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“WHAT’S PRICELESS TO YOU” WITH LIONEL MESSI | MASTERCARD
MCCANN, NEW YORK
Brand name
Mastercard
Description
A global technology company in the payments industry
Founded
1966
Headquarters
Purchase, New York, USA
Creative business transformation leader
Raja Rajamannar
Chief Marketing & Communications Officer and President, Healthcare
Recognising triggers of creative application
Mastercard has long been considered a creative leader in its industry. In 1997 the brand introduced its extremely successful “priceless” campaign. The idea behind the campaign was to generate awareness and demand by focusing on what money can’t buy, and subsequently stating that “for everything else, there’s Mastercard.”
Despite its success, a lot had changed by 2013 when Raja Rajamannar was hired as Chief Marketing and Communications Officer. The “priceless” campaign had been created purely from an advertising standpoint and before the prevalence of mobile, social media, and the internet. Rajamannar had to evaluate if “priceless” was still relevant and, if so, how the campaign could continue to compel the modern consumer.
Turning promise into value
Rajamannar immediately set out to transform “priceless” from an advertising campaign to a holistic creative platform. This new platform would add comprehensive data and technology capabilities to Mastercard’s foundation of creativity. Getting the emotional backing not only of executive leadership, but also of the marketing organization was of the utmost importance in these early stages. For Rajamannar, supplementing talent with outside help, while ensuring integration with current teams, worked to bridge existing gaps and get the transformation off the ground.
Harnessing exponential growth
Just as Mastercard as a brand needed to evolve, Rajamannar also understood that, particularly at a payments company like Mastercard, this evolution would need to include clearly defined financial success metrics. To make this credible and to build trust between marketing and finance, Rajamannar created a new position that served as an intermediary between he and Mastercard’s CFO. As Rajamannar puts it,
“When she (the intermediary) joined, it changed the nature of the equation between marketing and finance. And it really worked. It brought a lot of gravitas to the statements that we were making, because they were validated and verified by a finance person.”
Now approaching a decade into the newest iteration of the transformation, Mastercard continues to be wholly unified behind its famous platform. Through data, technology, and creativity the organisation is no longer simply talking to its customers, it is engaging with them in key aspects of their lives, priceless or otherwise.
Transformational results
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