 to address on digital marketing in the time of crisis. Now, our speaker comes down with more than 25 years of experience, the last six of which have been the role of Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for MasterCard and President of the company's healthcare business. Now, he is consistently recognized globally as a highly innovative and transformational leader. He is the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer and President Healthcare MasterCard. Let's all put our hands together where we are for Mr. Raja Manar. Thank you very much, Ketika. Much appreciate having me on this forum which seems to be fascinating. Wish I had spent a little bit more time listening to the previous ones as well. I joined somewhere at the last half of the previous panel and thought they were making some fantastic points. What I wanted to do was to basically share a little bit of the context which we are not unfamiliar with, but I wanted to put some perspectives in place. And against that perspective, how should marketers carry themselves into the future, both during COVID and post COVID? So firstly, in terms of the context, probably this is the most fascinating, if I can call it that way, given the amount of negativity around it. Still, it's one of the most fascinating moments in our history where we are not bombarded by one crisis, but we have a multitude of crises. So you have got the health crisis, obviously. We don't know if it is behind us or if it is getting behind us or we are up to wave two. And in some countries, we are talking of wave three. So we don't know how long it is going to last, whether the vaccines are going to work or not, whether the medicines are going to come out or not. Some were touted as medicines before, but then they are found to be totally ineffective. We're all plodding through it, literally a little shooting in the dark happening out here. This is one crisis. And there are also hypotheses that this crisis might actually continue with new mutations of this coronavirus. And if it comes, God forbidding, we don't know what else is in store for us. So this is probably the beginning of a crisis and probably little waves of this crisis recurring over a period of time. And I hope I'm wrong. The second crisis we have, obviously, is the economic crisis. The amount of devastation that has happened to the economy is absolutely staggering. In terms of, on the one hand, millions of businesses have shut down. A large number of large companies have gone bankrupt. It's unprecedented. Now, how does it correlate to the stock market? I have no clue. Why is the stock market booming? I have no clue. But the point is, if you look at the economy and the fundamentals, we are in deep trouble. Currently, we are tiding through government funding. They're printing money. They're making money available. Is there a hyperinflation around the corner? Probably there is at least inflation. If not hyperinflation, that's going to be pretty significant. The last time there was the crisis, the financial crisis, it was just one crisis. It took us about 18 months to two years to come out of. But this time, with the health crisis, plus we have got the economic crisis, it's going to be much more long drawn. The third is the crisis in communities. Now, you've got the social crisis in some countries like the US, where there are these racial tensions and tremendous amount of uprising which is pretty unusual. And I haven't seen here, in the last 20 years, I have been in the US, I haven't seen that level of momentum happening. And how long will it be before the economic unrest will also lead to social unrest? And I think there is a little bit of correlation all said and done between the two. So this is one aspect we have. And then you have got a scenario where there is a confidence that is in crisis. People are not confident whether they have got their job tomorrow or not, whether they are going to lose their livelihood, their income, already in many categories, particularly in the lower socioeconomic strata, they have been displaced totally, they have been totally disrupted. Now, what happens when people are now so disrupted, but they have to live for the livelihood, will there be crime that will happen? That's too far from where we are today, if it is already not happening. So there are a lot of, there's a lot of turmoil which is out here right now, and it's absolutely, absolutely unprecedented. And it's going to be with us for a long time and it'll draw on for quite some time. Now against this backdrop, what should a marketer do? Like Nero, does he play a fiddle? Or does she play a fiddle? Or do they do something else? And the answer to me is that something else. So firstly, when you look at marketing, it seemed to be a function to sell, to generate demand, to fulfill demand. And there is obviously a company goal to meet the targets and so on, which is what marketers are primarily focused. There are very, very few companies, in fact, you can count on in single digits or double digits around the world, of those who are truly purpose-driven, and purpose is not just about making profits, but doing something above and beyond. Without making it just a politically correct statement that you have to state that your CEO has to state so that you look good in your annual report or in some forums, you are saying the right things. No, I'm not talking about purpose from that sense. I'm talking of purpose in a true sense. How purposeful is this company? Looking beyond its own financial goals and objectives, satisfying its own shareholders, it's about satisfying all the stakeholders and community is a huge stakeholder. Number one, marketers should not be pure marketers at this stage in the crisis. They require leadership. They require humanity. I always say that before you are a good marketer, you have to be a good human being. Put yourself in the shoes of those people on the other side who are suffering or who are vulnerable, who are fearful, who are anxious. Try to solve their problems. No, you're not Red Cross, International Red Cross, or you're not Mother Teresa's Foundation. You have got a commercial responsibility. But what I would submit is there is a credible way of how you can link the purpose or the cause to the profits and the momentum, business momentum of the company that you serve. And I have seen ample number of examples. And this is not just about philosophical debate as to whether purpose drives profit. But I think we owe it to the society, to the communities that we are in that they thrive so that we can thrive in time. Now, I would say that when you're looking at any crisis, you have to approach it. From three different almost like a concentric circles, three concentric circles. In the center, you should start with your employees. Given the level of layoffs and furloughs that are happening, employees are scared. They're extremely fearful. What do you do as a marketer? What do you do as a leader? In fact, as a business leader, you need to calm your people down. You need to reassure them. You need to let them know that you are there for them. And that you can reach out to you anytime, middle of the night at three o'clock, they are feeling scared. They should be able to pick up the phone and talk to somebody. That is, I think, very, very critical. It is not theoretical. Unfortunately, there is so much amount of cynicism in general. And the business world in particular, the kind of statements that I'm making might be perceived to be, again, those things which are good to have, they are fluffy and it is all like, you know, what do you call sweet talk? It is it. This is real action. In fact, as management committee at MasterCard, we sat through this whole thing and we said, what do we do? How do we reassure our people? The decision we had taken is we will not let go of a single individual from the company because of COVID. And we decided also to communicate this very openly and in a very transparent fashion to the entire company. So I had Ajay Banga, who is the CEO of the company. And because I also oversee communications, I was facilitating that process as well within the company for internal communications. And Ajay had gone and stated, saying that guys, relax, don't worry, we are here for you. We are in it all together. We will do everything else to tighten our belt, because of course, revenues are going to be in under pressure in this kind of an environment for most of the companies. And we are no exception either. But we will not go to laying off people or furloughing them. For this year, absolutely nothing of that sort will happen. God knows what will happen in the future. But right now, don't worry. Just relax, calm down and we are here for you. The amount of difference that has made to people's sense of well-being, sense of calmness, sense of peace of mind, the reassurance they get is absolutely astounding. When they are in that frame of mind, they feel grateful to the company as I do myself. And they also then are trying to put in the very best for the company. When the company stands with them, they stand with their company. That's a reciprocal commitment that occurs. This is very important. The second aspect is, as marketers, we are supposed to be understanding the very subtle emotions and feelings of people. We need to understand the subtle emotions and people of our own employees first and foremost and try to tackle them. You cannot overcommunicate in this environment with your people. Reinforce. Tell people there are opportunities constantly for rumors. Be very transparent and keep leading the charge. Now, typically you delegate internal communication to HR. Say, though you had to write some memos, do some webcasts, do some podcasts, et cetera, whatever it is. But I think it is actually a marketing task. Your first audience, particularly at times of crisis, even in good times, your employees are your best brand ambassadors in crisis, even more so. So you have to communicate with them. You have to market the spirit, the inspiration to your own employees authentically. Don't fake it. Number one. The second is consumers and customers. When you look at consumers and customers, they are as well very vulnerable. Everyone is anxious. Many companies, they try to either run and hide at these times or they try to exploit. Don't do either. Be genuinely there for your consumers and with your customers, your clients. Reach out to them. Let them know again that you are there for them. It is a times of trust. It's a times of crisis that trust is really built. And if you are salesy at this point in time, if you are opportunistic at this point in time, you totally lose their trust. On the contrary, if you are there with them without a hidden agenda, but approaching with a sincerity to serve them, you will build bridges. You will establish substantial trust with them in an incredible fashion. The other point I would say is also there are times when you have to sell and there are times when you don't want to sell. This is the time to serve. It is not the time to sell. It's very critical. As much as we have got our targets hanging on our head, we have to remember the timing is everything. This is the time. Be with your customers. If they want to give you a business, gladly accept it. Serve them in totality. No issues, but don't try to sell. It's a short-term disadvantage, but a long-term huge competitive advantage. It's important at times of crisis not to be a knee jerk, not to be under pressure. I know that all the companies, particularly when there is secular trend that's going down, which means the whole industry is itself coming down, your numbers are as it is under pressure. So why would you not want to go and acquire more share? By all means, do it the right way, but not by selling. If you are creating the pull, great. Don't push. So this is the second. The third pillar, I would say, or the third circle in the concentric circles, the outer circle, is the communities. When communities thrive, the secular trend is positive. When communities thrive, the entire industry is lifting up for most of the industries. And if communities are not healthy, you are in trouble. Whether it is a social interest or the economic distress, or a bunch of other things that can happen, there could be various kinds of backlashes. And I have seen it time and again in multiple countries. And it's not just a United States phenomenon. I have seen it in multiple places. Communities have to be healthy. Otherwise, you are in trouble as a commercial entity. Try to serve the communities. Now, as marketers, what we should realize is we have resources. We have the skills and the capabilities. We have got the wherewithal to make a positive difference. Don't hold back. Just go into it. Just like consumers, communities expect brands to be visible. And particularly, if you look at the younger generations, God bless them, I think they are much more socially aware and socially conscious than my generation, for example, they expect brands to take a stance on social causes and not just take a stance, but to do something about it, to act on those. They are willing to pay premiums to those banks, to those companies, to those brands, which are really societally motivated, societally driven from a cost perspective, from a social good perspective. And they are willing to walk away from those companies and brands, which they feel are not socially committed, they are exploitative. Now, at these times, again, those feelings get amplified. And you absolutely have to tap into it in the most appropriate fashion, which means be there in the society, in the community, making a difference, whether it is healthcare workers, whether it is small businesses, or whatever else it could be, or daycare for children, whatever is the social good that you need to do that is tied to the current situation and the pain points of the consumers, try to alleviate those pain points. There are a lot of traps that marketers can fall into and they have fallen into. In fact, one of the previous speakers, I thought he was absolutely spot on from Aditya Birla, when he talked about every brand, even the globally reputed brands falling into this same kind of a model and everyone looking exactly like the same. I'll come to that in a second. But the first thing is, don't go dark. Many people will say, my budgets have gone, or my budgets have been deeply cut. How will I not go dark? How will I show up? The key thing is, there are enough number of ample number of opportunities, either for collaboration, or for partnership, or for earned media, that you can actually stimulate and get visibility and let the world know that this is the stance you are taking, this is what you are doing for them. But in doing so, don't fall into the trap of that sea of sameness, where you look like everyone else, because there are three topics which are at the top of mind for everyone. You want to really join those three topics and then you say the same thing like every other brand and that whole, it's like a total ambiguous mess. You ask a consumer, which brand did it? They say, I have no clue. So the point is, how do you stand out? How do you differentiate? The first thing is not by simply saying something different or doing something different, but doing something different or saying something different that is in tune with your brand. It has to be the voice of the brand. It has to be the personality of your brand that has to show through. If you fake it, they will see it. Don't fake it. If you don't have anything credible to say, then sit in your corner and shut up. But if you have something credible to say, you should, and I'll be shocked if you don't have anything credible to say in this kind of an environment. It's mighty critical. The other point I would say is, don't really be holding budgets. Now today, marketers have lost in many companies around the world a lot of credibility with the CEOs and the CFOs. When the CEOs are under pressure to deliver quarterly results, they look at, and when the economic crisis is there, there is going to be obviously pressure on the revenues and therefore you need to cut down costs to the extent that you can tighten your belt. Marketers have not been able to properly justify the return on their investment to credibly make the linkages between their marketing actions and the business outcomes. With the result of which many companies have done away with their CMOs, the chief marketing officer's roles, and replaced them with non-marketers at the head of the marketing department. In many cases, marketing has been fragmented all together and it has been distributed, or you do product, you do promotion, you do place, you do whatever else it is there. So what the hell does marketing do in these companies? You need to ask yourself those questions. Why did we lose the credibility? Because as marketers, we have not been able to justify the value, the prove the value that we have been bringing to the table. The exception being performance marketing where things are more tangible. But when you look at anything outside of performance marketing, it's all a guess game. It's all saying that trust me, believe me, that's not going to work. Now, the point is in a situation of crisis when the company is under pressure, don't try to hoard your marketing dollars. Don't try to be your own island somewhere where you say, look, this is my money. Let me not give transparency into this to the CFO or the CEO or the rest of the company. These are opportunities for marketers to build their credibility and to build bridges with their C-suite peers within the company. It's extremely critical that at this point in time, marketing does its bit to help the bottom line of the company, something which is not very easy, but something which marketers have to absolutely go after. Don't be opportunistic on the other hand. I'll give you a personal example. I was trying to buy a stand for my iPad because I'm doing a number of these kind of sessions. And when I was looking at stands on one of the reputed online e-commerce marketplaces, it was $61. Okay, $61 not too bad. But when I went to check out, they said that shipping costs were $211, three and a half times the price of the basic product that I'm trying to buy. Normal times, any purchase beyond $25, they would make it available free shipping. And now they're charging three and a half times. What does it make me feel as a consumer? These guys are exploiting me and you're talking to your marketer, right? And I feel terrible as a consumer. I'm first a consumer and second a marketer. And as a consumer, I feel horrible. I said, this is exploitation. Now, I don't have too much of time or too much of choice. So I may clearly go and buy the product, but what do I do when an alternative option is available? I would switch on a heartbeat. Don't be opportunistic. Don't do price gouging just because you are able to. You exploit vulnerability. It's easy to exploit folks, your customers, your clients, and the consumers at times of crisis. You look at the amount of literally black marketing by reputed brands. I would not call it anything else. It is black marketing. When you're talking of these hand washes, hand sanitizers and the wipes and the toilet tissues, which are going, like, you know, they're running out of shelves, like there's no tomorrow. There's the pricing officially on the websites of these reputed companies 7 to 8 times of normal times. That is exploitative. That's complete price gouging. That's being totally opportunistic. You should not be. That will be short term, smart from a bottom line point of view, but it is horrible for medium and long term. And it'll kill the trust and credibility. Somebody was telling in the previous panel and they were very right. How do you differentiate your brand? In future, where technology is democratized, data is democratized, everything is democratized, everything is accessible to everyone. How do you differentiate yourself? Trust is going to be one of those fundamental parameters that you have to really build. Otherwise, you're toast and that's going to be really very critical and people have to bear that at the back of their mind, actually at the front of their mind. In fact, one of the key things I would say is, you know, the marketers, we say that we need to have IQ from an analytical point of view or understanding things and so on capabilities. You need to have EQ and able to relate emotionally very well with people and so on. And then you have got more importantly something we call it as a DQ, which is decency quotient. This is the time for marketers to be decent, to be good human beings and to serve the community, which is in turn going to be of service to the brand in the medium at the long term. So those were the thoughts that I wanted to share and Geetika, if there are any questions I'm happy to take. Thank you first of all for joining us. You said some really interesting things that were things that you said on a human level. But you know, sir, considering the times that we're going through, they are just so they're just so correct. And I just want to share with you the one that's stuck with me. If you generate the full, do so, don't push. This is not the time to sell. It is the time to serve. This is wisdom that I think everyone across businesses and industries needs to adapt. Sir, taking from what I've just sort of repeated about what you just said, where in the last six months did you find the wisdom to arrive at this conclusion so fast? We haven't even begun to have case studies. We haven't even begun to see what the trends have been. We haven't even begun to see where we have reached. How did you come to this conclusion without real on-ground rule out? So Geetika, in fact, sometimes you have happy coincidences. So three and a half years back, I was sitting with my team and said that, look, we need to really figure out what will we do if a crisis materializes. My thought was about cybersecurity, or it is reputational risk. There is some PR crisis, or there is a financial disaster. There are so many of the crisis, which as marketers, we don't pay that much attention to. In the PR part of the wheelhouse, yes, you have some crisis management functionality, but marketing by itself does not have a crisis management function within marketing. So what I did at the time, I said, look, marketers, we have to realize that crisis is going to happen, but we want it or not. And we need to be prepared. So I formed a risk management function within marketing. I made my previous CFL as my new risk management head. So what she did then is to identify all the types of risks that we as a marketing function would face or could face and then have the building blocks in place. If this happens, what do we do? If this happens, what do we do? And we had war room simulations. We had systems and processes. We had single points of accountability. Who will do what? What the communication protocols would be. As a company, we do it very well for crisis management. But as a marketing function, we never had anything like that. So we did the playbook from there. We created our own playbook and we tested and trained our people extensively. Now we never predicted coronavirus. And when it happened, however, because all the building blocks were there, the cutover was absolutely seamless and we just moved like that. So we didn't have to scamper and start thinking at the time. So this is one thing which had really stood us in excellent stead. And I keep on advocating wherever I go, marketers have to have risk management function embedded. Trust me, this is not the last crisis that we are facing. There are going to be a series of crisis and we haven't even seen the beginning yet. And it's not one crisis at a time. It will be multiple crisis which will be a bombarding us. And I'm not being sort of the doom seyer. And it's not all doom and gloom. But the thing is, if and when doom and gloom happens, you better be prepared today. That's my point. Well, well noted, sir. Sir, the events also are a part of the marketing function and the live event industry across the world is, if may I say, a deep problem right now. What do you foresee the future for them to be? I mean, is live really going to pick up the way it was by Jan 2021? Or are we just going to continue to rumble and tumble in the virtual space? I think we'll plod along for some time for sure. Right? The fact is, if you look at the entire sphere of communication or communicating with consumers, I keep saying in a very provocative way that advertising is not the way to go forward. An average consumer is bombarded by 5000 commercial messages a day. The estimates are anywhere between 3000 and 5000, which is humanly impossible to process. Number two, the span of attention of human beings is reducing to now being slightly less than that of a goldfish at under eight seconds. So the window is narrowing and you're pushing a flood of commercial messages at them. What do they do? They either tune out or they put ad blocks. Already the estimates are there are 625 million plus ad blockers that have been already installed on various devices and growing at 30% per annum. Or people are saying, I'm so sick and tired of your ads that I'll pay money to keep you marketing idiots out. Now when that happens, as a marketer that's a nightmare for me, how do I reach these consumers? How do I tell them my story? How do I inspire them to go for my product? So a few years back, we pivoted at Mastercard from traditional advertising and traditional marketing to more of experiential marketing and word of mouth amplification. When that happened, our entire focus was on life events. And life events really give us phenomenal return on investment. We went into all kinds of what we call passion points. We went into movies, we went into arts and culture, into shopping, into travel, into environment, health and well-being. We identified 10 different passion points and we started going heavily after those and creating assets in each one of these passion points. Now certainly coronavirus happens. It's a crisis and all the life events come to a standstill. So fortunately, this is something which we were prepared for to cut over to digital experiences. What we realized is that digital experiences give you a very different type of opportunity, the ability to scale. So for example, if I'm sponsoring, which we do, say French open tennis, how many experiences can I give that? I can give probably a few thousand experiences over the entire period of the tournament. But digitally, I can give to millions. So the scale of digital experiences can be huge, but the impact of digital experiences is not exactly anywhere near a physical experience. So the future is going to be hybrid. And I think already there are a lot of technology solutions which are coming of how you engage, even if there are no live audience, that they can be live events. Like for example, right now you have got UFO Champions League. It's a live event. It's happening. It hasn't stopped, except that there are no audience in the stadium. But then there are technology solutions with augmented reality that are coming out with some tacky solutions, right now, I would say, of virtual reality. But there are ways of getting consumers connected very, very well with these live events than just sitting dumbly and watching in front of a television. So there are lots of stuff that are coming down the pike. And I saw some of those innovations and investing in some of those. It's pretty cool. So I would say the format of live events will evolve, but live events won't disappear. Thank you, sir. I'm a member of the live event. It's just a little bit need to hear that. I asked a lot of people this question, so it's been used for us. Thank you once again, sir, for your time and for your participation and that golden wisdom you've shared with us today. Thank you very much. Thank you very much Deepika. Much appreciate. Bye-bye then.