I recently had an engaging, forward-looking conversation with Mastercard CMO Raja Rajamannar for another publication — and as happens in so many cases, there simply wasn’t room to include in the final draft all of what Raja had to share.
Here, one of the most brilliant minds in marketing talks about the changing workplace in this weird year, how it is poised to change even further moving into 2021, and how the discipline of marketing is being upended by a barrage of technological changes. His book, “Quantum Marketing: Mastering the New Marketing Mindset for Tomorrow’s Consumers,” will be published in February by HarperCollins Leadership.
TC: What do make of the year we’ve just had in regard to our working lives, and what will work life look like in 2021?
RR: I think first and foremost, the pandemic, as unfortunate as it has been, has taught us a lot of lessons about leadership, management and marketing itself. Consumer behavior has undergone two dramatic changes, which are irreversible: remote everything and contactless. When you talk about remote everything, that includes remote working, and a lot of people are now asking soul-searching questions like, “Do I really need to commute to the office every day?” At first it was uncomfortable to work from home, but now many people, especially millennials, will stick with a company that gives them that flexibility.
Leadership requirements are very different when you’re in a physical environment versus managing when you’re remote. How do I build a culture? How do I accommodate the realities? Empathetic leadership is trying to appreciate the employee’s situation. When people are staying home, they have spouses to contend with, children to contend with, meeting after meeting, whether on Zoom or on the phone — we need to understand the reality and be flexible and understanding.
How can we support people while building a strong culture for the company? It’s an ongoing challenge but a good challenge because we’re looking at every single thing — the same goes for remote learning, and remote shopping. Every year we see a little increase in the number of people shopping online, and that number has grown dramatically this year, with first-time users discovering the joys and convenience. They are not going to go back. And there are people, like myself, who have been doing online shopping forever but who are discovering the joys of shopping in categories they would not have dreamed of in the past — groceries, everyday items. As marketers, if the purchase funnel is different, how is our marketing strategy going to change to accommodate that? Now it’s about contactless — social distancing, people not wanting to travel as much or to handle cash. That’s a dramatic change — and again, it presents new opportunities for business.
2020 is the proof point year for my book, which maintains the future is here and now. The premise of the book is, if you look at the world of physics, the science of making sense of how things work around you in the physical world, that worked brilliantly for centuries until mankind discovered outer space and realized classical physics doesn’t work. Atoms? Doesn’t work. Objects traveling fast? Doesn’t work. So there’s this new branch of physics, quantum physics, which changed our understanding of the world dramatically. Now we have product launches that are resting on the idea of quantum physics.
Marketing has been here since antiquity, but anytime there is a technological advancement, marketing reinvents itself. The internet? Data analytics? They changed marketing. Social media? The iPhone? They altered the face of marketing completely. Now the world is being disrupted by a dozen huge technologies — AI, virtual reality, the internet of things, smart speakers, self-driving cars, 3-D printing. All of it will totally disrupt the world of marketing, and classical marketing is already beginning to fail. We need a new way to get our head around it — and that’s quantum marketing.
Crisis is going to happen. PR was the only risk. Now there’s the social media risk, the data risk, the privacy risk. Then came the coronavirus — and it won’t be the last risk. Marketing has a series of risks to deal with. Every marketer should be aware that they need a risk management function.
TC: What have been some of the biggest changes you’ve made to your leadership style during the pandemic?
RR: When contact is at a minimum, you need to over-communicate. When people are feeling a little isolated, I think one of the first tasks of a leader is to reach out and communicate, communicate, communicate. Communicate what is happening in the company, what management is thinking about, where things stand — the good, the bad and the ugly.
You have to be transparent. You have to understand people are going through a lot of insecurity. When companies are under revenue pressure, you have to cut back on expenses. It could be in marketing, in tech, in people — as a company, you have to quickly decide and to be as humane as possible. At Mastercard, we went ahead and communicated to employees in March not to worry — that we were going to make other kinds of cuts but would not let anyone go because of Covid. You should’ve seen the relief on people’s faces, and in their hearts. People were reassured.
When people are at home, you must be empathetic. We don’t schedule meetings when people’s time is in demand from their families — from 8 to 9 in the morning, for example, or 12–1 p.m. There are no formal, scheduled meetings after 5 p.m. When you do these things, you are responding to the new realities in people’s lives. I also started a book club, so employees could jumpstart their learning. I select a new book every month — we supply the book, then we discuss it. It goes a long way toward morale.
Also, I call them to say, “I’m here for you — give me a call. Middle of the night and can’t sleep? I’m here for you — give me a call.” They feel supported. Our employee satisfaction scores have gone way up. Normally in a crisis, you would expect them to go south.
TC: What is keeping you awake at night?
RR: The impending onslaught of the fifth paradigm. Everything is changing so dramatically, with all the technology coming in, and as a marketing community we are not fully prepared. You need talent who understand the technology. As I write in my book, AI will disrupt our lives in an unprecedented fashion — everything from understanding insights to creating ads. Do I have the infrastructure? The talent? Marketing is in a major existential crisis right now. The traditional concepts of advertising are failing. Every aspect has to be reimagined and reinvented.
TC: What are you most optimistic about?
Marketing is going to finally evolve, truly, into a force for good as much as it has been a force for growth, meaning the societal good. It will move from a phase of political correctness to a necessity for marketers to embrace in a sincere and genuine manner. Considering the influence marketers have got, brands have to do good. Consumers are willing to vote with their wallets. The most optimistic marketing with start gaining more prominence and stature — not just in business but society at large. And that I feel very good about.
