"You Now Have Two Customers: The Human and Their Agent"

Summary

Raja Rajamannar, Senior Fellow at Mastercard, discusses crypto's branding problem and the need for simple use case education. He draws parallels to early credit card adoption, explains Mastercard's emotional branding around money, and details a shift from ads to experiential marketing. The conversation then explores the rise of agentic commerce, where marketers must win over both humans and their AI agents, requiring strategies that embed empathy into algorithmic interactions.

• Crypto suffers from a branding problem and public misperception; simple, use-case-driven education is needed.
• Use cases like storing value in inflationary economies and low-cost remittances can make crypto appealing.
• Early credit card marketing in cash-rich societies faced similar adoption hurdles and required educating both consumers and merchants.
• Mastercard reframed money as a means to fulfill dreams, peace of mind, and doing good, leveraging emotional connection.
• The brand shifted from traditional advertising to experiential marketing, cutting ad spend by 70% to create immersive brand experiences.
• Agentic commerce will see consumers delegating purchases to AI agents, doubling the marketer's task to target both human and machine.
• Marketing to agents requires a different logic (price, functionality) while humans still rely on trust and brand emotion.
• Building empathy into AI agents, through signal-reading algorithms, can be a competitive advantage for brands.