Featured Session: Why Saying Yes to the Unthinkable Works

Unknown Speaker 0:08 But what I do is qualify, is to give you some interesting examples of what I have experienced in my own career. I say yes to the real unthinkable, to the really impossible, to something which is very common thought happens as businesses, Unknown Speaker 0:36 as individuals, as marketers, we fall into the comfort. So human Unknown Speaker 0:54 beings are hardwired to avoid pain and to see pleasure interesting. The pain award is much stronger motivation for us to not do things or to run away from things, and even if there is a reward which intervenes your pleasure at the end of the journey, still people can like taking those students or making those decisions which are so Contreras to whatever we have seen till now as working? So something is working. We always say, why if something is not broken? Unknown Speaker 1:42 So we said. And probably the biggest problem with marketers and Unknown Speaker 1:52 with business as well. What happens is very low change. Now, if you see the amount of change that's happening, the true concept of exponential change is what we are witnessing at an unbelievable pace. Over the last, I would say, three and a half decades, everything has changed absolutely dramatically. However, marketers were very slow for change in slow for change, good or not even today, in my capacity, recently as the president of the World Federation of Advertisers, and also India executive committee and board member of the ENA, I have the infraction of, I have the privilege of, in fact, you look at years for the cost of the at peers from across different industries, and when you talk to them, sometimes like flinch, see that these folks are practicing theories and frameworks that were formulated more than Unknown Speaker 3:01 six and when they form, hypotheses and colonized to the practice of poverty. There Unknown Speaker 3:11 was no social media. There was no implementation of data analytics the context of business communities today, there was no microphones. There social media and there was absolutely no artificial intelligence. The question is, when so much is changing? When internet comes, social media comes, so vine comes about, your artificial intelligence, augmented media, all Unknown Speaker 3:43 these are coming if we don't change customer. The risk of irrelevant. Irrelevance is so huge, but it is manifesting now we know that many Unknown Speaker 3:57 companies have other way with the roles of CMOS, which is scary. Many companies, Unknown Speaker 4:08 many companies, have pushed marketing to be a lower order function that reports into somebody else. When I graduated from MBA, 1000 years back, at the time Martin, he was the most desirable profession, had a specific novelist, exciting action filled and you can really bring about doing things that they are conceptualizing the visualization of you, creating tablets, launching products. It was so exciting. It was very nervous in those days and all the valedictorians, the best performers and MBA classes, they used to do marketing, but today now, marketing is a profession which is ranking slightly above nursing and accounting. This was this study was just and students were going in, they are actually going to disappoint them. Look, I just value comparing marketing to accounting and nursing. I have nothing against those professions, but as a career marketer, it's my heart. I said no, and we have not adapted. Adapted as a result. Not adapted. Adapted. As a result, we started getting the bad practices, practices, deceptive marketing, receiving consumers and putting things like terms and conditions so fine, so small, that you or you're taking for granted by the consumers. You have to resort to all these if you don't keep up with the developments and stay and as a marketer, I get a grief for my wife all the time. Say, you market yourself cheats. You can be silly, because she was all the time. Now back to the point you Contreras all the time. Now, back to the point. The thing is, if you don't adapt, you become obsolete. Also, there is a whole sea of sameness. What this company does and this campaign looks like is exactly the same as this company is campaign and so on. You so on. It's a sea of sameness such that nothing stays in your mind. Everything is so not memorable. And it is in this sea of sameness that you would want to break out, to stand out, because sea of Sears is a sea of sinus is an opportunity for partners, for businesses, to break all the span ahead of the game, because everybody else is trying to look like everyone else. So you stand with a relevant way to differentiated fashion to the consumers you take now I'll just take a little example, way back right in 1997 marked with MasterCard. At that time, I used to work for cigarette and I was looking at the credit cards business. I spoke for MasterCard. It said that, look, it showed a farmer and a son, 11 year old son, and they were actually pretty, beautiful form, and it's a price of ticket for the match of an Indian sort of price of soda, $2 price of autograph for $40 Unknown Speaker 7:41 times. But the time spent with your valuable son passes. Unknown Speaker 7:47 There are certain things in life that money has everything else Unknown Speaker 7:57 and really, really an instant success across countries, across countries. Unknown Speaker 8:11 And I spoke at the time with the CEO of marketing of MasterCard. Unknown Speaker 8:18 I said, Tell me about it. So what people are fascinated? Me that this campaign, Unknown Speaker 8:24 which was created by my candidate as a part of the pitch days, which they were going through an RFP at the time, they have come up with multiple concepts, and this concept actually, they can't go well in market research, your traditional approach is something is very poorly in market research, you depend on marketing, such as the very mind, if there's not working, Unknown Speaker 9:02 Mark, market is saying this, but my God says something. Unknown Speaker 9:15 Because last 30 at one MasterCard. And so I inherited this fantastic campaign, and I said, Bob is great. So let me look at the results as to how well this campaign is doing. And when I looked at the campaign, what it was, quantitative, business. Business was zero. It was such a holy grail that you don't question an iconic campaign because you look like an idiot, because the whole world celebrates this campaign, and you come along and say all this campus, you Unknown Speaker 10:04 but here is Okay, let's try and figure out why is it not working, and it's fascinating. What we're telling in this campaign is there are things in your life that are most precious. Without the crisis, you focus on that, and MasterCard will focus around using MasterCard will focus on uselessness. For everything priceless, there is something but for kids other than priceless. MasterCard. So I said so we are actually, instead of associating the answers with priceless, we are associating ourselves with users, and that's what normally get, was the initial novelty and the differentiation. Worked for a while to grab attention, to get people engaged, and people were having all kinds of fun with them. They were creating means. They were creating videos. And sometimes when I see those videos which have been created, some after that, really well, it shows that people have embraced that campaign, become a part of the culture, and everyone started using it everywhere else. So it was doing well for the culture, but it was not doing well for the man. Unknown Speaker 11:16 So this is a belief because the recognition of crisis was so Unknown Speaker 11:28 strong. So what it said is, instead of talking about crisis, how about putting MasterCard in a position where we create crisis, we create experience. Cannot buy, but you can get them only through MasterCard. Now this is a quite a radical decision in the context of a company and the context at that time that was created, he was dead. This is such a funny thing, and we are passionate and coming up with some new family constantly we moved MasterCard, traditionally associated with priceless, to create priceless platforms, priceless.com priceless Unknown Speaker 12:26 cars, which being a section boost, you could see how things were turned on, Unknown Speaker 12:35 Fernando and suddenly how to listen. And the point is, again, to not take things for granted just because something is perceived to be fake, don't stop that you have the courage and information to move forward, because if you want Unknown Speaker 13:02 to play hard now as was waiting for this exercise, I started doing one more, which is the same, is marketing here working, is analyzing even working. And one of the things when I looked at my marketing strength and I said, advise me. And advertising is truly working behind attribution, models, marketing, all these things we had the same PCP that's really advertising is not Unknown Speaker 13:39 making a kind of difference. What do you study about start pulling back Adidas and repeat then and now, I will use my advertising budget for the company, and it hasn't done anything to it hasn't done anything, on the other hand, creating experiences and created Stories that consumers cherish and take them in their social media. On average, at that time, I was told that an individual gets exposed to any maybe 3010 1000 pounds every single day. It's still available as a privilege to have interest on the ads that people are supposed to maybe defend pasta, and I was concerned with the number of ads around there, but how little people even notice they don't even notice goes past you, or you go past them. You see those hands, and if there are so many ants coming at you on the one hand and on the other hand, something profound was happening, where the span of fluidization is shrinking like crazy, and it is now estimated to be under eight seconds, which is just how you stand out of that. Stand out from that Father, your story or your message, make you believe that they could be motivated to take an action in fear of your practice of all order and therefore the efficiency and effectiveness of ads as far as and the other species do you can discuss, certainly as a division, I hate business. It's ironical that I'm a marketer. I absolutely hate hands, because these hands are nothing but an introduction to my wonderful experience. Otherwise, as an example, when I'm looking at YouTube, Unknown Speaker 16:29 and watching you Some videos because and I'm sure the stupid Care Fund, you wait for five seconds From the skipper because as long as Unknown Speaker 17:02 you forgot about marketers wet about providing consumers with seamless, frictionless, delightful experience. I as a consumer was having a seamless, frictionless, delightful experience. Then you, the marketer, came in the mess. You introduced questionable experience. What kind of marketing Unknown Speaker 17:21 is laziness. You cannot take consumers for granted. And in this case, I was horrified that not only am I being put through this whole problem now, Lucia comes and says, after a few years, oh, we're not sure you Why's the first time you have to suffer. You cannot skip it. You may you just go through and after the first one is for the second one. And if you don't want to pay for it, by the way, or if you want more space, you better pay for that prices. So this is called black baby. Unknown Speaker 18:00 So this is called Blackberry, if you want to Unknown Speaker 18:13 surprise, I people have started going into 90 that's the latest number that we have actually done a sort of analysis on. There were close to 800 people to help with ad blockers. But you just don't see those ads at all on the one hand and on the other hand, what I can also see interestingly is people going to ad free content like Netflix. And these are like hundreds of millions of people with the Netflix and all the premium channels, so to speak, which are ad free content. So if I'm having non span of consumer attention, consumers feel that advertisements are an interruption of experience, and there are so many people, 10,000 parents, coming at you. Is that the right strategy? And that's what led our advertising space so dramatically. What we really need to do now, and that's what I try to do that time, is just question everything because it's comfortable to stay in your zone of comfort and just keep going with the flow. But if you're going with the flow, you remain potentially. You want to break out, you want to break you want to be ahead. And that's exactly what we should do, and we have been trying to do, and I looked at every single area, starting from basic consumer insights. Are we doing consumer insights correctly? How are we doing market research? How are doing consumer service focus group discussions? And I am convinced that we are doing it. Of a job, people make decisions subconsciously. Almost all of market research is focused on the conscious responses of consumers, and consumers give you answers, which they think of the correct answers, or they just simply don't know the answers, so they just tell you not enough. They are not psychoanalysts. They are not psychologists. They don't know if they're subconscious. It's fascinating. Conscious decisions are not driven by logic. Purchase. Decisions are driven by feelings and emotions, and the decision itself happens subconsciously and for long term awareness, and that is and should be completely missing. And we have computer technologies available, like talking of consumers, brain active and feeling it out. And you have somebody buying it at scale, market research, if you have how many of you are, how many of you are from marketing, the Unknown Speaker 21:16 correlation between what market research is predicting and what the actual outcome in the market is better to fill Unknown Speaker 21:24 the coin you have double the effectiveness of your market research is astounding, how poor the market is. Unknown Speaker 21:38 Conceptually, is wrong? Executional, right? Institutionally, we talked about advertising. I talked about one more yit programs. How many of you do IoT programs? I have read an article long back in bbc.com I it said that they have done a survey amongst people who are in a marriage or in a living relationship, and they have asked a question which is a little awkward, so how many of you have cheated on your partner? Any Unknown Speaker 22:26 area, what the percentage was? 50% okay, okay, Unknown Speaker 22:42 yes. It was actually 70% of the people said that cheated on their spouses or their partners, Unknown Speaker 22:56 bragging garbage out? I commissioned my own research in crisis like this, Unknown Speaker 23:09 and sometimes, when you guys are interested, I tell you how it has been done and how we got to the truth. This was a different form of Unknown Speaker 23:20 market research, but we don't sue from people. I think from people Unknown Speaker 23:28 and figure out what they're after the numbers within the range. So it's okay. I had talked to a bunch of people as well, and people who are specialists, they also had and in addition to 70% a further 15% have said that if they are sure they will not get caught, they don't mind you. They don't mind spread. So I'm not here for breaking any volunteers. The point is, if 85% of the people they are aware of the fact that they made a commitment, that an explicit commitment in the marriage, or an implicit commitment in a relationship, and they are aware of the consequences of being caught, which means there is reputation goes over the toilet, or this financial damage, or there is emotional hurt to the people they generally care about. So the way, the commitment, the remain of the consequence, but still, 85% of the people are not hardwired Fernando. This is fascinating. And if 85% of people are not hardwired Fernando, now we come as a brand. I said, I will give you one point for every dollar you spend. And how shall be loyal to me? How smart is it, right? And I was looking at how my commercial relationships are with different brands, and I'm going to pronounce it. If you look at airlines, American Airlines, Delta united and you have Everest airlines, because it's best for being in protest. Every single protesting membership of our political party, say, same thing with the grossness for ourselves about Amazon Prime, I got Costco and then I bought code. So who am I going to I'm not what we think is loyalty is actually something completely different, and the reasons why consumers are sticking with this loyalty programs is not for loyalty. They are seeking a value that is actually a part of the bond pricing equation, the value equation that the person has got. What am I getting if I do this? It's not loyal. But we pretend that it is loyalty, and we keep going in that direction, which is such a policy you need to have space. I understand as a marketer, as a company, I want people to stick with a brand and keep looking for chess, even I want them to be with me, because cost of renewing an existing member is much less such than the cost of a product of a new consumer. We are following the wrong strategy. You need preference management of the consumers at the point of their decision making, as opposed to running this widely programs in a standard way you need to rethink so every single area, advertising, market, research, pricing, the finance, purchase, everything reading. And that is what I call as quantummatically Different subject of my book, which I have published in 2021 which became a Wall Street Journal, best self, and it has since been published in 14 languages. And being part enough at more than 300 universities around the world. One of the biggest things that we have to look at as businesses is that consumers are not logical. They are not rational. Consumers are driven by emotions and feelings. Emotions and feelings need a very, very different approach than what it means to you. Logically. If you have to connect with emotions, you have to be thinking in a very different frame of mind and very different approach to connect with the Contreras and bond with them in a very emotional way. In fact, Rory Sutherland has written in his book, which I really love, the code. So he said marketing is not about logic, it is about logic. And the professor of behavioral economics said, yeah, he says that consumers are not logical, they are psychological. What we are saying is exactly the correct thing, which is that we need to look at them in a different way, and thinking as a process is fascinating, and what we need to do is to make those and I'll give you some tangible examples from MasterCard that I've seen at my state with the company, and then we'll just have some fun. So I'll give you the first example of what I asked about. So one fine day, I went to my CEO and I said, Let's drop our name from our visual logo. I visual logo technique is like, what did he have for breakfast today? Right? It is unthinkable, because we as a brand are so well known, so universal, we got 3.6 billion consumers around the world who have a MasterCard card and and it's working perfectly, by the way. They want to change the name just for the sake of creating work and relevance Unknown Speaker 29:12 from the logo. Now, the logic was very simple. The logic is Unknown Speaker 29:18 that the MasterCard brand logo, it had those two circles, interlocking circles, the master Contreras and you had one red one yellow circle. Consumer said, I recognize the brand, but it's a worrying brand. It's an obsolete brand. It's a higher brand. It's not allergic youthful, it's not upscale, it is not aspirational. So, so Unknown Speaker 30:00 the brand of the identity Unknown Speaker 30:05 of the brand, but that recognition has to be doing something for the brand, as opposed to just being recognition. So we changed during so much of research in the color psychology shapes number two, words actually go to the logical context, whereas visuals go through. And when you have the word and the visual way together, there's a confusion. Unknown Speaker 30:41 So it becomes a wall. So therefore, as I drop the damn name and just have to visual the different vibrant red and yellow knowledge over that, and also perform the design esthetics, Romans have their architecture. So we changed the extent of overlapping with the two circles to the golden airship, and we launched it today. 84% of people around the world have proper appreciation for recognition of MasterCard as a brand, but from being the 87th most valuable brand all these years now, we are the 12th most valuable brand in the world, and for the last seven years, we have been one of the top 20 fastest winning brands in the world, and with positive associations. Now it's a accessible luxury. Is everything's very aspirational. It's also very modern, very contemporary, all kinds of this difference. But the point is that they are actually sending subtle messages to your heart and creating the right emotional context and the right aspirational context. Just I'll play a video or take to Unknown Speaker 32:06 drop our name from the logo, trust everyone in the world to see these two interlocking circles and close the loop themselves. It was at first a leap, then we remembered, taking leaps is what we do. Welcome to the new brand expression of MasterCard. We didn't land here overnight. After decades of speaking in many voices to many audiences, we began a journey towards one voice, one vision, simplified and modernized for an increasingly connected, increasingly digital, increasingly visual world, standing for a company that stands at the very center of human progress, positioning us as an innovator and leader of a technology driven age, and symbolizing, as always, the power of our brand to connect people to the priceless possibilities in life. How many brands on Earth are universal enough, courageous enough to tell their story without signing their name? Yes, it's a leap, because leaps are the world moves forward. So this has actually changed again, of course, the business Unknown Speaker 33:38 of change and some psychological sphere talk, the key thing is to look at small devices. All of them are allocated Unknown Speaker 33:58 the same exact amount of square footage of square millimeters. Unknown Speaker 34:06 When I see the word MasterCard, I'm able to expand the size of my level. It looks disproportionate, so I edit it back. We increase it by 11% Unknown Speaker 34:20 but visually, optically. Plus, most of the favorite brands are actually blue in color. This brand is different. It stands out at what Contreras calls the moment of truth, at the moment when you're making the decision, using the product, buying the product, at that moment of truth, you show up bigger than your other force as a result of which, our momentum has been far stronger than every single one of our competitors as a brand, it is much smaller compared to my competitors, my bigger competitors, however, we are kicking everyone faster than anyone else, which is such a delight, and achieve them both. Now I'll give you another example. I get a call from this lady called Martha, who used to be in cooking for it at the time she was marketing that. And then she tells me, Raja, you want to buy an magazine? She said, it's not just a magazine. So I said, Are you trying to get me fire from the company? Why would you want to buy a photographic magazine? I buy a photographic magazine and Unknown Speaker 35:51 take a look at the video so it doesn't seem to have so what happened is, for about 27 years, there was this particular brand. It's called your beacon, which is a men's magazine, as they euphemistically call it, objectifying you. And it's not something which, if I have a father, I will never dare to show it on VC as a company of Unknown Speaker 36:21 kids. The idea that this lady had try this magazine and shut the magazine down. So we find a magazine often and shut it down, but we will do so in a beautiful way, where we depict women in the most respectful, elegant, fashionable, smart fashion. Smart fashion. And that could be the last issue housing Contreras, MasterCard buys this kind of medicine. Unknown Speaker 37:02 It's all fun. PR, hands. But I said, this girl, she has got an idea there, which is very edgy. Unknown Speaker 37:14 So we bought a magazine, and good and bad, and then the last ever issue was created. This issue was the single largest selling issue in the history of the of that particular magazine, and it has created so much of positivity amongst the 50% audience who are women, and even amongst very, very welcome, and the government has acquired, initiated and all that stuff, but this translated to clear business opportunities straight away into MasterCard being put on the platform to say, Okay, you seem to be committed and doing something about women and treating them respectfully of a country which is less Western going is still less Western, and Say, Yes, so there are traditional values and all the different that we really did something good, you will believe how much brand libraries from credit Unknown Speaker 38:35 cards. We are not a credit card company. There are famous technology, but we are associated with credit cards because we see our product and credit cards are one of the most hated product categories, only better than intelligence is the most hated category. So when we have this particular kind of a situation of a strong association with the most hated category among the most categories, getting into a possible territory was very important, and this initiative single handedly as smoothly in that country, and then we actually propagated the story to other countries, and we could see clear shut and today in Poland, we are one of the top 10 Most ranks. And I'll tell you, there's more to come now, I'll take you I'll give you a final sample. This is an initiative two years southwest office. Coincidentally, the Treasurer of MasterCard, who reports to the CFO, was also here at the time. So when I was going north, he said, Raja, actually, one of my family members is running How come you don't have it hard for blind people? Financial partners, makes a good sense. Accessibility is a lot of people still have to ensure and maybe all we should do is justice of having printed text have Braille card, as simple as that, topically, when we started researching this opportunity, we saw that less than of the people who are blind, so brain is so Contreras. When I was growing up, my grandmother used to live with us, and she was blind. She became blind, and I would see how she would navigate for the whole home. It was really my friendship, and I used to have, I and my sister, we used to help around in the home and keep everything in a specific place so that she doesn't keep on doing things and so on. We cannot change anything. Something is very fast. I said, How does the person actually navigate when they're having to recovers? There are multiple parts. There are multiple funds. How do they discharge this one? How do they know where, what is the front of the car, in the back of the car? How they know that this is MasterCard, or computing the card? Unfortunately, there are more than a billion people. Actually the number was 2 billion, but more than a billion people got severely site impaired as well. They're not totally blind, but they're severely blind, severely site impaired. So the audience is huge. The need is real. How will they offer? And this is what we truly think. Good. Unknown Speaker 41:56 I was born legally blind for millions of visually impaired Unknown Speaker 42:03 can be a judge. Credit cards used to have raised numbers, and now they're unfortunately losing that tactileness. Which one is my Unknown Speaker 42:13 credit card? Now I have to get somebody else to go through my cards to pick out this one. Unknown Speaker 42:18 I've been in situations where all the store clerks are just standing in a circle waiting for me to figure out where my card is. Unknown Speaker 42:26 It can be exhausting, but what it does could be identified by touch. This Unknown Speaker 42:39 is wonderful, introducing touch card by MasterCard, three distinctly shaped notches help people tell the difference. Okay, we Unknown Speaker 42:54 have an end. That's here. It's like notches. All three of them have notches. Never been able to tell my clients apart. Unknown Speaker 43:02 Developed in partnership with IDEA visions and the Royal National Institute of blind Unknown Speaker 43:08 people, this touch card is going to change my whole approach, the way I shop. Little things like that go a long way as far as bringing Unknown Speaker 43:18 independence to a Unknown Speaker 43:19 blind person, inclusive by design and a step forward for the entire industry, because a world designed for all of us is priceless. Unknown Speaker 43:31 Just a Unknown Speaker 43:33 little notch is huge progress, Unknown Speaker 43:39 right? So fast, because Unknown Speaker 43:51 it's not just some of the comments that I have received so Unknown Speaker 44:00 there was one more example we have done. Unknown Speaker 44:20 Here we have done completely looking at our entire marketing strategy. We put everything on this, whether it is doing market research very differently, approaching products very differently, rethinking about entire loyalty aspect very differently, getting into experiential marketing, getting into multi sensory marketing, brand, everything has opened restaurants, 11 restaurants, two of The publishing style restaurants, and we are very scared to is giving accelerator. We hope you're the first branch to eSports and so on. So there's a task of that space happening and but constantly we take ourselves everything, and challenge you, question everything and get moving. If something feels comfortable, that's the zone, actually, that you should not be push yourself forward. So let me just pause there and ask you for some Qs. I'll just skip the next one because so the whole idea is that, in fact, one of the things we've been trying to do is to encourage both our people and company as well as at our agencies, to really come up with highly crazy ideas. And the key thing is, it's easy to really use someone who has a crazy idea and even high margins, also this guy's this person is often keeping his predict those final ideas and secondly, also bring about the discipline, that inspiration, which has come about is not just lifted, but has to translate to proper institutions that gives you commercial results. Otherwise, creativity and innovation. For the sake of creativity, for sake of marketing, has to drive the brand. It has to feel the business be a forceful declare for the business, and it has to build a very sustained competitive advantage. So that's what the whole approach is. Just go through and there? So the questions are, how you respond to a growing market of consumer of marketing tactics and actively avoid brands because of it? And that's a story of time, right? That's exactly what I've seen every single term you look at marketing has become a practice of deception. Nowhere was marketing meant to do it because we as marketers have become lazy and we as businesses have become greedy, simple, exactly, if you ever tell me, your develop, your download, your fitness. If you take a fitness app, can be ready to return. I actually ask you permission for looking at your banking data. Unknown Speaker 47:39 Just read this. You don't even have to read how you feed it, to chat GPT or ll or Unknown Speaker 47:46 cloud, and say, what are the things I should be concerned about in this particular terms and conditions. You will sit up and say, My heart, this is unbelievable. So what I would say is, as a brand, firstly, you have to realize that you don't have to achieve to succeed. You can be straightforward and be hugely successful and it is not safe. I can use any number of examples, not only MasterCard, but even at some of the companies that I admire, how resilient they are and how committed they are to be straight and get things done to the most straightforward time. Opposed to doing this anti factory transparency, restricting data, not collecting data, not being subject to data. Don't collect data that you can't protect. You have to really look at all of this. I'll just give you one anecdote. I had a minor surgery a few years back at the hospital, after five years, send an email from them saying that, Oh, we're really sorry we had a data page and your name was, your name, your social security, your data, your address, your mother's made a name, and your grandfather's This is ridiculous, right? Why did you need all the information to do the procedure? And number two, you have no business to write and keep my data if you don't have to protect it. And by the way, after the surgery was over, assuming we needed all the information, why do not parse the data we need to bring about these kinds of changes. And do Unknown Speaker 49:30 it, and that's what will be fun. But I think as a consumer, I really welcome that, and as a marketer trying to practice that absolutely Contreras, right? Transcribed by https://otter.ai