Mastercard executive Jill Kramer on how brands navigate trust in new era of commerce

Thank you so much for having me.

All right. Well, I'm up for that conversation. I'm thrilled to be here. Thank you for having me.

Yeah, almost seven. So, I'm

Gosh. Well, so beginning I learned really an entirely new industry.

You're not yet holding yourself accountable for what you're supposed to know and you're just absorbing. Yeah. The other thing I learned was that the culture of the company, the brand that I loved from the outside in was even better from the inside out. I have to say you can't get that as a guarantee when you make a decision. But I was thrilled. I love the company. I love the culture. I love the leadership. And then the last thing was just how the breadth of Mastercard's business and the significance of the impact we have on commerce and communities and economies is so much broader than I thought and I'm completely enthusiastically committed to making sure that that broader story is more deeply understood than it is today.

Yeah, I mean really so much has been changing, but I think it's a good thing. I think sometimes we focus... It's funny because marketers are such generous people, you know, we tend to be optimists like we believe so deeply in ideas and we advocate so passionately, easily excited about, but we're also kind of pessimistic about our role in the enterprise. Sometimes we're tough on ourselves. We get really challenged. And I think AI has created that for the last few years. It's like, is it going to replace us? Is it going to make us less important? Is it yet another challenge? But what I've noticed in the past six months is really that typical marketing resilience that like no this is a great tool that will make us even more insightful, even able to tap into even deeper emotions and reach communities and audiences at a more personal level. And moving forward with then how does that drive even greater creativity? How does that drive even greater growth and even greater performance? And one of the things that hasn't changed amidst all of that is trust and the role that trust plays. In fact, if it's changed, it's only because it's got even more important. How do you think about trust within the business and within Mastercard and how it shows up as a brand? So, I could talk about this all day long. It's an absolute passion point for me right now. Few things. Trust right now is challenged, right? It used to be you could earn trust and that would go with you until you did something to break trust. You'd be really focused as a brand on not breaking trust, but now you really do have to earn it every day. Add to that the next generation coming into power, Gen Z, it is the greatest transfer of wealth in human history. They trust significantly less than previous generations. So, you have to earn it every day and now you have to earn it with a tougher audience. So then you counterbalance that with there are things that are like trust in our space of commerce and financial transaction and the secure identity protection, the fraud detection that we do that is also a little bit forgotten and taken for granted like you know you're so it's just always working. Yeah.

And I think that goes back to the company and the culture. We are truly obsessed with that trust. We are truly obsessed with the security, how it's built, how we innovate against it, how we're always two steps ahead of how it needs to change to keep up with the world. And I think we just need to maybe expose that a little more and talk about it a little more. And I think that's what audiences want right now. They want to know what are you doing to earn my ability to participate in what you've got to offer the world. It's interesting because trust definitely feels like it's a theme this year and people are talking about it a lot and we were having a good conversation about it and talking about you know is trust a department or is it something that just has to be embedded across departments and teams and the whole business and it sounds like for you that it has to be embedded in everything that you do. And it's a gift if it already is you just need to recognize it. It's that ingredient that's so present, but you might be taking it for granted as a marketer, just as your audience might be taking it for granted. And if they're not going to assume it's there anymore, because there's trust on so many levels. Are you the brand you say you are? Do you actually perform and have the values you say you do? But then there's also what am I giving you and are you protecting it? So there's trust on all of those levels that we need to talk about. And in our business that goes from base consumer behavior every day where you don't even think about things, but it goes to the bigger enterprise operations that whether that be security or corporate payments. It's like that trust has influence on all of those audiences, it has an accountability to those different audiences for different things in different moments. How are we making sure that we're not taking for granted that they know this and how are we working with them to make sure we're always redefining it and innovating it in exactly the way they need.

If you think about the fact that trust is leading to different ways of audiences connecting with what they products they want to buy. So maybe you're in a much more authentic space via a community or a creator, but then you want to go through to purchase. How do I know that that's going to be as secure as the previous behavior I used to have? So now this feels more personal. I trust the recommendation more. I trust the community that's validating this brand promise. I also want to trust the next step that goes with it. And so being the company that adapts and participates in all of those forms of exchanging ideas and perspectives and points of view and eventually products and services. It's a trust-based participation from start to finish.

Yeah, I think that a lot so much meaning is changing for multiple generations, but I think that there's a lot of discussion around it as there should be for Gen Z. And I think it's about don't assume that what mattered before matters now. And that's within a generation and across generations. And taking the time to pause and reflect and give them a moment to tell you what does value mean to me today. And obviously our brand platform priceless like don't assume you know what is priceless. And there are moments where priceless is a shared definition and there are moments when it is a very personal definition. There are moments where it feels big and almost like oh my god wow and there are moments where it is small and very personal and almost imperceptible but it's still priceless. So how do you invite that participation with the brand platform as well as with the brand's products and services.

And it's just continued to evolve right and so you're thinking about how it can evolve for the next generation. Exactly. And you know one of the things that I did back to your opening question around what have I been doing in the learning space was I didn't want to assume I knew the origin story of priceless because so many of us who are brought up in this craft we hear about that as an example you learn about it. I went back and I was able to talk to the person who actually wrote the RFP that led to the multiple campaign ideas that came and the selection of Priceless and go back to what was the business problem they were facing at the time. And what we did as a team was we reconstructed every chapter of Priceless, what was the business problem or opportunity, what was the desired destination, why did Priceless get us there, and how did we measure it? And then we were able to say, okay, now where does Priceless go next? And don't assume it can go there.

Like think about it just as a human being like just because you're you might have a skill, you might be the person who's always done something, you want to be chosen in that moment because you can do it now. It's the same thing for us with this idea. And if it couldn't do it now, that would be hard for me, but I would have done it. And I was very transparent about that. But

I got goosebumps when I saw what Priceless could do next. And the key to it was give it its purpose.

And it's beautiful to watch something that storied tell the next chapter of its story.

And to listen to him tell the story what it felt like in that moment who he had to win over. It was great.

Absolutely no idea. Do you know the reality was that he promised at the time the board that the campaign could probably last two to five years.

This is where being an experiential brand serve us incredibly well. When you do what we've done through sponsorship and partnerships for the past decade, you very much learn how to participate authentically in different worlds. So I'll contrast this with McLaren, right? A huge moment for us. F1 is a huge moment for the world. But the McLaren Mastercard F1 team is a very real partnership. We learned their culture. We learned about their fandom. We learned about what matters to them and then we participate. It's the same thing with creators. And what I love about Mastercard is they don't ever take we don't ever take the shortcut. And that takes more time and effort, but it is so worth it. And someone described at the awards ceremony the other night that Priceless was timely and timeless. It's also it can be broad and it can be so specific. What you have to do is let those creators tell you their story of themselves, their community, what is priceless to them, what they're fighting for, what they're excited by, what brings them joy, what brings them purpose, and then engage with that. If you shortcut it,

it you feel intrusive in the environment.

Exactly. And also like let them pitch you back. I think sometimes you forget as a brand like you go in and you get the deal with said creator, said influencer, but let them tell you their story back. Like I was just talking to the team earlier about pretend you don't have that relationship because sometimes the contractual agreement almost gets in the way and like pitch each other actually like date a little bit figure each other out. And so those creators are where they are because they know exactly what they're doing. So, you need to let them tell you that.

Yeah, you have to building agility in marketing and communications is no joke right now. And there's this tension between when you're a large global company and a large global brand. How do you have the consistency that means the throughline will actually exist but also the agility and the relevance that's highly local? This is what I have been obsessed with for the last seven months. I just had breakfast with team members today from Singapore, Poland, and I'm forgetting one country, but we were all talking about what is the experience like as a Mastercard marketing communication person from all of those different perspectives. When does the brand help you? When does it get in the way? When does the consistency get you like on the second tier of the platform? And when is it limiting your creativity? You have to constantly be having those conversations and be able to do that when you're innovating at speed, which Mastercard is and always has done. To tell that story consistently, but also in a very bespoke fashion, is the key. So, the technology actually applies to the marketing communication function itself. You have to be able to connect dots and contextualize the story you're telling. The days of, oh, I'm here in Singapore and we're making an announcement here and I'm just going to live in my bubble happily and make that announcement. Those don't exist anymore because the brand won't get the awareness and the fame it needs at the speed it needs to be a critical part of that conversation around that innovation.

It's organizational. It's workflow. It's governance and it's the technology and the tools that make the first three things not feel onerous. It has to feel embedded in the way you work every day. You can't have to go somewhere else and wait. You have to bring ideas forward, be able to share them, get the benefit of inputs and additional context from others, but still be moving at speed. That's the technology gift to marketing. I was obsessed with that at Accenture. Obsessed with it at Mastercard. And I watch it in the way the people at Mastercard are reacting to, oh, now I see more. Now I know more. This isn't bogging me down. It's propelling me forward. It's such a great example as well of where people if there are any people that are feeling nervous about the adoption of AI those examples are such good examples right of actually this is how it's a tool that can help you go faster because when you can build those systems suddenly you're not having to do separate emails to everybody to tell them what's going on.

It could be humongous but I need to get what I need from it and that's what you have to build.

Yeah. So if you think about AI has played a critical role for Mastercard for a long time. I mean think about fraud detection. Think about the data sets that we have. Think about the patterns that we can recognize. That has been enhanced by AI. And we've innovated for our company and the industry and really ideally for economies at large with exactly what does that look like and how do you see those things. When you talk about the evolution of commerce, it is absolutely fascinating to me how shopping is changing. And I had the privilege of sitting in with a bunch of retail brands yesterday morning and really listening to that. I mean, imagine being the brand that used to want to be on a shelf and then the store, the retail experience that carries those brands. They have to have a reputation with the buyers and the brands and the shopping experience. All of that changes. So, you've got still you have physical environments. Then you have digital environments. We live through that change. Now, you have these creator influenced environments and you want to get right from that creator's recommendation to what I want to purchase. You all have to be able to work in completely new ways. Then you add AI to the mix. You add agentic to the mix. Who's got what data? Where are their data advantages? So you want to keep certain data proprietary. How do you get more data? That's what ex

Exactly. Is it worth it? Is it working? That's where Mastercard plays such an important role in the ecosystem. And that's what I love about listening to us talk about Agentic Commerce, whether it's agent pay or agent pay for machines. It's like we're understanding all of these players because we sit in that very unique vantage point. You know, governments, you understand the economy, the varying economic situations, you understand the brands, you understand the retailers. How do you then help them all interact in new ways, faster, more personalized, and in ways that actually work?

Yes. How I need to know that actually when I put my card down for something. Exactly. And no matter what that transaction how that takes shape over the years like you don't even think about currency conversion when you're buying something from the other side of the world. You don't think is it going to be safe? You know that that is all built in. Those are the kind of things that are actually all inspiring but they're also invisible. And how do you balance those two things and say yes they're both at the same time.

It is the being a part of that ecosystem. It is the community. It's the connections we have around the world with the different parts of the economic ecosystem. And it is about the way we think of it as human beings. We think about it in a very personal fashion. But there are bigger systems behind that. And think about the effect that cyber has on small businesses like you think about it as somebody who's paying for something yourself and you want to make sure your money your identity is safe. But for a small business, it has a much bigger impact. It has a huge impact in enterprise. Those are all the spaces that we participate in and we learn from and we share that learning and we make everyone's system better. But in the case of small business that cyber resiliency is not built into their business models. It can't possibly be but we can help with that and then you can also create conditions where the customer feels safe. So it's from the human to the smaller medium enterprises to the largest enterprises. It's all that type of the ecosystem and the data set and the recognition we've built and the algorithms we can see and access that make the proposition pretty as I said all inspiring.

Yeah, I mean, the Mastercard Economics Institute is amazing. Michelle is amazing. I think you've probably met her before. That insight and the way we share it and who Michelle speaks to and the way we present it is incredibly helpful to the multitude of customers and partners we work with, but also to media to share that and there's always that up-to-date pulse on where is the consumer confidence index at any time. I think the last one I heard there was signals were all still strong spending was changing but people were still spending within their personal abilities and remits but maybe on different things. I think when I heard your CEO speak, he also it surprised me that when he talked about that there is still room for online spending to continue to grow, right? That that was still an opportunity and that with agentic commerce that was something that you're actually seeing increasing. Absolutely. And I would have thought it was already at that moment, but it's interesting how these new technologies are also going to drive that.

Yeah. Still opportunity.

I think that the marriage of marketing communications is now more important than it has ever been because of AI, because of content, because of LLM models and their ability to scrape and learn and therefore answer questions for consumers and business leaders. It's really important that there's a throughline between those two things. And that integration. I can't think of a project I've worked on at Mastercard where I didn't need both groups working at the same time to both promote and protect to look at things from all angles. I also love the way the disciplines are different but complimentary. I think from a career development standpoint it's really nice to watch people try both sets of muscles. So, I personally like to see people develop both skills because I do think that they make you better on both sides of the table. But right now that story that you tell the authenticity of it, the honesty of it, it has to show up in every channel, earned, owned, paid, influenced. And so you really have to be speaking from one team. You have to own the brief together. You have to own the narratives together. You have to so when we look at creative the communications team is in the room with us when communications is looking at an introduction the marketing team is saying this is what I understand about this product set or line of business or geography so it's really an important partnership and I think it's more important than it's ever been. That reputation piece is really top of the funnel for consumers and so that connection is just so important. Yeah, it's like communication has always been reputation building. It is brand building as well. And to think that they are two different disciplines, I think is shortsighted. And creating conditions where both the human beings in those roles and the way the again back to the agility and the connectedness and the contextualness of the organization that has to be built in systemically so people can work together very easily.

You know, I've worked for two really highly fast-moving innovative companies. So, I actually start internally. I track a lot what my teammates, my colleagues are seeing and sharing and then I go deep on the articles. And I love that sharing culture around have you seen this? Read this. This was an interesting podcast. This was a super interesting take on this. So I find that I'm very ritualistic in the morning. Like I love my mornings. I like to have long mornings. I like to have a little coffee. But when I dive in, it kind of makes my daily reading list. So it's a change. I used to be very I would read the exact same things every morning. There was a couple of subscription kind of aggregators, newsletters, and then podcasts that I liked, especially when I would be on my commute into Manhattan. Now it's different every day because I'll wake up to or have flagged from the day before a whole bunch of things I want to read and that's the way I will start my day.

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