 Hello and welcome everyone to E4M Talk Show. Our guest today is Raja Rajamanar, the Chief Marketing and Communication Officer of Mastercard. The brand surprised everyone recently by announcing a sponsorship deal with the BCCI for international and domestic tournaments played in India. Welcome to the show Mr. Rajamanar and congratulations. Thank you so very much. Really appreciate having me here. Mr. Rajamanar, you replaced Patreon to become the title sponsor for international matches and domestic matches held by BCCI in India. Why did you choose Cricket sponsorship and why now? So, Cricket is the second largest sport in the world in terms of fan following after soccer and our strategy is to really go behind sports and areas where people are really passionate about and curate and create experiences that are truly priceless for our customers and for our consumers. So, we actually call this as the experiential marketing strategy and since 2013 when I took over at Mastercard as the Chief Marketing Officer, we pivoted our strategy away from an advertising-led marketing strategy to an experiences-led marketing strategy and what this means is we identify areas where people are truly passionate about. We've got 10 areas like sports, music, films and we've got philanthropy, sustainability environment and we've got fashion, arts and culture and so on. So, we've got 10 health and well-being and so on. So, in each of these areas, we started acquiring assets for sponsorship and where we negotiate with our partners in a way that we are able to curate experiences for our customers and consumers that money cannot buy but you can get them through Mastercard. So, this has been the whole premise and since then we have been going very strongly like for example, in the world of sports, sports is an ocean. It's not just one single area. So, for example, golf, we are one of the largest sponsors of golf tournaments around the world and golf ambassadors we have. Tennis, for example, we sponsor the French Open Tennis and the Australian Open Tennis, we've got a number of ambassadors and so on. So, when you look at soccer, which is one of our largest areas of sponsorship and which are the world's most following. So, we have UFO Champions League, Copa Libertadores, Copa America and we've got brand ambassadors like Leo Messi and we sponsored a number of women's soccer teams around the world. So, like that, when we look at the entire space cricket is something which we have been looking at and studying for a little while and we are fortunate that this opportunity came along to associate ourselves with BCCI and get into the sponsorship and as I said, it's like second largest in terms of fan following and in India, you know, I have grown up in India and Hyderabad and while I was growing up, we used to play a lot of cricket in our streets and we know how passionate we were all about and in those days, there was no television either. So, it was already a commentary and we would be totally engrossed and what's delightful to see is that spirit and the passion continues till date as far as cricket is concerned. So, we said here's something which will be making us a lot of sense to get involved in and we feel very blessed that we had had this opportunity to sponsor the tour events. So, may I ask what are your short-term and larger objectives, you know, in India with this partnership? So, first and foremost, what we want to do is to really make MasterCard a beloved brand. So, we want a brand which people have affinity for, they like the brand and what we find time and again is when you get involved yourself in an authentic fashion in an area that people are passionate about, they start liking you. And that's an important thing, you know, we call it brand love and brand affection. These drive consumer choices and consumers' preferences towards the brand as things progress. So, that's something which we feel is very important for us and India is obviously one of our most, I would say, high priority countries and the potential is incredible. If you look at many other countries across the world, there might be today much bigger than India in terms of the revenues that various companies make. But India's population is very young, which means that the future of the world is in a place like India and no brand or no company can afford to ignore India. So, it was the combination of India being our priority market with high potential and cricket being a passion area in India. Like no other categories, probably, and I keep saying in India, there are three main religions, cricket, Bollywood and music. So, this is an opportunity for us to get involved with those kinds of levels of passion and therefore we have gone with that. And the idea is hopefully the brand will start becoming stronger in the country. It will be more endearing to consumers. And it's not just a payments brand or a payments enabler, but some brand that enables and curates priceless opportunities and priceless connections for you. In fact, our brand's statement, we say, is connecting everyone to priceless possibilities. And that's what will strive in India as well. So, how much ROI you are expecting from this collaboration, especially since it is just for six, seven months? Right. So, we have to obviously take what is available. And so the period that you have listed is correct. That's a period for the contract that we have got. And the way we look at our ROI is at three different levels. So, one is, is it enhancing our brand in a measurable way? And does it have therefore downstream effects on our business? Number two, is it driving business for today and for tomorrow? And number three, is it giving us a competitive advantage in the marketplace? So, these are the three dimensions. Now, in a relatively short period of time, it is the number one and number two, which actually are more measurable in a quantified fashion. And our ROI is that we are projecting at this point in time. We don't have any returns yet. We haven't even started our activations in India. So, whatever ROIs we are projecting in India, they're pretty positive and comparable to some of the best assets that we have around the world. How are you going to measure the ROI? Because I think the tournaments are a spread on domestic, international matches. So, how are you going to calculate the ROI? See, I have been, firstly, I'm a chemical engineer by training and I went to Sumania University in Hyderabad. And then to I am Bangalore, where I pursued a lot of quantitative subjects and also my grounding in finance, etc., has been with Citibank for 15 years. I worked there. So, one of the first things that we try to do is to quantify things and measure. Now, measuring ROI is not very easy, but it is something which is an art and a science that you actually evolve and develop, which we have been doing over the last several years. We have even acquired a number of data analytics companies around the world and they are actually focusing and we have got a ton of proprietary methodologies by which we actually measure our ROI and based on the returns, we're able to make our choices and optimize our investments appropriately. So, this is the major thing. We have our own secret sauce, so to speak. The other interesting thing is, you know, for unlike many other brands and many other categories of products and companies which are out there, for us, we have one significant advantage is that we can see data in a highly, in a totally anonymized fashion and in an aggregated fashion in real time. So, we don't know who is actually spending what amount where, but we know how much money is getting spent in where and we are able to sort of identify very clearly, okay? Take a simple example. If you take, say there is one city in which there is a tournament happening and another city which is very comparable to it where there is no tournament happening. Now, if my transaction numbers go up, if my volumes are going up in one particular place where there is tournament happening, but not other and there doesn't seem to be any other cause that is very evident than the fact that we are doing something in the first market, that is a reasonable indication for us. You know, we call it AB testing or it's a test and control. So, we do these kind of things, but I have oversimplified just for the audience to not get drawn down into the weeds. But the point is that we have got very sophisticated and cutting edge technologies to measure our ROIs and as for any other investment that we do, we will also keep monitoring our ROI for this investment as well. Yes, thank you for explaining the process. We would also like to know what are your marketing plans around this deal and how do you plan to activate the deal with the BCCI? So, basically a couple of things. You know, when we enter into any sponsorship, we have broad agreement on the areas for activation with our sponsorships partner in this case, BCCI. Now, we are in the process of doing brainstorming sessions and with the local team is actually the one who is taking obviously the total lead on this and they are the ones who have got a ton of ideas and will bring them to life pretty quickly and all this is happening in real time as we speak and you will see a ton of action on the marketplace hopefully pretty soon. We would love to cover all those things and what touch points you are looking at with this deal? Whenever we look at any deal, it is a 360 degree, highly integrated and a wholesome campaign of activations. It's not just, you know, we say, okay, let's do on the promotions or let's do on the television or let's do on the media or outdoor or perimeter boards in the stadiums, etc. We have got a holistic set of what you call touch points that we really focus on and as I said, the team is again going into each one of these because we have finite investments and we have to choose which areas we are going to invest in and which is the one which is likely to give us or move us more towards accomplishment of our objectives that we have set up for ourselves and based on that they will come. So, but right now, it's a tad premature to say these are the touch points specifically that we are using. We got a very broad idea but the key thing is now it is a question of bringing them to life with a lot of creativity and out of the box thinking and a lot of innovation behind it. So, as you earlier mentioned that cricket is, you know, religion in India and you have been sponsoring other sports events such as Delhi World Club Open. You signed Shukapur and Anirva Lagiri as brand investors and golf is entirely different game altogether. So, what is your strategy behind supporting Indian golf which has very few audience and very niche audience? Yeah, so, you know, I think you hit the nail on the head. You know, there is this saying which says different strokes for different folks, right? We cannot have one single broad brush and hope to reach every segment in the marketplace with a broad brush. So, we need mass appeal on one level. That's what gives us the scale but we also need to understand what are the other niches or other smaller sports or smaller areas that are available which will really give us a tremendous amount of brand advantage in those spaces. Now, as far as India is concerned, in addition to golf, we also party to Batman, right? We are supporting four players at this point in time. So, what we try to do is to look at what are consumers passionate about. When you look at the entire mass of consumers, we segment them and for each segment, we try to look at what are they passionate about. When you look at cricket, it cuts across the entire spectrum of audiences. But when you look at golf in a country like India, it's a little bit more focused on the more affluent segments, so to speak, right? Which is also an important segment that we go after. And then we also have got somebody like Batman, which is not exactly an affluent segment kind of a following, but it is something which is very topical. So, recently, for example, when Indian Batman has done very well in Asia, suddenly there is a lot of attention and focus in that space. So, which is a terrific opportunity for us to be able to get into that sport around that occasion and really get good, what do you call, support that's given to some players that we thought was going to be very helpful. And we think it's going to be very helpful for our brand. And so that's what we are going about in terms of our portfolio management. So, if you look at it like even just in the world of sport globally, and we are taking examples of what we are learning in various countries and we do success transfer across different countries. Now, we are in Donf and we are one of the largest sponsors of Donf. We are in football, which is soccer with UFA champions, Likopali, Butterdores and all these things. And Leo Messi is our brand ambassador, he is world's number one. Then we are in Tunis with French open Tunis, Austrian open Tunis and a bunch of ambassadors. We are into skiing. So, we sponsored the kids pool tournament in Austria. We are into what do you call ice hockey. We are sponsored the Maple Leafs in Canada, for example. So, it's a very wide spectrum and we try to identify the segments that we are really trying to connect with and see how we can up our image, how we can make our image very relevant and how can we help consumers connect with our brand and how can we connect with the consumers by curating these experiences and so on. So, that's what we are not focused on. It's not a one-trick only, but we are really approaching it as a portfolio strategy. Now, the question comes in mind, how sports sponsorships, which is a spread across the sports, fit into your larger plans for brand building and growth within India? Right. So, like I mentioned, there are two things. Firstly, we have got this experiential marketing strategy, which is one very big one. The second one is what we call as passion points. And we have moved away from the traditional segmentation methodologies and moved into what we call as passion-based segments. So, in passion-based segments, we say if I have got these several hundred million people who are there, what are they passionate about? Like I just mentioned before, in India, for example, music is a big passion more than many other countries actually. Cricket is, of course, and then you have got Bollywood or Cinema in total. Now, Bollywood is there. It's very national. But also, if you look at, for example, in the South, the telecom movie industry is a huge one. And that's where I have been sort of brought up on a diet of these movies, literally watching every single week. Now, these are the areas which people, if they're connecting with, we go into those passion points. The idea is, if you do something meaningful and authentic in an area that people deeply care about, which is what we call passion, the brand ratings will go up. The brand perceptions will go up. The right and the relevant attributes of the brand will become stronger. And we have tried this again and again and again across multiple countries. Now, just look at this way. So, if you measure the brand strength and the brand rankings of MasterCard, a few years back when we started this whole strategy, we were at number 87. I still inherited a top 100 brand in the world. Today, we are at number 12. And this is, we are punching way above our weight. And we are beating not just brands in our category, but brands across everywhere, across categories of industries and companies, et cetera, who are not even in competition with us. Because at the end of the day, when you're getting into brand positioning, you are trying to occupy a space in consumers' minds and in their hearts. And consumers are not segmenting and compartmentalizing their mind and heart by product category or by service category. So it's basically one space in which you have to cut through the clutter, stand out and stand for something meaningful from a consumer's point of view. So that way, when we are getting into something like cricket or something like sports or cinemas, we are trying to connect with consumers through their passion and by curating and creating experiences in a meaningful manner. And we call this priceless experiences. And that strategy has paid us off very, very well, at least in the last nine, 10 years that I have been here. True. So now a question comes in mind, are sportsperson far more convincing and trustworthy compared to other celebrities such as film stars when it comes to promoting financial products? So here is the thing. Firstly, it's fascinating when you look at consumer psychology. If you are having a consumer connect with a particular brand in a particular category, what should you look at and say, does the consumer have credibility in this particular category or in this particular personality, as far as that category is concerned? Now you would think, for example, if you have a movie star endorsing a financial services product, it may not work. No, but consumers are not trusting an individual only the context of that particular category, but they trust the person. Is this a trustworthy person? Is this a person whose recommendations I want to follow? It doesn't matter whether the person is what you call endorsing a two-wheeler or endorsing a financial services product or endorsing a soft drink. The point is, is that individual, the ambassador or the sportsperson, whoever it is, credible? Is that person somebody who I as a fan would like to follow, would like to take the advice of, would like to be guided by? So this is one very interesting aspect. Like for example, we have seen, no, we have been associated with movie stars quite a lot, which is, we had for example, Hugh Jackman, the Australian movie star, and it was one of the most successful campaigns that we had run with him. He's not a financial services expert, he's not a payments expert, but he's a trusted authority. At that time, we had the evaluation, etc. So from those perspectives, it is not, if you're a sports person, you're applicable only in these limited areas or these specific areas. Yes, there is a multiplier effect that happens. So if I'm a sportsperson and I'm endorsing sportswear or cricket, I'm endorsing a particular brand of what you call bats, cricket bats or ball or whatever it is. If I'm saying there is immediate connection and much more impact and that's what is we call it the force multiplier. But at a base level, are you believing this person to have reason to believe? Do you believe him or her? And if you do, doesn't matter what they talk about, they said they talk about diet, you believe. If they talk about saying that, hey, this is something which you should have this learning program for some educational stuff, you believe. So it is a fascinating thing and not as clean, cut and compartmentalized as we would like to believe it is. I ask this question because most of the brand ambassadors in India, I mean, your brand ambassadors in India are sportsperson like MS Dhoni and Anirvan Lahidi or the four badminton players, right? So that's the question. I have not seen any Indian actor as a brand ambassador of MasterCard in India. No, we in fact had, for example, we had Anil Kapoor, we had Sonam Kapoor and we had Irfan Khan. So we did have the movie actors as our brand ambassadors too. Okay, so are you going to sign more? The hope is that I'll have unlimited budget to follow my passionate sponsor. Everyone that I would like to, but the point is we have to make our priorities and the three areas that I outlined in are obviously going to be areas of focus for us to connect with consumers, which is music, which is movies and which is cricket or sport more broadly. So these are the three areas you will see us and this just hopefully the beginning and we are very optimistic about India's future and our opportunities as a company in India. And therefore, we'll go all out to realize those opportunities in the best possible manner. And therefore, you should actually expect action into the future, at least in these three areas if not more. So do you have any plans to support Indian football as well? This is the point, which is are we supporting football? Absolutely, yes. Are we supporting every football around the world? No. And are we prioritizing? Yes. So as I said, we are not blessed with infinite pool of funds. So with the available funds, what you try to do is to prioritize. Now, if there is an opportunity that is having a very high ROI, there is no reason why we cannot do something with Indian football as well. So first, we are open to all possibilities. We are constantly evaluating them. And when there is an opportunity, we'll absolutely take a look at it. But right now, we don't have a plan to say, yes, we are getting into football or we are getting into company or we are getting into some other sport. So it is a very thoughtful approach with finite funds. So Indian sports has emerged as a big ad revenue generator and experts say that sports ad revenue in India is currently one billion dollar, which can go up to three billion in the next five years. What is your prediction? You know, particularly after the pandemic, there has been a tremendous amount of positive movement for live events. And so when live events have started happening again, people are going back with the vengeance to these events. Number two, for various sports organizers, they have actually lost a lot of what they could have during those two years. And they are trying to be very thoughtful about how to bring their sport back to the levels that they were pre-pandemic. So that's number two. And number three, there is a ton of focus in terms of with work now becoming a little more hybrid. People are also reallocating their time and they're also dedicating more number of hours watching live sports, whether it is on television or on streaming channels. So when the audience viewership numbers are very attractive, that immediately becomes a magnet for advertisers, because all the people are sitting there and it's the right context. So as an advertiser, you want to reach those people so you are doing your advertising on in those channels on those specific occasions. So therefore, I see that this momentum continuing. Now, there are obviously global events which are happening, whether it is the high inflation rates that you have got, you got the war and you got God knows what else is going to happen around the world. Barring anything untoward like that or God forbidding some of the pandemic and all this kind of things, I see the trend being pretty positive both in India as well as in most of the world at this point in time. So I feel very positive that things will be looking up in terms of advertising revenues as well for the channels of the media companies into the immediate future. So now the last question. Are you looking for more sponsorship opportunities in Indian cricket? We are always looking for opportunities. They don't only have to be sponsorship opportunities. Sponsorship is one way by which you try to connect with and communicate with consumers and engage them. But there are so many other ways, even independent of sponsorships. So having said that, for the right opportunities, we're always open and it's a matter of prioritizing and adjusting our portfolio of investments. Thank you so much for talking with us and congratulations once again. Thank you so much. Really appreciate your time and for having me on your show. Thank you.