Entrepreneurial Marketing

CHAPTER 14Uniting Marketing and Finance: From Separation to Integration

In 2013, Raja Rajamannar, chief marketing officer of Mastercard, wanted to elevate the marketing division and give it a more strategic role. At that time, Mastercard was already a well‐known brand. Rajamannar saw that marketing efforts had been successful in raising brand awareness. However, they hadn't led to increased revenue.

Rajamannar also observed that the CFO did not work directly with the CMO, even though marketing expenses were among the top three expenses listed in the income statement. To change course, Rajamannar asked the CFO to work with him and integrate the departments.

For this integration to work, Rajamannar added a finance team member into his marketing team. He asked the newly formed group to use a formula to measure ROI for marketing activities. The goal was to set up a common knowledge to measure marketing's impact on the broader business goals.

As a B2B2C brand, Mastercard's strategic plans included engaging directly with the end customer. The company wanted the individual cardholder to recognize the brand. To achieve this, Rajamannar carried out experiential marketing executed by Mastercard in regional offices. He wanted every region to find the right way to communicate directly with the individual customers. He then asked the regional offices to measure the impact of the campaign using the ROI measurement. As a result, Mastercard's brand value rose from US$69 billion in 2013 to ...