'm not here to make any value judgment, but when I think about it, I say, look, if 85% of the people who have made some kind of formal commitment already, or informal or implied commitment, and they know that the consequences are terrible if they are caught, still, they're not hardwired for loyalty. If in real life and on far more important things that people are not hardwired for loyalty, we come as marketers and say, You'll spend $1 and each dollar you spend

00:14:49:02 - 00:15:11:07
Raja
I'll give you one point and then I'm not pretending that you are loyal to me. That is the biggest fallacy. We are kidding ourselves. And, look at anyone. Like I know, for example, if I look at myself, I have got more than five airline frequent flier program, loyalty program memberships. I've got every single hotel chain. I'm on their loyalty list.

00:15:11:09 - 00:15:41:01
Raja
Same thing with grocery chains as well, my everyday spending. I've got Costco, I've got Walmart, I've got Amazon Prime. Who am I loyal to? These are not loyalty programs. They   are actually price incentives couched in a program. Loyalty is very, very misplaced in this context. We need stickiness. We need preference. So what, in fact, I suggested is that we should have a different framework to win and keep consumers on an ongoing basis.

00:15:41:03 - 00:16:09:13
Raja
And that is what I call a preference management platform. And it should be technological driven and so on. So every area, whether you look at purchase, same thing is true. Market research. I actually started my career in market research and most recently I was chatting with the Head of Market Research and Consumer Insights at Unilever, and both of us were sort of commiserating and said the way we do market research is terrible and what you get is completely useless material and we rely on it as true.

00:16:09:15 - 00:16:32:00
Raja
The reason is consumers cannot articulate why they have done something or why they like something. They are all subconscious. By very definition, if you ask somebody why you did it, they have to post-rationalize and tell you, and they are not psychologists to begin with. So the whole aspect of marketing has to be rethought. And that's exactly what I am saying, is what quantum marketing is about.

00:16:32:02 - 00:16:49:23
Raja
And I share this with Philip Kotler, and it was so true. He had given me a note which I actually framed it and kept it in my home office because he is my guru and he is saying this is Raja actually what the future is. And what I have done is something which is which was very true for that era.

00:16:50:01 - 00:17:19:20
Raja 
But I completely agree with you. We need to reinvent ourselves, rethink marketing the concepts, the frameworks, the strategies, and therefore the tactics. 

Alison
So I'm going to jump to another emerging area that MasterCard is very much leading in, and that's around inclusive design. So you're definitely leading the charge in innovating with inclusive design. And your most recent announcement about Touch is a great example, which brings me to a few different questions, starting with what led to your focus on inclusive design and also if you could share the business case for inclusive design.

00:17:19:20 - 00:17:55:18
Alison
I know our listeners would be very interested in that. 

Raja
Yeah. Firstly, inclusive by design is not about political correctness. I think it's... It should be self evident that if somebody is in a distress and if you are in a position to help, if somebody has a problem and if it can solve that problem, genuinely and their problem might be unique than the rest of the mainstream, so to speak, if you help them, they are grateful to the solution that you have given and they stick by you and you can actually have a very profitable business proposition.

00:17:55:19 - 00:18:19:10
Raja
I keep saying that if you pursue purpose, profits will follow. They are not mutually exclusive. So what we really need to think about is how can we do things that are truly inclusive and can we make a business case for it? I'll give you one example. So when we started looking at say, you mentioned about Touch.

00:18:19:12 - 00:18:46:14
Raja
So when we started looking at how many blind people out there in the world, and how do they use their payment products today? The experience was shockingly horrible. And we said, My god, the number of blind people in this world, fully blind or partially blind, is about 2 billion. I hope that number is wrong, but that's what statistic after statistic is actually showing.

00:18:46:14 - 00:19:10:05
Raja
Assume that the number is 1 billion, it is a humungous number from just from a segment point of view. My grandmother was blind and I have a deep connection to that space, therefore, because growing up I have seen what she went through. Now, in this context, coming back to my business, which is credit cards and payments, payment cards,  prepaid cards, debit cards, small.

00:19:10:06 - 00:19:28:18
Raja
We said, how can we make it easy for a blind person to be able to use our cards? How do they know which is the front of the card, back of the card, where is the chip? Is it a debit card? Is it a credit card? Is it a MasterCard or some other card? How do they distinguish other than by putting it in a specific slot in that wallet or in their purse?

00:19:28:20 - 00:19:55:03
Raja
So we said Braille should be the solution, because everyone is supposed to read Braille. But shockingly, a very tiny percentage of people, less than 10% of people who are sight impaired know how to read Braille. So that cannot be a solution. So we started racking our brains and eventually came up with that extremely simple solution where you provide a small notch on the side of the card, the shape of the notch tells you the type of the card. The location of the notch,

00:19:55:03 - 00:20:16:20
Raja
if it is on the right side, just below the centre, you are holding the card the right way. If there is a notch, it is MasterCard. Now in one single small notch, we really came up with a comprehensive nice solution. When we launched it, what happens? It is now one of the fastest growing products that we have got. Highly profitable, already launched in 35 countries around the world.

00:20:16:22 - 00:20:42:03
Raja
So there is, the results are coming from a business perspective, but the focus was actually on trying to solve the problem in a real way. And I have received countless emails from, I thought actually, even though my grandmother was blind, somehow I associated blindness with more elderly aged people. What I saw is so many mothers of kids who are teenagers and so on.

00:20:42:05 - 00:21:02:13
Raja
They said we are so grateful for the solution because this is life changing for my child. It was unbelievable. The key thing is, it is hitting the right nerve amongst the audiences, those who are your core target audience, as well as the secondary tertiary audiences who are not blind themselves, but see the plight of the blind  people.

00:21:02:15 - 00:21:27:13
Raja
So this is something which is absolutely energizing. And when you talk of this, you know, purpose driven, that's one thing also which is very important is that attracting the right talent and keeping them at the company is very important, particularly if you are not the highest paid. And we don't want to compete on salaries or compensation. We want to compete on giving them the quality of the satisfaction of their work, right. of what they are doing.

00:21:27:15 - 00:21:53:01
Raja
When you become truly purpose driven and really put your money where your mouth is and be consistent in your commitment to the cause and that the purpose you have a higher retention level, you are able to attract all the best talent. So it really solved so many things. So when people said, I have to do something purpose and it is a work thing or it is something which is basically meant for political correctness, I would say, stop, you've got it wrong.

00:21:53:03 - 00:22:12:00
Alison
That's such a great example. I was on the board for the CNIB for six years, so I have a personal connection to it as well. But your example is also such a powerful counterpoint to the earlier conversation we had around loyalty, where the loyalty programs that we think are really building that true connection between brands and consumers are flawed.

00:22:12:06 - 00:22:49:13
Alison
What you're doing from an inclusive design and recognizing a pain point that was solved with such a brilliant and simple solution is really driving true loyalty. Now, as we look to the future of marketing, what skills are most important for marketers in managing through the tech tsunami that we're all living through?


Raja
I would say most of the top marketers, I would say, particularly the classical marketers, they're very good at psychology, sociology, design and areas like that, and the contemporary marketers are the ones who are more quantitative, analytical and they are much more left brained in their thinking.

00:22:49:15 - 00:23:16:15
Raja
What you really need is a combination of these two. So which means you need people like Leonardo da Vinci, who are not easy to come by, and if they are there, they don't want to join marketing. They want to be in Silicon Valley or investment bank or be consultants. So we've got a tough challenge on that. But basically one of the things that we have to recognize is the future is going to be with the classical marketers who train themselves and upscale themselves at all technologies, data and finances.

00:23:16:17 - 00:23:34:22
Raja
It's a little bit of going against that core grain, how to put the effort. Not to become experts in technology. So, for example, AI is coming, right? It's already upon us. People are saying AI is there, what do we do, how can we use it and stuff like that. But the fact is AI has been around for a long time.

00:23:34:22 - 00:23:57:21
Raja
And MasterCard, we have been using it for more than ten years. And they built a whole digital marketing engine using AI and automation out of Singapore, six years back, before gen AI came. Now when gen AI came, that's when the prominence of overall AI has shot up. And many times marketers mean gen AI as the real AI, but as it is just a type of AI across the board.

00:23:57:23 - 00:24:24:23
Raja
Now, the point is that if you don't know what AI is and what it can do, you get left behind very quickly. And I have seen the kind of productivity enhancements that AI can give you. It actually like, for example, in the B2B context. Okay. As an example, we have something called the RFP factory, which will respond to various RFPs that are given, sent to MasterCard. It used to take about 7 to 8 weeks before.

00:24:25:01 - 00:24:50:22
Raja
Now it takes less than what that one day. One day. It takes, it frees up resources, it standardizes your responses, makes it more accurate and current. And it really looks at all the past RFPs that you have done, takes the tone out of those, takes the creatives out of those and really composes something which is incredibly more powerful than what a human being can do today. And in less than one day.

00:24:51:00 - 00:25:13:01
Raja
So what the point is, if I am able to now do these kind of things across the entire marketing value chain, the gains can be incredible. But I talked about the digital marketing, the digital engine in Singapore that we created and now it is all around work. They're getting productivity enhancement between four and eight times. I'm not talking percentages, but I'm talking about multiples.

00:25:13:01 - 00:25:44:17
Raja
So that's huge. I can kill my competition with that kind of a productivity. Now if you are not really caught up with the latest and greatest as far as technological enablements are concerned, you'll become obsolete, you'll be left behind. So the first thing I would tell marketers is you need to understand the new technologies. At this stage in my life and in my career, I spend about 5 to 6 hours every week educating myself on something new or deepening my knowledge on a subject that I wanted to pursue deeper.

00:25:44:18 - 00:26:01:06
Raja
I think that's one thing people have to do. So skills wise, I would say learning agility today and investing time behind learning is the number one priority. 


Alison
That's such great advice and if you can find 5 hours to do it, there is no excuse for the rest of us. Now, before we go, you've been very generous with your time.

00:26:01:06 - 00:26:25:15
Alison
I'd like to have you share one piece of advice that you think marketers most need to embrace in the year ahead. 


Raja
Learning. We spoke about it. But the second thing I would also say is that from a company's point of view, any company, I have worked at multiple companies are closely tracked in my voluntary role as the president of WFA, with my peers, CMOs around the countries across various companies.

00:26:25:17 - 00:26:48:22
Raja
One of the biggest things is the C-suite in most of the companies doesn't get marketing. Whether it is a CEO, whether it is a CFO, whether it is a CIO, CHRO. Their understanding of marketing is very low. When their understanding of marketing is very low, you don't get full justice for what your team desires and they deserve, right.

00:26:49:00 - 00:27:23:09
Raja
And you have to evangelize marketing, that the evangelization of marketing becomes with educating your peers. So one of the things I would say is for the coming year, if there is one priority organizationally that people have to set for themselves, is to build close bridges between themselves and the other C-suite executives and slowly pull them into the fold of marketing, meaning, involve them in their campaign creation, do creative workshops for them. They love get doing those kind of things because in their jobs there is not a whole bunch of creativity, honestly.

00:27:23:11 - 00:27:44:14
Raja
Okay, and get them, take them to sponsorship events. Let them see the power of how your brand can be brought to life, how experiences can be curated. When you start drawing in these C-suite colleagues into the fold, what you'll see is they start embracing marketing, the start supporting marketing, then they'll start advocating for marketing. And that's a journey.

00:27:44:14 - 00:28:04:09
Raja
It doesn't happen overnight, but I think the beginning of the journey, I would say if marketers are not already doing it, it's high time that you do it. And of course I talked about learning. 


Alison
That's such great advice and and evangelizing for marketing, it's inherent in the examples you've shared that in doing that effectively, it's all around the business performance and business results

00:28:04:09 - 00:28:23:19
Alison
marketing can drive too. When you think about how to get the attention of the CEO and CFO, certainly it's got to be coming from what's in the best interests of the business and how marketing is playing a pivotal role in the success and growth of the business as well. 


Raja
Absolutely 


Alison
Well Raja, it has been an absolute delight. Thank you so much and I hope you have a wonderful day.

00:28:23:21 - 00:28:45:18
Raja
Thank you, Alison. Thank you very much for having me, and you too, have a great day. Thank you. 


Unknown
Thanks for joining us. Be sure to visit the CMA.ca and sign up for your free My CMA account. It's a great way to stay connected and benefit from the latest marketing thought leadership news and industry trends.