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Mastercard has announced that Raja Rajamannar, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer since 2013, will step down from his role at the end of November. He will transition into a newly created position as Senior Fellow on 1 December 2025, advising the company on brand and marketing initiatives.
Replacing him is Jill Kramer, currently Global Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at Accenture, who will report directly to Mastercard Chief Executive Officer Michael Miebach. Kramer joined Accenture in 2016 as Managing Director of Global Brand, before being promoted to CMCO in 2021. Prior to Accenture, she spent over a decade at BBDO, leading accounts across consumer and enterprise sectors.
Rajamannar joined Mastercard in 2013 after senior roles at Citi, Unilever, and Humana. While the company’s “Priceless” platform originated in 1997, he expanded it into a global marketing ecosystem spanning experiential campaigns, sonic and multisensory branding, and purpose-driven storytelling. Mastercard said the leadership transition follows another strong financial quarter, with second-quarter 2025 revenue rising 17% year-on-year to US $8.1 billion and net income reaching US$3.7 billion.
BTB So What?
Raja Rajamannar’s departure marks the end of one of the most consequential CMO tenures in modern corporate marketing. Over 12 years, Rajamannar was instrumental in showcasing how brand building could function as rigorous business strategy, translating emotional equity, sensory architecture, and cultural resonance into measurable commercial outcomes. While he inherited the Priceless campaign, he transformed it from an advertising tagline into a multidimensional brand ecosystem: experiential platforms, sonic identity, and cross-sensory engagement that repositioned Mastercard from a payment utility into a culturally embedded institution.
The appointment of Jill Kramer signals a strategic recalibration. Her background at Accenture—where she oversaw a 74% increase in brand valuation—suggests a shift toward operational marketing: synthesising brand positioning with data infrastructure, platform orchestration, and ecosystem partnerships to drive growth at scale. This is marketing as enterprise architecture, not just communications. Rajamannar built a brand designed to be felt. Kramer inherits the challenge of ensuring it continues to perform seamlessly integrated, intelligently responsive to data, and operationally scalable. Against Mastercard’s strong financial performance, this leadership shift suggests the brand foundation is secure. The question now is whether marketing’s next mandate is optimisation, not reinvention.