How do you think about that?

So firstly, there are, I would say, multiple elements that we have to recognize.

The five senses through which people absorb information, and then that gives them the meaning or not.

So a visual, for example, when we are just showing the visual without any words, we had to make sure that those visuals had the same universal appeal and the same meaning.

And red and yellow, because they're the nature's colors, so to speak, one associated with sunrise, the other one associated with a whole bunch of other positive things, and the ratio, they worked universally everywhere.

we didn't have to say a single word.

Immediately people say, oh, that looks very upmarket, that looks very sophisticated, that looks very futuristic, that looks literally timeless, and it's beautiful, youthful, and so on.

It's a

So when did that kind of change take place, do you think? When did the rules that were previously kind of held so dearly start to be undone?

So first shock to marketing happened probably in the late 1990s.

With the advent of internet, the rules of marketing game have totally changed.

The behavior of consumers and how consumers interacted with each other, with the brands, with their environment has dramatically changed.

Marketing has not evolved.

Yes, there was a new branch called performance marketing, which was born, but then that is pretty much a classical marketing continued on its own stream.

as though nothing has happened.

So I suppose with all that in mind, if you were back in the marketing hot seat at Mastercard, what would you be looking to do?

Mm-hmm.

We were launching credit cards.

And that really is the most appropriate example to where cryptos are today.

So Dubai was a cash-rich society in those days.

All of Middle East was actually, all the g-GCC countries.

And people will say, "Why the hell do I need even a credit card? Because I have got my cash, I pay with my cash, and everything is done." The merchant would ask us, "Why do I even need to pay the commission of two and a half percent or whatever? I'm getting a hundred dollars.

That way I get instant cash." And we had to educate both sides, the consumer side as well as on the cust- on the merchant side, as to what is in it for them.

What's your approach to where you think the agentic economy is going?

Can you tell me about that?

Yeah.

So if you look at the theories and principles of marketing, they were all formulated about 60 years back by the likes of Dr. Philip Kotler.

When those theories and frameworks were formed, there was no internet, there was no data analytics, there was no mobile phone, there was no social, there was no AI.

My quest was to say that Are marketing principles and theories so timeless that they remain steady and constant over decades or even centuries? Or do they evolve and change as things change around them? If you look at something like Newton's laws of gravity or Newton's laws of motion, they don't change with time.

They are what they are.

Is marketing like that or is it different? I quickly came to the conclusion that marketing is very different.

So now that we are seeing a lot more agent use with open clubbing coming out and it's very popular now, do you think how far along of the shift of where agents are doing a lot of retail spending for everyday people and stuff, how far do you see that?

Yeah.

So I moved to London and I had all of Europe, Middle East, and Africa reporting to me for all consumer assets.

And I was not just handling marketing, but I was handling the entire P&L, profit and loss, the entire business system for all lending products, yes.

And I learned a ton of things.

The first and foremost is as much as there are differences from India to Dubai to London, The commonalities are stunningly the same.

People have the same aspirations, the same fears, the same challenges.

It's so literally like a mirror image between each one of these.

What has been a couple initiatives you guys have put out that maybe have done really well or maybe work that you're really proud of?

What about in the boardroom? What would you say is the biggest misconception about brand ROI?

So I think there are multiple misconceptions about not just brand ROI, but all of marketing.

And board members typically are not from a marketing background, and therefore they have certain thoughts and opinions.

which I think it is a responsibility of the CMO to gently and delicately bring them along, tell them what is and what is not marketing, and how we run our campaigns and why.

Because one of the very interesting things is anybody who is not a marketer has a very strong opinion of how to run marketing or what should be run.

Is this a good campaign? We should be doing this.

We should be doing that.

Does your approach change when we're in a tougher down period, a tougher economic cycle? Does your approach to marketing change? Do the things that you measure change? Does your thought about ROI get more intense or is it always intense?

Wow.

Now, we didn't start with the objective of profit.

We started with solving a real problem and being purposeful about it, whi- which sort of makes a huge amount of difference.

I'll give you another example.

Uh, actually I keep thinking about it.

So when I was growing up, uh, my grandmother, she was blind, and me and my sister would hold her hands and help her, uh, you know, navigate through the house.

And even when she was sitting in front of her, uh, you know, dining table, we had to show her where the glass was, what items were where.

Mm.

Wow.

Now, we didn't start with the objective of profit.

We started with solving a real problem and being purposeful about it, whi- which sort of makes a huge amount of difference.

I'll give you another example.

Uh, actually I keep thinking about it.

So when I was growing up, uh, my grandmother, she was blind, and me and my sister would hold her hands and help her, uh, you know, navigate through the house, and even when she was sitting in front of, uh, uh, you know, dining table, we had to show her where the glass was, what items were where.

And fast-forward, I went to a South by Southwest, uh, conference, and I was coming out, and one of my finance colleagues has come out and said, "Rajat, how come we don't have a card for a blind person? How does a blind person pay their card? How do they distinguish one card versus the other card?" I said, "Man, I should have thought about it." I, I actually s- I grew up seeing somebody who was blind in my own family.

Mm-hmm.