Raja Rajamannar

A public gesture of empathy can have a profound impact on the community it’s meant to serve. Plenty of marketers would agree with that bit of wisdom—but when the community in question happens to be transgender and nonbinary, you’re likely to find few marketing executives with the courage to make that public gesture. One of them, however, is Raja Rajamannar. In 2019, Mastercard’s marketing department learned that nearly a third of adults who showed identification cards with names or genders that didn’t match those by which they identify suffered negative experiences as a result. Rajamannar and his team recognized the obvious ramifications for the company: Credit and debit cardholders could well be grilled by suspicious cashiers or otherwise publicly embarrassed. The remedy was “True Name,” a program that let trans customers opt to have their chosen names put right onto the plastic. The move was not only an industry first—it also conveyed some of the strongest visible support for trans and nonbinary communities in the business world and beyond it. “Mastercard’s commitment as a brand is to stand up for decency, integrity and equity,” Rajamannar tells Adweek. “We strive to be an agent for positive change. It’s our unwavering responsibility as a brand to support our customers and make their lives easier, however we can.” The initiative sounded an unlikely note of inclusion and reassurance amid an especially tumultuous year, yet it was hardly the sole example of Mastercard’s marketing agility. When the pandemic foreclosed on the company’s various out-of-home and experiential marketing plans, Rajamannar and his team tossed out their original playbook and devised a roster of new, virtual experiences (all hosted on the company’s Priceless.com platform) to take their places. Customers were able to enjoy many of the same events that cardholders were accustomed to—concerts, film festivals, wine tastings—from the safety of their homes. Switching up an entire marketing strategy during a public health crisis might well have destabilized a less prepared company. Fortunately, Rajamannar was able to draw from years of emergency-management experience. “Although we could have never anticipated Covid-19, one of the risks we worked through was people being quarantined in their homes due to natural disasters,” Rajamannar explains. “Fortunately, when Covid hit, we had the building blocks in place to deploy the contingency plan.” The change of direction ultimately proved its worth. While the entire credit card sector took a hit from reduced customer spending in 2020, Mastercard posted net revenues of $4.2 billion for the first quarter of this year, an increase of 4%. Meanwhile, McCann New York’s creative effort behind “True Name” garnered as much attention as the corporate initiative itself, nabbing a total of seven honors at Cannes, including a Grand Prix for Brand Experience and Activation. In a statement, McCann Worldgroup CEO Bill Kolb said it was “rewarding to see that our work, in partnership with a global client like Mastercard, advances important social good causes, such as equal rights to LGBTQ+ individuals.” Rajamannar himself has been widely hailed for his leadership, too, though he is quick to point out that no marketing emerges solely from one person’s office. “There is one consistent thread that has made [all of this work] possible,” he says, “and that is our talented, high-performing integrated marketing and communications team.” —Shannon Miller

Raja Rajamannar

Corie Hengst

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Corie Hengst