Mastercard’s three pillars of marketing effectiveness

Mastercard, the payments company, judges marketing effectiveness through the lenses of building and protecting its brand, driving business growth, and obtaining competitive advantage through differentiation.

Raja Rajamannar, Mastercard’s chief marketing and communications officer, discussed this subject in a LIONS Marketers Series event held by LIONS, which, like WARC, is owned by Ascential.

Why it matters

Effectiveness often lacks a shared definition, as marketers adopt their own criteria surrounding what this term means. It is, however, vital for brand teams to have a clear, shared perspective of this notion to guide their strategies and help track performance.

Mastercard’s effectiveness model

In aiming to “forget all the fluffy stuff” relating to effectiveness, Rajamannar explained that Mastercard has focused on three parameters:

• The first is “how do we build, nurture and protect the brand, because marketing folks are the brand stewards,” he said.
• “Second, how do you fuel the business? How do you become a real driver of the business or an enabler of the business, depending on the organization?”
• “The third is: How do you set up platforms that will differentiate and distinguish your company and your brand ahead of competition, so you're creating some kind of competitive advantage?”

The big idea

“If you look at these three [pillars], and anything that you're doing, and you're trying to measure the effectiveness of, against these three pillars, that's when you'll start making a lot of sense.” – Raja Rajamannar, chief marketing and communications officer, Mastercard.

Sourced from LIONS