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INTERVIEW | Make Money by Mastering Modern Marketing and Building a Global Brand with Raja Rajamannar
00:28:31
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- [00:00]
A
You're listening to the Travis Makes Money podcast presented by GoHighLevel.com for a free 30 day trial of the best all in one digital marketing software tool on the planet, just go to gohighlevel.com travis. What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to the Travis Makes Money podcast where it's our mission to help you make more money. Today on the show, I have a new friend, Raja Rajamanar. He's a senior fellow and former chief marketing and Communications Officer over at mastercard, helping transform the company into one of the world's fast, fastest growing and most valuable brands. He evolved the iconic priceless platform and his work is featured in case studies at Harvard Business School and Yale School of Management where he serves as an executive fellow, bestselling author, and thought leader, Raja has been inducted into multiple halls of fame and serves on several boards. Now. Raja, how are you? Thanks for taking the time.
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B
Thank you. I'm doing great and great to see you as well, Travis, and thank you for having me on your show.
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A
Of course. Happy to, happy to have you join me. Let's, let's go back in time. First off, Raja, before we talk about some of the amazing things that you got going on in your career now. Now tell me the first time that you ever made a dollar that made you excited or shocked.
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B
The first time I made money was I was asked to volunteer as an invigilator. So invigilator is somebody who makes sure that the students are not copying in their exams. So I was doing my chemical engineering and there used to be a test in India called Test of English as a Foreign Language. So when people want to come to the United States, they have to pass that test to be able to get admitted to the US Universities and so on. So I was asked to go and sort of monitor the students so that they are not cheating. And it was one full day's hard work of pacing up and down and keeping a vigilance of these people. And I was paid about, I would say 20 rupees, which is about 33 cents for the day that goes by.
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A
For the day.
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B
For the day. That was my first ever income and I feel so good about it. Yeah.
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A
Yeah. Well, like what's funny is like regardless of how small the dollar amount is, it feels still impactful. The first time that you do something in exchange for earning some money, it's very special. There's something, yeah, there's something valuable about that experience. So. So you were in college at the time going for chemical engineering Is that correct? Okay. And that was in India?
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B
That was in India.
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A
Okay. So at what point did you end up coming over to the States?
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B
So I actually after completing my MBA in India, I joined Unilever. And after finishing Unilever, I was posted to Citibank. I joined Citibank in Dubai and I worked with them for a number of years, and they moved me to the United States in 2001.
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A
Real quick. Sorry, Roger, to interrupt. So. So you were going for chemical engineering. Right. What would. What were you doing inside of the banking industry? Did you like. Did you in finance was calling your name, you're doing accounting. What exactly were you doing?
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B
It was all very accidental, but I was trying to make the best out of any given situation. I would be lying if I say I had a very strategic plan and I was sticking to it. No, it was not. Life was very different. So when I graduated chemical engineering, actually, even before that, when I was doing my mba, I was specializing in environmental management, which is a subset of chemical engineering. I did environmental engineering. So at that time, I was given a summer project with a Claire cosmetics company called Lakme in India. And my project was all about logistics. Because I'm an engineer. They gave me a logistics project. But I sat in a small chair outside a cubicle where my supervisor was there. And they were trying to figure out a new advertising campaign to sort of tell Women in tier 2 and tier 3 cities in India, which were very conservative, that it's okay to use color cosmetics. Because in India in those days, there was a little bit of a taboo that a good woman won't use color cosmetics because she's trying to attract attention to herself, which means she is not of a good character. It was crazy kind of a situation. So they came up with some very complex campaign. I said, why are these guys struggling so much? So I took a piece of paper and I wrote a headline for an ad. I said, is it bad to look good? And then I went inside and said, what do you guys think about so happened that the chairperson of the company was there at the. She saw it, Mrs. Simone Tata. She said, this is brilliant. So it was immediately taken as the concept that they will go ahead with. And it won the best advertising campaign of the year award.
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A
No way.
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B
So I said, my God. So I'm actually a better marketer or advertiser than I was a chemical engineer, though I was a gold medalist in chemical engineering. So I shifted to marketing. So in Unilever and before that with Asian Paints, I worked for about seven years in India, 10 years almost. And then Citibank came along. They said, look, we don't want to be a bank anymore. We want to be a brand. And we want to recruit people who are very good at marketing to come and help us grow our business. And we are starting a credit cards business in Dubai for the GCC countries, Gulf Cooperation Council countries. And they said, would you want to come and start up the whole thing? So I said, I don't know anything about credit cards. I never had one. I didn't have a clue. And I was not considering myself as a financial guy. I was quantitatively savvy, but finance wise, I never considered it to be my forte. So I said, it probably doesn't make much sense. They said, look, the good thing is it's an international post. Dubai has no taxes, and the amount that we give you actually roughly works out to 10 times of what I was making in India.
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A
I mean, that's a pretty compelling pitch. It sounds like, to me, Raj, that's
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B
the end of all argument. And they said, money wins. In this case, I picked up, packed my bags and moved. It was as simple as that.
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A
Yeah. I was going to say money doesn't always win and it's not the only factor and it's not the most important thing. But also 10 times, yeah, yeah. How do I move to Dubai? Is the next question you ask Google.
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B
Exactly. And I did exactly that.
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A
How did you enjoy your time there, in Dubai?
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B
In Dubai, it was pretty fascinating. You know, it was culturally very strange to me because India is a secular country and Dubai at that time recognized itself as an Islamic country. And they used to have a lot of cultural norms, particularly around the festival of Ramadan. Everyone is fasting and I could not sort of hold my hunger and I need to eat. So how do I do it in a way that I don't offend any local people, yet I'm also understanding and empathetic to what they're going through and so on. It was a beautiful cultural training for me for all these years that I was there, how long. And one of the examples, I'll give you to something which was a steep learning for me at a professional level as well. So we launched, at the time, Citibank launched a global campaign called Where Money Lives. When you translate it to Arabic, it doesn't make sense. So we translated it roughly to Where Money is brought to Life. So I thought, that's fantastic, it's working very well. So I went and launched it and then I got calls saying that you cannot have this campaign going because only God is allowed to bring things to life. Who the hell is Citibank? I said, my God, I didn't ever think in a thousand years that this could be the kind of direction that it could go to. It was one of the best lessons in my life of trying to understand the cultural nuances. First and foremost, you have to respect every community that you are in. And then how do you then make sure that your campaigns and your company is very effective in that culture, because you're playing in that culture. So that was what I have done. But it was a phenomenal stint there. I learned a lot of things there, traveled quite a bit. It was a new industry. I established market leadership. And I was there for seven years in Dubai and I became the regional head of the global consumer bank, so to speak. And then from there, Citibank transferred me to London. And that was a very different set of experiences too.
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A
Yeah, geez. I mean, those are like from India to Dubai to London, the seemingly three wildly different cultures to be ingratiated. What did you think the difference was, especially coming to London from Dubai, in terms of how you marketed to the customers?
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B
So it was the first time for me getting exposed to Western culture full time.
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A
Yeah.
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B
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 and L profit and loss, the entire businesses 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. Culturally, they were absolutely the ones that you needed to be aware of because marketing always operates in culture. And unless you understand that deeply, you will not be able to succeed in that place. And you can sort of backfire. Things can backfire. So when I looked at, for example, in London, one of the things I found out is the level of competition there was so brutal. Unbelievably, the competition was there in other markets too. It was there in India. It was there. But the nature of the competition is very, very different. It's much more scientific, it's much more data driven, much more digital. Whereas in India as well as in Dubai in those days, it was much more on creative positioning. It was much more dependent on the distribution strength that you had as a company. And so that was one part of it. Second, the work ethics were very different. So if you look at somebody like, in place like India, we used to take it for granted that you don't go home till things get done. And there were multiple nights I was just camping at office and then I was doing, I'll barely get one hour, two hours of sleep and keep powering it through. In London, I found there was a much better respect for work, life, balance. And I had to respect and I was respected too, saying, hey, you got a home, you got a family, you got to go away, be there. Life is not all unidimensional in terms of work. That was a huge change, actually, which I have found in terms of how different they were. The third thing is in places particularly that are oriental, Middle Eastern as well as in India, people look up to you if you are a boss, if they disagree with you, they rarely surface it, they don't show it, and you can literally get away to some extent. At least this is how it was 20, 30 years back. You could get away by ordering people around and they will do it. They may not like it, but they will do it. So managing was very different there. When you came to London, for example, management had to be completely. Your style had to be adapted. People will openly disagree with you, they speak their mind out, and initially they say, wow, I didn't expect this. But then very quickly you realize, yeah, I think it's a completely different kind of. They are trained to express themselves. They're trained to be assertive and confident. It's not about always deference to the hierarchy, but actually you stand your ground and you do what is right. And I thought that was a phenomenal change. And even within Western markets, whether it is European to Spain, Spain was much more oriental in its nature, just like Greece was. Whereas if you look at Germany, France, France was a little different. Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, uk, these were all very, very similar, the Nordic countries, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and all. So you could actually see how culturally you could sort of stratify people into different buckets and say, this is how these people go. This is how these people go without over stereotyping and overgeneralization. Yeah. But there were a lot of commonalities. It was pretty fascinating.
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A
How do you, how do you adjust as a leader in those contexts? Like, how quick are you? Are you like, trying to hire some sort of a leadership consultant or coach to be like, hey, I've usually done it. Like, this doesn't seem to work over here. How do you compartmentalize when you're looking at, okay, well, you're leading all of Europe. And like you said, there's multiple. There's multiple different learning styles and management styles and leadership styles that work across the European countries that are all directly within your purview. How do you deal with that as a leader?
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B
What worked for me the best is to be absolutely open, transparent with your team members. Tell them, I'm new to this place. I don't fully understand your norms, your etiquette, your approach, your management style, how you're used to actually. So help me understand and go there with a level of humility that you are there to learn and open yourself. Say that, hey, I need to learn. I'm not all knowing, not omniscient. You just have to teach me. They respect you for that. They start really building bonds with you. They are going out of their way to help you. People are very helpful across the board. I have seen in every single country, if you approach them genuinely, they're really willing to help you. And you talked about hiring consultants. Actually, no. Your team is your best consultant because they're living that reality every day. And they tell you everything in the context of your job, in the context of your daily working. And they would say that. They say, for example, very early on, when I was there in Europe, this Raja, you work like an animal, you know, but the key thing is, I think that is very unidimensional. You need to have a balance in life. This is my team telling me individually, I said, yeah, you know what? You guys are right. And actually, it was quite a reset for me once I went to London of how I carried about myself. And that doesn't in any way cut your productivity or output. The key thing, the more balanced you are in life, the better the output is, the happier the team is. And everyone is passionate. It doesn't mean if you have a work life balance, you're no longer passionate about your work. You can be passionate and you can be passionate about your family and spend time there too. So that's how it was. It was pretty valuable to me as lessons in my Life.
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A
Where did MasterCard come along in all of this?
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B
So Citibank brought me to New York and I came in 2001 and I was there for a few years till the financial crisis happened. And when the financial crisis happened in 2008, the markets went south and Citibank stock became a penny stock at that time.
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A
A penny stock?
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B
No, I didn't realize that 84 cents was the lowest it went to wow. My stock options and equity was all assigned when the stock price was well above 50, well, about 40. And I was one of those guys. And here's a lesson I would tell anyone who is willing to listen. I say you have a concentration risk. Your employment is with one company. Your investments are also in the same company. You need to diversify. I was one of those guys who did not exercise a single option. I did not sell because I was so passionately committed to my company.
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A
Yeah, sure, sure.
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But in the process, I did not diversify my investments at all. And when the company came, at that time, Citibank was the world's number one financial institution. It could happen to them. They came all the way from 56, $57 to 84 cents, and they didn't have the stomach to say, let me cut losses and get out. In terms of the stocks, the belief is always, the company is so good, at some point it'll come back. Maybe it's hit the bottom. Let me wait for a little while. It'll come up. No, it just kept going down, down, down. So at that time, I was very fortunate that Heidi Cant Struggles approached me for a role in Humana, which is a health insurance company out of Louisville, Kentucky. So I went there because I thought and I had to rebuild myself financially to some extent. I went there and after three years, my ex boss at Citibank became the CEO of MasterCard. So he says, raja, come back over here. So that's why I came back to MasterCard. And I've been there as a CMO for more than 12 years.
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A
That's real quick. Before I ask more about your career, there's on the, the, the, the, the part that you were just saying about your, the financial decision. How do you frame regret when it comes to those types of decisions? Because the opposite could so have easily been the case. It could have so have easily gone the other direction. Where you were like, hey, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna sell a bunch of my stock options here. I'm gonna liquidate this. I'm gonna put it in these other assets. And then Citibank could have 5 xed. And then you would have been sitting there scratching your head like, I wish I would have just kept it all in the company, that I believed it. You know what I'm saying? Like, there's always, there's always that possibility. How do you view those financial or those investment decisions from a perspective of, I just got to do the best that I can with the information that I have and Then be okay with whatever happened.
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B
Yeah, I think it is very prudent first and foremost to diversify. Now look at anybody's situation. If your salary and day to day living is dependent on what the company is paying you, and if your investments and wealth is also in the same company, you are putting yourself very much in harm's way. You might be the best of the best companies. Every company has a cycle. Sometime it'll come down, sometime it'll go up. You don't know how long the cycle is, whether it'll outlive you or it'll be. You'll be actually able to luck it out. But as I said, luck is not strategy and hope is not strategy. So you have to diversify. My philosophy after that burning my finger so badly is don't put all eggs in one basket. If your employment is coming from there, great. Hold on to the stocks and options that you are mandatorily required to keep the rest of them diversify into other unrelated segments so that if whole segment itself drops, your money is spread across, your savings are spread across multiple indust. So it's pretty good. Or if you are very conservative, okay, go and put in muni bonds or Treasuries or whatever so that at least you are protecting the value of your wealth from eroding whether you get growth or not.
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A
Are you more of a index fund guy or are you more of an individual stock guy?
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I do three things. I do option trading, okay. I do index and I also make bonds and bonds.
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A
Okay, so you got kind of like super low risk, somewhat low risk and higher risk.
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B
So this is a brilliant piece of advice that I received in terms of how to manage money. So as it's split into three buckets, bucket number one, your pension bucket. Your pension bucket is where you have got income coming from investment. The capital won't erode. You are capital guaranteed. That's what muni bonds are. So X percentage of your money is in muni bonds. Then you go to the second bucket. The second bucket is your growth bucket. Growth bucket is, I put it in S&P 500 or whatever is the index that you believe that's going to actually do well. And historically S&P 500 has been one of the best performing ones and it has outperformed so many financial companies, financial advisors, big time. So you can also put it in S&P 500 intel. It'll keep growing, it'll go through ups and downs. But overall the trajectory, if you're looking for a long term growth, it is the even medium term growth, I think it is there. So that's the second bucket. Then the third bucket is the speculative bucket. Speculative bucket is probably less than 5% or 10% of your total portfolio where you speculate. Now in my case I have learned options trading and I enjoy it because I study the company and I try to prognosticate or predict, oh, is it going to go up, is it going to go down? Should I am in a buy position or a sell position or a call or a put, am I going to go to. I don't go to the extremes of naked calls and all that. That's a little. I burnt my hands a couple of times. So I said, okay, where the risk is infinite, stay away from it like the plague. That's what I do. So now I actually do very controlled kind of options trading and the returns are fairly decent for most of the times. And of course when suddenly a war breaks or something happens, things might actually go upside down. But in the medium term, long term, things really work out well. That also gives me a lot of intellectual satisfaction and that itch to speculate is taken care of in a very contained bucket. So you attend to that itch. Okay. This is your play money or your speculative money and then you got your growth pool and then you have got your pension pool. So this is how I look at the thing and this is an advice I received from one of the financial companies chief investment officers. So probably this is how you should look at it. And that's been. It gives you peace of mind. On the one hand, it gives you a level of certainty. There is nothing like 100% certain, but a higher level of confidence and certainty. Plus also as I said, most importantly, when you are even a little educated in finance and you want to play, but don't play with your whole home, don't pet your farm just a small portion. It gives you tremendous satisfaction and even if you lose, you have. Okay, fine, I lost only very little amount of money. I haven't lost my shirt.
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A
Right? That's casino money.
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B
Yes, exactly. Yeah.
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A
Raja, how have you found your time now at MasterCard? You've been there for 12 years, the CMO. 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.
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B
Yeah. So there have been a bunch of initiatives which all come out of one bucket called Quantum Marketing. And this is going to be the future. I have written a book on it and it got published, became a Wall Street Journal bestseller, published in 14 languages, won a number of awards, and it's being taught in more than 300 universities around the world. The problem with marketing is most of the theories and frameworks of marketing were all formulated more than six or seven decades ago when there was no Internet, there was no data sciences, there was no artificial intelligence, no mobile, no social. So I started challenging myself and saying, when the world has transformed so much, should marketing be reinvented? And that's exactly what I have experimented all these years at MasterCard. So we eat our own dog food, so to speak, and then validated the hypothesis and then came up with this entire framework called quantum marketing, which has got, for example, things like, how do you create multisensory engagement of consumers? Or how do you actually do neuromarketing? Getting into neurology of people to understand their behavior and predict their behavior to be successful, how do you use or how do you tap into the science of behavioral economics or the science of color psychology? There are so many areas which are all, relatively speaking, not only actually, they're cutting edge. And how do you deploy AI? So this is what I have actually put together. And this, I think, is what my biggest accomplishment is in my career, coming up with this and defining this whole field of quantum marketing and putting it in a framework that is actionable. And in fact, yesterday morning I was pretty. I was amused. One of my acquaintances, I would say, he has said that he wanted to learn marketing and went into Claude and says, I want to learn the best and the latest and the greatest in marketing. What do I do? They said, your first quote of calling is read this book by Raja Razumannar, who is a Senior Fellow of MasterCard, et cetera, et cetera. So he sent it to me. It's. Other than the kick that you get out of it, I think it's very gratifying that you are defining a new field altogether. And not many people have the opportunity in their lives to do that. And I have had that. And I'm just beginning to really evangelize it. And that's the reason why I joined both Harvard Business School and Yale School simultaneously to actually work with the professors to see how quantum marketing can be codified into the MBA programs and students can be taught about it.
- [25:06]
A
Raja Raj Minar, I appreciate you taking the time to come on the show, man. Quantum marketing is the book Mastering the new marketing mindset for tomorrow's consumers. If you are in business, you're in marketing. You want to evangelize the world to the message that you have you owe it to yourself to go pick up a copy of Quantum Marketing and learn how to market in this new world world. So, Raj, I appreciate you taking the time to come on the show. I know you're a really busy guy. Do not take that for granted. Everybody else that's tuning in, remember, money only solves your money problems. But it's a little bit easier to solve the rest of your problems with money in the bank. So let's solve that one first here on the Travis Makes Money podcast. Thanks for tuning in. Catch you guys next time. Peace.