Raja Rajamannar

Welcome to another episode. Take me back to the beginning, so for the audience and everyone that's watching and listening, your story into like fortune, fortune five hundred, you know the world to being the CMO of MasterCard, which is just nuts. You don't wake up one day and say mom, this is what I want to do. You initially went to school for chemical engineering and now you're in marketing, so clearly there was there wasn't a book on that.

So take me back to your little kid, you're running around, what were you first interested in? See if a stay as a kid. I used to be a good student even then, and my mom would put the fear of God in us to say that if you don't study well, you will have to probably be a manual laborer in one of those fields or construction sites, which petrified me. So I used to really study very hard. Did she make you do that work like at nights or weekends

or summers. No, no, no, no, she did not. Viewing it from a distance was enough for me to say that's not what I would really like to do. So as a student, I was a very good student, and I joined chemical engineering because I was interested in chemistry, and I was also specializing in environmental engineering, which is all about pollution control and treatment of effluence and all that.

And I really enjoyed it. And I was a valectorian and I stood first to the university as well as other universities, got some gold medals and all the good stuff. So I thought that's where I was going to actually make my career. And I joined NBA after that in one of the prestigious management schools in India called the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore, and I joined for environmental management and human settlements and habitats. So that was

where I thought I'll specialize in. And quite by accident, between the first and second years, I had to do internship. And I did this internship with a company called lack Me, which was a color cosmetics company in India, in India, in India, in Angalore. So I was sitting in one of the cabins and working away on my logistics projects, and I overheard a conversation between my supervisor and the agency guys in the next cubicle, and I said, why

are this guy struggling so hard? To me, it was very evident how they should produce the campaign, though I had no clue of advertising or marketing for that matter. So I just took a small piece of paper and I said the campaign caption I gave, is it bad to look good? And then I created a small campaign out there right there as an ad and I went to him and they said, hey, I got an idea. I just overard your conversation, so I hope you didn't mind, but here is what I have as an idea. So

he fell off his chair. He said this is brilliant, and then that made it its way to the chair one of the company, and then they really converted it to the real campaign, which become a big hit once some awards and all that. Wow, and it was just something you were overhearing. I was just overhearing, and they intuitively did it. So then I started thinking, you know, maybe this is what I'm really good at. So in stuff environmental interesting, our environmental management. Let me also try

to specialize in marketing. So I started taking a lot of marketing electives and that's when the bug had really written me. And here it is thirty six years after. I'm still in marketing and I joy every moment of it. So then you graduated, You've decided to make the switch over to marketing, which is a massive mindset shift. How did you have the courage to do that? Like I hear you you had that line with you know the superiors, and it works and it's fun and it's exciting. Let

me go take some electives. But you train your whole life to do one thing to then just make such a dramatic shift, Like, how do you have the courage to do that? Or did you not do it? Like it wasn't so black and white, It was kind of over time. No, it was an immediate switch. Literally, it was an immediate switch. There was no pondering route for

a long time. So the key thing is, you know, every marketing course that I took, I really enjoyed it very deeply, and I could perform very well in the examinations, in the case studies and things like that. Uh, and when I graduated, I had I also want some scholarships and all the good stuff. So when I graduated, there was a company which came to the campus called Asian Paints.

It was the largest paint company in India. Like the first company you worked for, correct, yes, And they came for the campus recruitment and they don't They didn't have a marketing department though they were India's largest paint company and they wanted to create a marketing department. They wanted me to be a founder member of the marketing team. But as a founder flunkey, which I was okay with. I had two bosses. It was a three people team.

So somehow the idea of creating a department from zero and being a founder of that department gave me a lot of kick. I said, okay, I'll go and do it. And imagine my surprise when I went to the camp. When I went joined the company, one of the directors on the board of that company, he and I we

happened to meet in a men's toilet. So he asked me, I believe you're the guy who has come in to teach us how to do marketing, But tell me we are doing anywhere so well without the help of any marketing so far, and we are the market leaders, So tell me what exactly are he is going to do and how are you going to transform this because we're doing well without your help so far. That actually set me thinking quite a lot. I said, these guys are

already market leaders. They don't have a marketing department, So what exactly does marketing do in companies? Till that time, my knowledge and marketing was all very theoretical. It was reading Philip Cartler and all the marketing books and all that stuff. Then I started on a journey going to different companies h and trying to ask them what do you do in marketing? How are you organized? And what are your goals and what are your strategies and so on.

And I was going to people who are not companies you were not competing against. And it was a fascinating eye opener for me that each company had its own definition of marketing. They do whatever they pleased and call it marketing. And I said wow, because that that sort of dispelled the myth that marketing is a function is very well defined and this is how it has to be. It was as varied as the companies were so Hi said, Okay, then we'll come up with our own definition of marketing.

And I created my own job description and our own mandate for the function. And we produced some award winning campaigns and created some award winning new products which became market leaders and became with the distribution and logistics innovations.

Had a fantastic time there, and then what happens is once you start, you know, seeing success, success motivates you to do even more, and that sort of even more and some of that that sort of kept going throughout my career and I moved from after three years with Asian Pints, I moved to Unilever, which was considered to be their school of marketing in India. Yes, and the reason why I wanted to mut huge company. It's a

gigantic company and it's a household name in India. And I didn't move because if it was a household name or a great brand. But I moved because they were giving me accommodation in Bombay. As a nice little they give you an apartment. It's a big perk right in Bombay. You don't affer you cannot refer an apartment on your own, particularly when you're starting your career in three years into

your career. So I said, that's a great deal. So I went and joined, and when I joined, I had the biggest shock in my life when they said, okay, you're coming into Uni Liver, but you start in sales, not in marketing. And here I was. I always had very low opinion of salespeople. Oh good, you've come to the right podcast. Correct, so welcome. So interestingly, I said, no, sales is meant for people who are not intellectual. Great, God, I want to just keep recording this. I'm sort of

going on right. And I always felt if people are a glib they can talk smoothly and they can trick you into buying things that you don't need. You're a great sales guy. You in awards, you get your come incentives and all that. They said, that's what sales is. And I'm not that kind of a guy. Always fancy it myself as being a intellectual and a creative kind

of a guy, but not a sales guy. So I said, I'll not joint and then the head of marketing for Univerity India he said that you trust me unless you're a good salesman, you'll never be a good marketer. You'll remain an ivory town marketer. And uh, the temptation of the apartment was too much to let go, So very reluctantly I went into sales. And I was put in charge of North India, which was a gigantic territory for India at the time for all the personal care products.

And I had like a salespeople that had to supervise and had no clue of sales, and I was put off their boss. I said, he's going to be a crazy journey. And I think my myths about sales got dispelled with it. The very first week. Suddenly started seeing that these guys and I joined. In summer, it's hot, scorching heart in India. In the I've heard it's awfully hot. And these poor guys would go onto the streets go shop to shop to shop, because in India the distribution

was moment pop stores. They would go, they would plead, they would convinced, they would sell the product, actually deliver the products themselves, because they had to pick up stocks and if you don't deliver the stocks, then the shopkeeper might change his or her mind. So they wanted to fulfill the right then and there itself, collect the money from the previous visit, and then go to the next shop. They had to do forty shops a day, and I started walking with them. I found a new and a

level of respect for these folks. I said, these guys are killing themselves. They're pounding the pavements relentlessly, and when you're told no, no, no, in multiple shops, it's very for me. I was feeling thoroughly depressed and demoralized. These guys they wouldn't let their spirits sink our sag. They would just keep going. I tell you that was probably the biggest lesson in my life from the point of resilience. And I a new founding appreciation for sales like never before.

And then I start getting addicted to sales and we started really together the sales that we were bonding beautifully, But what was enduring was the relationships with the people. They would give their life for you. And these folks still now. There's some of my best friends and I keep in touch with them and whenever I go to India, we have a reunion with the team. And they're all in different places now. Some of them have unfortunately passed away,

some of them are there. So the those who are life we all get together frequently and we have our zoom calls these days. Actually I made lifelong relationships and they taught me, actually, what is marketing in the field, mar It is sales. You are fighting the marketing warfare on the streets, in the shops, in the retail and that's where the actually the rubber hits the road. You can sit in your ivory tower head office in an air conditioned comfort and then start creating all your fancy campaigns.

But these are the guys who actually make it happen. You know, you can create demand, yes, but these are the guys who are actually enabled the demand fulfillment and get the distribution going. Without all that, your whole marketing is altherways useless, and particularly in those days, there was no direct marketing. You had to go through distribution channels. But what also done it did was in sales, you're

focused on tangible outcomes. In marketing, you can become very fluffy and intellectually justify to yourself that you're doing a great job. People, I've loved this campaign, stuff like that, But sales is all abouts and it's very very tangible, right, connecting the dots between the results, marketing, etcetera. It was a phenomenal journey and I was there for three and a half years in sales before then I moved into marketing.

And then when I'm so grateful that I had that steam, I want to go back there to that that moment it where you know, you talked about the question that came to you of Okay, we're a huge company, we're selling a lot. What are you going to do for marketing? What is marketing for a company that is already selling

the most? Is it just really? I mean, you've done a lot of innovation and what I mean I could talk to you for a hundred hours right like there is That's what I'm saying when you came in here as I don't even know where to start with him because from this award to this title, to this role to this is so much. But it's it's innovating new products to help sales. Is that kind of the path

that you then took. For sure, you're selling everything you currently have well, but you could sell more and you could also do this, this, this, and that's where marketing helps. So marketing or the way I would look at it is creating demand across every point within the value chain. Okay, consumers should demand your product, the retailers should demand your product, the whole siters should demand your product or service. Which you were it is the factory people should prioritize your product.

You're creating demand for your product to be produced by these guys. You're literally selling You're the need to get your product into their respective domains across the entire value chain is one part of it. Second, you're trying to understand the latent demand, latent needs of people. People many of the times they don't even know what they want, right. And I think Steve Jobs has really made it famous

with his court and that's true. But Philip Carler long long before that, he said that marketing is all about satisfying the felt and the latent demand of people. And uh so that part of it is something which is fascinating to understand. Like, you know, how innovative can you get creating a soap? How much two people related a stupid soap are a shampoo? Right? But then you're trying to split hair and come up with concepts which are really compelling and shift the market share in terms of

the demand that you get and then fulfill it. It's that kind of a thing. How do you manage logistics very differently, how do you come up with packaging innovation Because when people are going not every product purchase is a predetermined purchase. There is a lot of impulse purchase.

Plus also at the moment of truth, when you're just buying it, the packaging needs to be motivating and give you that just gentle nudge to go over and then pick up that and then buy the product you create packaging pricing this is a quantitative game, and pricing is where in fact I have leveraged probably the most of my engineering skills because you're playing with numbers and how small changes in pricing can vastly impact your profitability on the one hand, but on the other hand, it can

also you know, move your consumer behavior, whether your price elastic or not. That's what the term is. It's fascinating. And then there's behavioral economics, which is a completely different field where it has got nothing to do with rational thinking, but it's all about emotions and feelings and how do you connect that behavior with economics And the combination of the intersection is habit of economics it's a fascinating thing.

So marketing is such a rich and holistic function. Uh, and that's what I tried to do throughout back area, which you a role with you a company or with your geography I was in So how long were you you lever almost seventy years, almost seven years, and from there you went to City Bank, City Bank and you're there for a long time, fifteen years. So what was the first thing you thought about then? As as the

marketer right behind that new credit card? That that other people listening who are starting their own businesses, whether it's in sales of real estate or cars, or starting their own app or whatever they might be doing. Like where do you what do you start? I get that question a lot because people become very overwhelmed. Right, they know what they're doing, but they have no idea where you even start? Do I start with socialize it people on the street? And I should I print out flyers? Do

I go on a radio show? Do I do it all? And then I don't do anything because it's too much like when you did that, Like, what was the first thing you thought about? What you want? See? The first thing is you need to make sure that you understand what need you are satisfying and of whom? Uh? And if you know, for example, I'm satisfying the payment needs

of consumers, that is a notion in itself. What part of payment needs is it the borrowing or is it the you know, a spontaneous immediate payment or you're talking about the convenience. There are so many aspects of So what you do is you look at the need dissected to death to understand every facet of that need. Number one, write it all down. I think there's nothing gives you better clarity than either speaking it out or writing it down. Writing it down is by far the best when I find.

Then when you look at it and then see, okay, these there are ten needs or sub needs or manifestations of the need or the one need that I'm actually saying I'm going to address. Choose your bucket of needs that you want to satisfy Number one. Then get the cultural context and the fabric. People say, oh, I'm in the business to business marketing or my product is to businesses, so why should it be b to be so why should it be bothered about, you know, human psychology and

all because I'm selling it to your business. The thing that's a big fallacy in people's minds. So long as it is human beings who run businesses, they still behave like human beings even in the business context. So Raja the consumer behaves exactly the same way as Raja the decision maker for his business, the same aspirations, the same insecurities, the same goals, the same apprehensions. It's your one individual,

irrespective which context you are in. But what happens, for some weird reason is people become very formal and impersonal when it comes to be to be communication or b two be pitching, whereas in personal they're all you know, oozing emotion and nice and warm and all that stuff. So that people have to really realize it is one single person into different contexts. Yes, when I make decisions

for my company, I'm not paying it out of my pocket. Sure, somebody's financing, there are some gatekeepers, there are some influencers to my decision. But I'm still Raja. I'm the same person with the same emotional makeup, with the same feelings. So if you recognize that part of it, you're going to be marketing very differently than the way you are. In fact, I give this feed back to a lot of my peers as well. Is a look at the flyer or some brochure that you produce for a company.

It looks like a piece of industrial brochure, which you should not be. Make it interesting, make it exciting, make it playful. So when you came into MasterCard, because I'm still you know, I've always come from a point of you know, every house we sell is a brand new puzzle. You know, the house hasn't sold a thousand times where it's selling so well that one house, so I could sell it in a heartbeat. I don't have to do anything for it. Every house we get is hard in

some way, unless it's underpriced. But it's maybe twice in my whole life I've met a seller who's agreed to underprise something every other time by far, well it's over priced. Um. And so you MasterCard is a huge company, right, a massive company. What was one of the first things you did when you came in there to really help them think about marketing in a different way, to help them

grow their business? Yeah? You see, Actually MasterCard was already a top hundred brand whether you inherited it, right, And that's a huge privilege to inherit a brand like MasterCard, and I felt very grateful for that, and I still feel very grateful for that. And the company had a fantastic ad campaign called Priceless. Uh so it's not like I have inherited something which is broken that needs to be fixed, but just chugging away brilliantly. Famous. Who came

up with that? An agency? An agency, yes they have that. They were the ones who came with the Priceless campaign. And we is running now. In fact, next year is the tiversary of that happen, So it's it's absolutely doing a brilliant even today. So when it came in my my mandate was not a fixed marketing, but to really move marketing into a different realm of effectiveness. And so we started asking ourselves, what why does marketing exist within

master Card? So in those days it all used to be about build and nurture the brand and make it strong. So I said, that's a very narrow way of defining marketing. So we said, we'll have three pillars. We will grow and nurture the brand and protect our reputation. We will be the single biggest competitive advantage for master Card. So marketing and communications should be the single biggest competitive advantage for master Card, and therefore we can fuel the business.

So we said, we'll be actually feeling the growth of the business, profitable growth of the business, and of course build these UH platforms and capabilities that are very difficult for other people to replicate, so we have a sustainable competitive advantage. So with these three pillars, we went in and we went a complete overhaul, including the Priceless campaign. So Priceless used to be an advertising platform, so you show very beautiful moments in people's lives that are truly priceless.

Might say you focus on priceless things for everything else there is master Card. That was the campaign very simplar. So what I felt was that first day had to be very careful not to have the new Bright syndrome.

So new Bright syndrome is actually an Indian concept where they say when in India we have the concept of joint families where everyone lives together from the family, so that the boy, if you have got sons, the daughters in law and the son, they all live with you and you grew up in you age, the previous next generation comes up, the previous generation passes away, but they're

all living together. So they say, when a new bride comes to the home, she wants to prove herself that she is worthy of the family, and and then she tries to impress. And then first thing, the way she tries to impress is to criticize the existing practices and tell everyone how great her mother's house works, and get the best practices from the previous home. So that is a recipe for disaster. So when I came into the basket at one of the first things I said is

I have to respect the heritage. I have to be grateful for what I have inherited, and then not be biased only by that, but to say, okay, how can I take it to the next level. I'm not throwing the baby out of the bath water, but how do you make the baby stronger? So the first thing we struck me is priceless is being so underutilized as a concept for us by us, it was used only for advertising. But can priceless be truly infused into all the four

piece of marketing? Which product? Can we create priceless product opportunities? How do you infuse pricelessness into price, into packaging, into promotions, everything like across the ind of her distribution and that changed our whole approach, and then we started create using priceless as an experiential platform introat of showcasing wonderful experiences on the television. In the advertisements, we said, we'll curate

and create experiences for people that will really experience. And you know, there are certain things which you can explain, there are certain things you cannot explain. Your experienced. Priceless is to be experienced, not explained. So we were creating those priceless moments for people to experience. Like just as an example, if you say, okay, you can go and sleep on the Great Wall of China, or sleep inside the Pyramid the Great Pyramid Chaps that's in Egypt. That's

a once in a lifetime experience. Or have it to ur off Loover Museum after the museum is coursed for public, and you sit at the end of the dinner in front of Mona Lisa's portrait and you have dinner with her and there is official photograph of taking your pictures and you're trying to sneak your pictures when nobody's watching, and you sleep for the night under the glass pyramid created by I M. Pay and you sleep out of

the stars. It's an ethereal experience, unbelievable experience, truly priceless. So we started curating this at scale in an economical fashion, and I moved a lot of my money from traditional marketing into experiential marketing. We started building experiential marketing platforms which became rock solid for us, and we started getting into sponsorships in a big way to be able to curate these experiences. So we looked at people's lives into passions.

What are people passionate about? No two people are passionate about the same thing. Each one is very unique. So we would focus on ten passion points around the world like sports is one passion point, music, traveling, art and culture, movies, philanthropy, environment, sustainability, help them well being and so on. So we had these ten passion points. In each one of these passion points, we're curating experiences that money cannot buy, but you can

get only with a master Card. That changed our trajectory completely, both in the B two B context and two B two C context and fast word. Now master Card has become a top ten brand in the world, as may shared by brand z, which is we had identified one of the most robust methodologies and trackers done by a third party. So we're not self reporting ourselves. Somebody else is doing it and they are publishing it and we're looking at pure that public data. And uh so we're

a top ten brand globally. We are at number eight in the United States. Our brand has never been stronger. Brand valuation has multiplied about eight times in the last eight years. Crazy, yes, and it's been sort of that's just on the brand side. But in terms of the cutting it stuff, we are doing something like, you know, creating our audio brand, and we have been rated for two years in a row as the world's number one audio brand for two years. You know that. That's a

very nice thing for us. We created and launched our own restaurants. We launched our most recent restaurant three weeks back in Some Paula in Brazil. The next one is happening next week Mexico. Priceless. It's Priceless by master Card everything, you got everything. It's it's a phenomenal restaurant, but it gives you unbelievably could experience. That is the idea. Then through all the experiential marketing and not just magazine ads

right and standard television commercials. Is you're you're taking budget dollars and you're putting it in places that can permeate what you're talking about, like you know behavior more than any Yes, it's behavior, absolutely right, and connecting and engaging with consumers on things that they get about, which is what we call passion points, and not just reminding them that you your credit card. Nobody cares right, they can about themselves and their needs. So how do you really

engage them in that sense? And also one of the key things we do is we call it multisensory marketing. If you see most of the ads that cater to do off your senses the sense soft, site, and a sense of sound. Now, human beings by and large are blessed with five senses, which means they've got sensors, five sensors through which they absorb information, the brain processes and comes to conclusions and makes them act or feel or think. How do whatever? Why are we using only two? How

can you leverage all the five senses? Fragrances one that's a sense of what it called as well. Then we have got restaurants as a sense of taste as an example, sense of touch. We launched a card last fortnight, a card called Touch Card, which actually helps blind people by

feeling it. There is a small notch on the side of the card so they can orient the card because otherwise they have no way of front of the card exactly, and they don't know which is that a credit card, DEVID card, prepaid card today, what they have to do a person whose site impaired they had to take the current shoot to somebody else? Which card is this? Why

should this we depended on somebody else? It's scary on one hand that a lot of bad character to take advantage of it, and on the other hand you should give them an enablement to be independent. So when we did develop this concept and we ran it past some brilliant not not for profit organizations like the National Royal National Institute for the Blind in the United Kingdom, they loved it. So we have actually just announced the launch and we're going to be making it available in the

first quarter of two around the world. So this is laborating the sense of touch. Now, what what we are doing here is not to brag about MasterCard the brand, but show you and give you experiences that are truly meaningful and relevant to you, and you know subconsciously, subliminally or virtual level it, or even consciously that this has been brought to you by MasterCard, and you feel good

about it. So there is a strong positive connection between your feelings and the enabler, which is in this case MasterCard. So we're rethinking marketing completely. And you know, I actually returned the book called Quantum Marketing, which went on to become a Wall Street a General bestseller. Congrats right way, Thank you so much that one lots of awards. I feel very very grateful for that. And many business schools have actually changed the marketing curriculum in their NBA program

based on my book. And so what we're talking about is the way you do marketing today is not going to work tomorrow. You need to reinvent marketing in the new context of cultural changes that have happened and are happening. They're literally tectonic changes. Then you're talking about technologies coming

at as like a tsunami. More than twenty four different technologies like AI, A are we are, You've got a body called autonomous driving vehicles, sit aroun of things, wearables, twenty four different technologies each one capable of disrupting life's twenty four of them together will totally alter lives altogether. So marketing has to really leverage those technologies and not

get obsolete or left behind. And then there is data every time, Like you know, people have connected a thermostats, connected tooth prussures, connected commotes and coffee makers, so everything is connected and these connected devices are gathering information. So we need to be very careful of consumers privacy, be in incredibly respectful of their privacy. And even as you're respecting the privacy, then figure out what am I going

to do with all this data? How can it make sense out of it and how can it be in better service of the consumers tomorrow. No, between the technology, data, and the cultural shifts between the three of them, marketing is not going to be the same. And the new way of doing marketing is quantum marketing and MasterCards is my labs. MasterCard is my labs literally where we are trying out and then figuring out what works, what doesn't work, and then take it on. So it's been a fun journey.

What excites you about the future now, right, You've been doing this for a long time. You've seen the world change real fast, and it gets faster every single year. The way you market and the way you sell is very different today than it was when I got to the business thirteen years ago. It's very different than the way it was. You know, it's less door to door now, which is great, um, but it's also overwhelming because there's

almost too many options. So thinking about marketing, branding, and sales in the ties and beyond, how do you stay motivated and how do you how do you plan for success when there is so much noise and you can't win with dollars. Dollars is not the way to win at all. Uh. In fact, you know, when I look at the future, I talk about the advent of the fifth paradigm of marketing. So if you go back in time, marketing used to be in its very first parody, very

product centric. I've got a great product, packaged, beautifully priced, appropriately available next door, consumers well flocked by product. And why because consumers the logical in their thinking and rational in their behavior. Why would they go anywhere else? If we get the best product, best price, great packaging, easy availability. That used to prevade for a long time, actually for

more than two thousand years. Literally, But then marketers discovered that now people are not rational in their thinking our actions. They're not logical, they're emotional, they're full of feelings, they're irrational. Actually, that was the second paradigm of marketing when sociology, psychology, anthropology, they came into marketing. It prevailed for a good number of years, and in mid ninety nineties Internet came about, Data analytics came about into marketing. It changed the face

of marketing totally. It was like people are starting again in terms of marketing. That is the third paradigm, which is data driven marketing. Then in two thousand and seven, iPhone was launched and social media platforms scaled, starting with Facebook. That brought marketing into the fourth paradigm. Each of these paradigm shifts was being enabled by two technologies at a time.

But going forward, we are at the cusp of this fourth and fifth paradigms where we are going to be disrupted by twenty four technologies, each one incredibly powerful, and the collection of this twenty four is mind boggling. Everything that we learned in marketing till now is going to fall flat on its face. It's like you're recreating the entire concept of marketing, reimagining it totally, new frameworks, new structures. Just to give an example, I keep saying this often

that advertising as we know it is dead. Loyalty doesn't exist. Loyalty is dead. There's not a concept of loyalty. Human beings are not hardwired for loyalty, period Dogs are. Human beings are not. So what's the point of brand's running loyalty programs. They need stickiness of the consumers, but they have to reimagine the entire paradigm. Ah, Purchase funnels don't exist. Purchase worlds are collapsed. So what I'm saying is every single facet and tenet of marketing the way we know

it is falling is failing or falling apart. So we need to reinvent and rethink and marketing when you do this is so enabled with all these technologies and data and everything happening. I almost feel like I've been trained these last thirty six years to now enter the real field of marketing. Some at the start of the journey literally of this fifth paradigm, which is incredibly exciting. There's the most inspiring moment and one of the good things

Ryan is I might sound Pollyannish on this. But the reality is there is something fantastic you feel when you feel when you realize that they have made a contribution for the betterment of somebody or some groups, or some communities or some countries. Marketing of future is not just about shareholders and your company's profits, but it's going to be grounded in ethics, int aegrity and good for the community,

of the social good. So marketing is going to be a force for the growth of the company but also for the good of the society. Now, we experimented with a few We started at MasterCard with Cancer Cures, so we partnered with Stand Up to Cancer. Were raised about fifty dollars for them. We created campaigns, we did a whole bunch of things. Our job is easy, but they created drugs, that discovered drugs which got ft aproved seven drugs in the record time. And when patients actually occasionally

right to MasterCard saying that thank you MasterCard. And we do this with MLB and World Series and All Stars and all that, where we say the stand up, stand up moment, stand up to cancer moment, so you stand up for somebody against cancer and you hold the board et cetera. The kind of emotional response which we get

is gratifying. Are getting into things like the Touch card for the blind people, and I have personally received letters from some of the parents of blind children saying that this is so profoundly meaningful, Thank you so much for doing it. I think that in itself makes it worth it. But it is not just to feel good. This is going to be a requisite. Consumers are going to vote with their wallets for the brands which do social good, which are purpose driven, not just for political correctness and

to give a non nice sound bites. It's not about sound bites and political correctness and optics. It's about such substance. Consumers are not idiots. They see through us in a heartbeat, and therefore you have to be authentic, consistent. Since you're committed and demonstrate what value you're adding, you will win big time. And again, this is not just you know, uh, for the sake of statement I'm saying, but I've read

a full chapter in about it in my book. Specifically because this is making such a big difference to us, whether it is for attracting the right talent and retaining them. Now, they want to be the place where their social good. They're exactly and people are wanting to buy, even paying a premium, the products which are actually contributing good to the society. So this is going to be the most exciting phase of marketing and number so I inspired and I wish I'll have longevity to see from the next

few decades of working. But that's called visual thinking. Big Money Energy is hosted by me Ryan Sirhand. It's produced by Mike Coscarelli and Joe Lorreesca, an executive produced by Lindsay Hoffman. Find more podcasts like Big Money Energy on the I Heart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts.