Mastercard Senior Fellow and former CMCO on dropping the brand name
October 1, 2026
Raja Rajamannar dropped the Mastercard name from its own logo. After testing brand recognition across 26 countries and studying how the brain processes visual symbols versus written words, he was confident the evidence was on his side. In this episode of In Other Words, host Jason Hemingway is joined by Raja, who spent 12 years as Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at Mastercard and is the author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Quantum Marketing. They explore the conviction behind that logo decision, how he cut the advertising budget by more than 70% and still accelerated the brand from number 87 to number 12 in the world during his tenure as CMCO. They also examine why most marketing organizations are competing for human attention in a world where the audience is increasingly a machine.
Raja Rajamannar dropped the Mastercard name from its own logo. After testing brand recognition across 26 countries and studying how the brain processes visual symbols versus written words, he was confident the evidence was on his side. In this episode of In Other Words, host Jason Hemingway is joined by Raja, who spent 12 years as Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at Mastercard and is the author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Quantum Marketing. They explore why the Fifth Paradigm of marketing demands a complete rethink of how brands compete, communicate, and earn trust at global scale.
The logo was only one part of the transformation. Raja cut Mastercard's advertising budget by more than 70%, redirected that investment into experiential and multisensory marketing, and built a sonic brand identity that now reaches more than 3 billion touchpoints worldwide. The conversation turns to how agentic AI is reshaping marketing itself, and why brands that aren't surfaced by the algorithm when an AI agent handles discovery and purchasing simply don't exist.
What You’ll Learn:
- Why dropping the Mastercard name from its logo strengthened global brand recognition
- How cutting advertising by more than 70% accelerated brand growth
- How a sonic brand identity scaled to more than 3 billion touchpoints
- Why agentic AI is fundamentally changing how brands are discovered and selected
- How to reframe brand loyalty as preference management
- Why traditional loyalty programs are a myth
- What it takes to create brand messaging globally without creating unintended offense
- Why CMOs need to speak the CFO's language to win investment
Raja Rajamannar is a Senior Fellow at Mastercard and a pioneering marketing leader whose twelve-year tenure as Chief Marketing and Communications Officer transformed Mastercard into one of the world's most valuable brands, rising from rank 87 to number 12. With a background in chemical engineering and a deep expertise in quantum marketing, behavioral psychology, and AI-driven brand strategy, Raja has authored the Wall Street Journal bestseller Quantum Marketing and hosts Bloomberg's Quantum Marketing series.
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Highlights and YouTube Chapters:
- 00:00 Introduction
- 03:00 From Chemical Engineer to accidental Marketer
- 07:13 The Quantum Marketing thesis
- 12:13 Dropping the name from the Mastercard logo
- 14:00 How the brain processes a logo without words
- 19:14 Building a sonic brand across 3 billion touchpoints
- 25:30 When harmless messages become harmful
- 29:50 When agentic AI makes the purchase decision
- 37:51 Loyalty Is Dead: Welcome to Preference Management
- 41:12 Trust as the ultimate competitive advantage
- 47:33 How CMOs win over CFOs
- 52:04 “What I Wish I’d Known on Day One”
Episode Resources:
- Raja Rajamannar, Mastercard Senior Fellow & Former CMCO
- Quantum Marketing Book
- Bloomberg’s Quantum Marketing Show
- Jason Hemingway, CMO at Phrase
- Phrase Website