Raja Rajamannar, the former global CMO of Mastercard, has delcared that the marketing theories and frameworks developed decades ago are outdated, and have been for some time.
He delivered the punchy prognosis on the future of marketing on the Marketing Association of Australia x B&T Brand Masters podcast, recorded following his speech at the Association’s RESET conference in Sydney earlier this year.
Listen to the full podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
“The biggest myth perpetuating in marketing is that the theories and frameworks formulated more than six or seven decades back are still working,” he told B&T editor Tom Fogden and Cairns Crocodiles content director Pippa Chambers.
“The reality is that practically every single aspect of marketing is no longer working. That’s the realisation that marketing and marketers have to come to — whether it is consumer insights, advertising, loyalty programs, the purchase funnel. Every single element of marketing has to be reinvented, reimagined, reset, literally.”
In his mind, the internet and the iPhone ushered in a change in consumer behaviour that has not been fully comprehended by the marketing community and he pointed to the division between performance and brand marketers as evidence.
“Technology is evolving very fast around us but marketing is remaining, more or less, stagnant,” added Rajamannar.
“If you look at the laws of gravity or electricity, they remain stable. But markeitng is not an abolsulte science, it evolves with culture, it is impacted by technology and data. The theories and frameworks that were formulated before any of these technologies were present in the 1960s and 1970s by the likes of Dr Philip Kotler, they’re not relevant at all.”
In its place, Rajamannar has formulated what he calls ‘Quantum Marketing’ and, as he told Chambers and Fogden, his book on the topic has been published in 14 languages and taught at 300 universities around the world.
This Quantum Marketing framework offers, in his mind, a more holistic way to look at consumer behaviour with a greater focus on experiential marketing and attention-grabbing executions which generate more interest. He pointed to Liquid Death and Dubai Chocolate as two brands who have embodied the framework in their actions. He also said that he put the principles to work while he was at Mastercard, creating restaurants and more immersive sponsorships to connect with customers.
“At Mastercard, I cut down 70 per cent of my advertising budget because I didn’t see sense in spending that kind of money and moved it other ways of engaging consumers,” added Rajamannar.
Listen to the full episode below.
