How creator marketing has become key to Mastercard’s culture-hacking strategy
By Sam Bradley • May 28, 2025 •
Fine dining and globe-trotting travel have been displacing mere objects as consumer status symbols ever since Instagram first arrived on the app store way back in 2010.
It’s a shift that brand marketers have long sought to connect with. Few have been as persistent as Mastercard, though. The payments brand first began marketing around “experiences” almost 10 years back, according to CMO Raja Rajamannar; it first unveiled its “Priceless.com” loyalty platform in 2016.
A recent survey by research firm Dynata of 15,000 European consumers appears to validate that strategy. Despite the hairy economic circumstances facing shoppers across the continent, 70% said they wouldn’t hold back from spending on experiences like eating out or tourism.
Increasingly, Mastercard’s means of reinforcing its position has been through creator and influencer marketing. The company stages hundreds of events a year, including some linked to its sporrts sponsorships like Formula One’s McLaren team and tennis’ Roland Garros tournament, and typically invites several creators to each one, giving it a creator cast of thousands. Rajamannar spoke with Digiday about the brand’s creator strategy, how it picks the influencers it partners with, and whether creator spending could eventually eclipse traditional channels like TV.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Consumer attitudes are changing, but how has that affected Mastercard’s strategy?
People have started valuing experiences a lot more than buying things. There’s been a profound shift across the entire globe, where people started clearly communicating and feeling that experiences matter more than things. So we pivoted our strategy, and back in 2013-14 moved a significant portion of our marketing budgets towards experiential marketing, as opposed to pure media investments.
How does creator marketing dovetail with that approach?
We have brought in influencers in a big way to all our activations. We make the influencers experience what consumers would experience so they are able to authentically report through their eyes what they are seeing to their followers. This is a very important component of our strategy, and it’s getting to be bigger and bigger.
We have quite a robust portfolio of influencers who we engage with on an ongoing basis. We also support [them] through paid efforts to get the voice of these influencers out there when they are saying something which particularly appeals to us.
What we try to do is not constrain influencers by corporatizing them. We want them to have their independence of thinking, their style of expression, and we should give them the creative freedom to be themselves. At the moment, [if] you straight jacket them into our brand template, they lose the authenticity and will have instant organ rejection.
How much does Mastercard spend on experiential marketing versus “traditional” channels?
We don’t reveal that number … but predominantly, we used to be an advertising-led company in terms of marketing strategy, but now we have experiences to lead strategy.
What criteria do you use when choosing between creators?
Number one, we need to see that their approach and their values match ours. Number two, we want to make sure that the tone with which they communicate to their consumers or to their followers is something which resonates with the tone of MasterCard.
We’re a principled company and we want to make sure that our associations are absolutely squeaky clean. We want to make sure that [doesn’t] constrain creativity in any way, or constrains independence; on the contrary, you can be clean and creative.
For some brands, a particular type of approach of the influencers can be seen to be edgy and therefore desirable. But [for] another brand that same case might be over the line and not in line with their brand values.
[Also], we try to pick those who have scale and a wide range of fans that follow across multiple geographies and areas of interests.
The traditional channels will not disappear because TV, for example – especially live programming – has got a ton of reach and the economics are very favorable. So, it won’t go away. It’s a question of whether influencers will get more and more and more significant as a part of the mix. My answer is an absolute yes.
Why?
Let’s look at it this way. If you’re watching a program and you’re constantly interrupted by advertisements, it is an interruption. It is an annoyance. Advertising is not an experience in itself. It’s an intrusion to your experiences.
However, an influencer talking about a brand to their fans? It’s not an intrusion. It’s infotainment. It becomes a part of the ecosystem. As more consumers move toward platforms that are ad free, where ads are seen as a disruption or intrusion, it’s inevitable that influencer as a channel will become bigger and bigger.
I would not at all be surprised that sooner than later, influencer [as a] channel will be much bigger than television. I don’t know if it will be in three years or five years, but that’s something which is going to happen.
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