Raja Rajamannar
101 Great Minds on Music Brands and Behavior
Raja Rajamannar, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, Mastercard
Raja Rajamannar is the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer of Mastercard and the President of its Healthcare division. Internationally recognized as a master innovative transformer, Mr. Rajamannar has received some of the world’s most prestigious awards. Among them, the WFA Global Marketer of the Year, the Forbes Top 5 World’s Most Influential CMOs, Billboard’s Top Branding Power Player, and the CMO Club Hall of Fame. In addition to that, Raja is also part of the board of PPL Corp (NYSE: PPL) and various non-profit boards, including Bon Secours Mercy Health, New York City Ballet, Cintrifuse, ANA, and the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA).
“It’s important to pick the right partners who understand music and the brand at the same time. If they have the resources, the right attitude, and the innovation, then you’re in good shape.”
— RAJA RAJAMANNAR, CHIEF MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER, MASTERCARD
Reese: Why is sound growing in such importance in the digital age?
Rajamannar: The ability for marketers to communicate with consumers has exponentially increased because people are now consuming content through multiple devices. With the advent of smart speakers, the Internet of Things, wearables and podcasts, consumers are interacting through the medium of sound. So, when you say, “Hey Siri” or “Hey Alexa”, and tell the device what to do, the brand has no choice but to show up in that environment. Therefore, sound is an extremely important development, and it’s vitally critical for clients to recognize that.
Reese: Looking at Mastercard’s sonic identity today, it looks like a perfectly executed plan with a clear strategy. Can you pull back the curtain and take us on the journey that brought you here?
Rajamannar: When we looked at developing a sonic brand for Mastercard, we thought we could take the playbook from other brands and adapt them for Mastercard. But when we did a complete environmental scan, we found that they didn’t have a comprehensive sonic architecture. They had brilliant visual brand architecture but nothing for sonic. There were some random efforts, for example, Intel, who had the mnemonic at the end of the ads, but there wasn’t anyone we could see who’d done it end to end, so we literally created our own playbook from scratch.
Reese: Can you talk us through those steps?
Rajamannar: Firstly, we figured out what the architecture could look like, so we worked with various specialists in different fields, people from neurology, musicology, musicians and voice artists, trying to find out what makes a person resonate with the right kind of vertical sound. It was a science, and based on that, we created a ten-layer architecture. The first layer was about finding a melody for the brand, which would be at the heart of everything else. This is the foundation on which the rest of the brand architecture stacks. The melody had to be pleasant, neutral and not dominant. In addition, because Mastercard is present in 110 countries around the world, it had to be memorable, ‘hummable’ and adaptable to different genres, cultures and continents. It took us nearly two years. The second layer was a subset of this 30-second melody which was three seconds long. This melody ends all our ads and is our sonic signature. Then the third layer is the acceptance sound, which is a further subset of the sonic signature and is 1.3 seconds long. This is played every time a Mastercard transaction goes through successfully, at the point of sale or in the consumer’s own home on their digital devices. We then expanded these three layers significantly. For example, we created vertical ringtones for people to download to their phones, we used the melody across our restaurants, advertisements, videos, sponsorship events and company events and so on. We adapted it to different styles, languages and different parts of the world. We now have a rich repository of more than 200 different versions, and it’s growing fast. The third, the acceptance sound, has already been embedded into 84 million points of interaction. It’s scaling upwards in an unprecedented fashion. We’ve also launched a song called ‘Merry Go Round’ and created an album which will be launched later this year. It has this beautiful infusion of the Mastercard melody into it without being overly obvious. The idea was to create awareness for the Mastercard melody around the world. We’ve also created a centralised sonic DNA, which is being sent around the world as a guideline for local markets.
Reese: How is the sonic DNA for Mastercard distributed globally?
Rajamannar: We have a library that’s been created with a very robust architecture. So if I’m sitting in India and I’m looking at a particular programme, genre or event such as a football match, I can type in what I’m looking for. If it’s already been created or is close to my requirement, it can give me some options so that I can adapt it instead of creating something from zero. This central depository is accessible around the world.
Reese: What do you do to ensure the cultural adaptability of the assets?
Rajamannar: Anything produced has to be cleared by a panel of people. Some of them are regional, some of them are global, and they will look to see if it is compliant or not with our guidelines.
Reese: Have you any advice for your fellow CMOs who may be following in your footsteps sonically?
Rajamannar: It’s important to pick the right partners who understand music and the brand at the same time. These people should have the resources, the right attitude, and the innovation. If they have all these, then you’re in good shape.
Reese: What guided you to become a trailblazer in terms of creating a sonic DNA for a brand?
Rajamannar: Three things: Number one is that I started looking at the visual brand identity and asked what the equivalent of that in the world of sound is. I then tried to create something around that and incorporate it into my architecture. It helps that I’ve got a small amount of training in classical music from India. That led to the ten different layers, and so far, we have three layers, and the fourth one, the infusion of the sonic melody into the music, is coming now. So, a lot of it was because of a little bit of classical musical training, then looking at examples of how things are done in the visual world and trying to project them into the world of sound. The third is a lot of trial and error; so, talking to experts, musicians, musicologists, artists, composers, which is the most important thing.
“It’s important to pick the right partners who understand music and the brand at the same time. These people should have the resources, the right attitude, and the innovation. If they have all these, then you’re in good shape.”
Reese: And what would your advice be in terms of finding the voice for a brand?
Rajamannar: You must be careful. Some voices are timeless, and others may seem old fashioned. Voice will play a very important role, particularly with voiceovers, but there could be an advertisement with a voiceover that doesn't quite have the same potential everywhere. Voice has a role, but it’s more limited than music.
Reese: Looking at your end-to-end customer experience, what have been your biggest challenges in terms of sonic?
Rajamannar: The first from a challenge point of view is that today’s consumers haven’t heard of too many sonic brand identities. Relatively speaking, it’s a new space. But when brands start rushing it out, it will be a cacophony. Too many brands will be making too many noises and sounds, and consumers may simply turn off. Additionally, with visual, you have the opportunity to put the brand on twenty posters, but in sonic, you can only process one song from a brand at a time. So, when all the brands are shouting together, how will the consumers handle it? It’s going to be a challenge. From a consumer’s point of view, brands will have to be conscious of the fatigue factor. It’s a possibility that as new devices come onto the marketplace, and if consumers express this fatigue, device manufacturers might not even make a provision to get brands into that space.
Reese: Can you sum up what you would say to CMOs who want to ensure their sonic branding is futureproof?
Rajamannar: Firstly, music is timeless, and because music is timeless, it’ll have an appeal forever. What you’re doing in music is essentially creating a series of frequencies that resonate with the mind and heart. The key to that is that it can be in or out of style, depending on the genre of music. For example, if you’d have played rap fifty years ago, it wouldn’t have fitted into context at all. But you won’t succeed if you try to play for the future. What’s required is to have a melody that’s adaptable and a sonic brand that can evolve with the culture and context. It must have adaptability. That’s how you future-proof it.
Note: The interview took place in Purchase on the 13th of April 2020.
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