Brand Innovators kicked off Cannes with a splash, opening our first ever Brand Innovators Beach in collaboration with Influential on the Croisette.
Raja Rajamannar, chief marketing and communications officer, at Mastercard took to the stage and talked about the importance of building relationships with the C-suite to promote “the real value of marketing” to the CEO and CFO. “If you want to take risks, without the CEO’s support it becomes difficult,” he said. “When the CFO embraces you, you are on a fantastic path,” he said.
Rajamannar also encouraged brand marketers to test and explore generative AI, which he said has gotten faster and cheaper and makes testing and learning much faster than it has been in the past.
Rajamannar stressed that you don’t need to be an engineer to use AI. “All of us use electricity, do we understand how it all works? No, but you know that if you put your finger in a plug you get a shock,” he said.”Have enough knowledge to say what can I use it for and where can I get shock and where can I get the benefit.”
Liz Caselli-Mechael, Head of Content & Digital, Nestlé encouraged marketers to face challenges head on. At Nestle, they put the “fish on the table” and address the biggest problems in order to build a successful marketing program.
For The Los Angeles Rams, marketing is about storytelling that inspires. “Marketing has changed whether it is sports betting fantasy, how do you expose and tell the story to who they are as a brand,” said Kai-ling Frederick, chief marketing officer, Los Angeles Rams. “You have to think about individual stories. What stories do people want to hear more about?”
Francine Li, global head of marketing at Riot Games talked about the importance of collaboration with teams when creating marketing and being authentic and non-interruptive. Li mentioned that Riot Games recently partnered with Coca‑Cola Creations to create Experience Points (+XP) in League of Legends games, an example of what this non-interruptive marketing looks like.
Brand Innovators will be hosting senior brand marketers through Thursday.
