Greg Boosin Reveals How Mastercard Has Diversified and Evolved Over the Years

Bill Zengel: Can you describe your journey at Mastercard and how you have evolved as a marketer and a leader? What are some of the biggest changes you have seen in the industry, and how have you adapted to them?

Greg Boosin: I’ve been with Mastercard for a long time at this point – 17 years. Literally everything has changed. From the emergence of technologies that we now consider foundational—like the iPhone and social media—to the data-driven way we can measure and evaluate which marketing strategies work across those channels.

Similarly, Mastercard has transformed ... from a card company to a diversified technology company. We do things now we didn't previously dream about. Did you know that Major League Baseball partners with Mastercard to stop bots from stuffing the ballot box for the All-Star Game?  Or that a major QSR partners with Mastercard to personalize choices presented on its drive-thru menu? And since marketing strategy follows business strategy, the marketing discipline has transformed as well.

Personally, I have grown with the company with experiences in finance, sales, and marketing. I have developed many "hard" and "soft" skills, none more important than learning how to manage and then how to lead. And I learn more each day from the amazing folks around me.

Zengel: Can you share your perspective on B2B marketing challenges today and how they relate to emotional decision-making?

Boosin: Is there any other kind of decision making? Every decision is an emotional decision. Within marketing at Mastercard, we are all students of behavioral sciences and neuroscience. We employ these disciplines as strongly in B2B as you would expect we would in consumer marketing.

Zengel: How do you use emotional decision-making in B2B marketing, and what are some of the challenges in appealing to emotions in a business context? Can you give an example of a successful B2B campaign that used emotional appeals?

Boosin: I believe the key to driving excitement is sharing an opportunity that your prospect can convert on to drive their success or showing you can help them avoid a risk they are blind to. Let's say you are a small-business lender, deciding which small business gets funded. The data necessary to make proper lending decisions is notoriously inaccurate, which means you could approve loans you shouldn't or reject good applications. Mastercard Open Banking can illuminate a small business's whole financial picture, thus helping the small business lender be a hero because they find growth that others hadn’t. The "hero's journey" storytelling arch has proved extremely effective not only in driving sales force confidence and pipeline, but also in working with product teams to bake the right narrative into product development.

Zengel: Let’s dig deeper into your point about driving sales. Can you discuss your experience with lead generation and lead qualification? How do you approach gated vs. ungated content, and how do you measure the success of lead gen campaigns?

Boosin: Mastercard has made nearly 20 acquisitions over the last 4 years. Many of these acquisitions have come with amazing lead generation talent, capabilities, and tools. Strategically, this has given us the opportunity to really focus on the buying journey leveraging the best practices, best tools, and best partners from across the organization. Regarding gated vs. ungated content, I will say that we are always testing what works best. No one likes to fill out forms nor get peppered by a sales development rep just to read a piece of thought leadership. Nor can most businesses afford to be passive and simply wait for demo request to engage with prospects more deeply. Our job is to find that balance and recognize that it's always shifting...in part, because, indeed, there is so much emotion that drives behavior and emotions are always changing.

Zengel: Can you give an example of a successful B2B marketing campaign you have led in the past?

Boosin: There is so much that people don’t know about Mastercard.  The best marketing campaigns are not only compelling but those that have the added benefit of being unequivocally true.  Last year, we launched a B2B campaign that details that we do way more than most people understand. I’m eager to share the details and what we learned at the Masters of B2B Marketing Conference in June.

That said, I gave a few examples earlier in this conversation and here are two more. Walgreens works with Mastercard to help determine which health and wellness products make it to shelves. StriVectin partners with Mastercard to personalize online shopping of anti-aging cosmetics. This campaign has proven to advance perceptions of Mastercard – with ‘priceless’ as a primary asset – specifically among our expanding set of B2B prospects, which is great preparation for lead generation activities.

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