40 REAL-LEADERS.COM / SPRING 2022 MEET THE REAL LEADERS “LOYALTY MUST INSTEAD EVOLVE FROM AN ERA OF WINNING AND KEEPING CONSUMERS BY WINNING EACH INTERACTION.” blockchains, 3D printing, 5G, drones, autonomous driving vehicles, the Internet of Things, Bluetooth speakers, and wearables. All these things have the potential to disrupt people’s lives in good and bad ways in the very near future. As a business leader or brandmarketer, you need to ask yourself how these millions of small innovations will affect your business and how youmight adjust your strategies accordingly. The future will be so radically different that the current strategies, concepts, and frameworks of selling our brands will no longer work. We’re currently on the cusp of the fourth and fifth paradigm of the technology revolution. Each one was ushered in by disruptive technologies. For example, the third paradigmwas ushered in by social media platforms and connected mobile devices that have changed our lives. The fourth paradigmhas built on the third by adding location-basedmarketing, social media marketing, and influencer marketing to our devices. Unfortunately, this has been at the expense of user privacy, andmany consumers now feel digitally harassed and are turning away from these marketing techniques. The solution? Quantummarketing. Business leaders must now completely reimagine marketing and reinvent it for the immediate future. Leaders need to become true general managers with a command of data, finance, PR, and other disciplines to transformmarketing’s ecosystem. Quantummarketing will demand that business leaders adopt a newmindset and leave behind dated models, such as loyalty. Today’s consumers are fundamentally disloyal, so brands need to end the habit of spending hundreds of millions of dollars on customer loyalty programs. Loyalty must instead evolve from an era of winning and keeping consumers by winning each interaction. The brands that leaders build nowmust embrace consumers rather than the converse, turning old marketing methods upside down. Last year, a study in the U.K. asked participants who were married or in a relationship if they would ever consider cheating on their partner. Seventy percent said they already had, and a large percentage of the remainder said they would if they knew they wouldn’t be caught. So, as marketers, are we foolish to believe that customers will be loyal to our brands and loyalty programs when their personal relationships —with serious levels of explicit commitment — are not solidly based on loyalty? Harping on customers from an elevated platform about how they should be loyal to your brand is not a good strategy. I travel extensively as a senior executive of Mastercard and belong to loyalty and reward programs of almost every major airline. Is that real loyalty? No, it is simply a great way to get some cheap or free rewards. Real brand loyalty is something else. We’ve seen the rise of chief experience officers inmany companies who create seamless and unforgettable experiences for customers. This is a relatively new skill that will become critical to retaining customers. Dumping marketing messages onto consumers without pausing to consider how they will take it is a grave mistake. To get people to love your brand, you need to adopt a social purpose. This is not something you can easily fake, and consumers will recognize the authenticity. It’s not about grabbing a short-term politically correct issue to get consumer attention for a fewweeks either. Consumers are not stupid and will quickly see through your act. So instead of pursuing profits as your purpose, pursue social purpose. This should become your North Star, and the profits will follow. n Raja Rajamannar is the chief marketing officer and president of the healthcare division of Mastercard. He is responsible for successfully leading the company’s marketing transformation, including the integration of the marketing and communication functions. COURTESY OF RAJA RAJAMANNAR
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjY3Mjcw