Marketing fraternity needs courage to let go

Consumers no longer want "stupid stories and ads" that brands continue to produce, but a seamless, meaningful and uninterrupted experience. Few, though, are providing this. That’s the blunt view of the current state of global marketing from Raja Rajamannar, the chief marketing & communications officer of MasterCard, speaking on the side-lines of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, which has just wrapped up in the south of France. The marketing fraternity needs to start embracing more aggressively what Rajamannar calls "real time hyper-targeted engagement", where once-in-a-lifetime unexpected experiences are created. "Brands need to understand that to be successful they are now just behind-the-scenes enablers of an experience."