Mastercard’s next chapter: how brand power is driving its B2B boom

We caught up with Cheryl Guerin, Mastercard’s head of brand strategy and innovation, during the ANA Masters of Marketing conference in Orlando to find out how a brand built on emotional storytelling is now using those same skills to drive enterprise growth.

“Mastercard has always been a strong consumer brand,” says Guerin. “But the decision-maker has always been at the business level. Issuers and merchants decide whether our brand gets distributed. The consumer marketing helps us win that business.”

What’s new is scale. The company’s growing services arm now sells data products, loyalty platforms and cybersecurity solutions directly to businesses. Commerce media – its newest venture – is aimed at helping advertisers target the right person at the right time with measurable attribution. “It’s the Holy Grail,” says Guerin. “Reaching the right person at the right time and knowing if they made a purchase.”

Despite this increasingly enterprise-driven model, Guerin insists the emotional core of Mastercard’s brand remains central. “Whether you’re a consumer or a business, you’re still talking to a human being at the end of the day,” she says. “There’s no such thing as brand over here and demand over there. Without brand, there is no demand.”

That philosophy – treating every buyer as human first – is what allows Mastercard to move into B2B without losing its identity. Its long-running ‘Priceless’ platform, launched more than two decades ago, still anchors the brand in consistency and trust. “Even in a fast-changing world,” Guerin says, “consistency matters. It shows what you stand for.”

Mastercard’s adoption of LinkedIn’s new ‘buyability’ concept fits neatly into that narrative. The framework measures a company’s readiness to be chosen – blending trust, familiarity and emotional relevance with commercial performance. “Every motion of marketing has to be connected back to revenue,” Guerin explains. “It’s not brand versus demand. It’s one motion coming together.”

This idea will feature in The Drum’s upcoming three-month documentary series on buyability, premiering in November as part of our B2B Month. The series explores how companies like Mastercard are redefining business marketing by balancing creativity and accountability.

Kramer’s arrival adds another layer to the story. During her decade at Accenture, she helped nearly double its brand value while building one of the most respected B2B marketing operations in the world. Her background at BBDO and DDB brings creative and strategic firepower that aligns perfectly with Mastercard’s ambition to grow its services business.

“If 50% of our business is going to be services, having a CMO who’s a B2B powerhouse makes perfect sense,” says Guerin.

The move underscores Mastercard’s broader ambition – to keep its brand as relevant in boardrooms as it is in wallets. It’s a reminder that even in the hard-nosed world of business marketing, brand remains the soft power that drives the hard results. For Mastercard, that belief in brand has always been, and still is, priceless.