Google’s CMO Lorraine Twohill on Leading the Frontier

0:00What does it mean for you to be a Frontier CMO? An important part of being a Frontier CMO is having an agile mindset, not being afraid to change, understanding that these moments will come like we're living through right now, probably one of the most disruptive eras we're going to see in our lifetime in marketing, and just not being afraid of that, leaning in and going, OK, here we go. Let's work this out together and bring people with you.

0:24We started Frontier CMO with a simple idea. As marketing leaders are pushed to the edge of what's possible, we need to map out a new playbook for the AI era. We even named the show after the frontier AI models Google is building right now. I'm sitting down with my boss, Lorraine Tuhill, Google's chief marketing officer. More importantly, Lorraine is one of the most influential CMOs in the world with more than 20 years' work building the Google brand. We discuss her lessons from building Chrome into the world's leading browser, how she's navigating Google's AI transformation, and what remains fundamentally true about great marketing, even as everything else changes.

1:00Here's my conversation with Lorraine.

1:07Welcome to Frontier CMO. You've been at Google since 2003? That is correct. Officially the CMO since like 2009 or something. That is a long period of time. And when you think back to those early years of Google, before Google really was the big Google, what was going on? What was it like to be in the room? Well, I joined in London. I was one of the first international hires. Google was very small back in 2003. When I joined in London, there were already maybe about 20 hires and they're all in one room. This is before video conferencing. It's a real startup mode, very different world. What does marketing look like at Google in the early days?

1:39What sort of things were you actually doing? This is before large budgets or anything, right? Well, when I was still in Europe, I did a lot of hiring. So building out the teams in the countries and really proud of the team we built. I've always believed country first and having strong leads in each country and strong regional leadership, I think, to balance the sort of strength of the mothership back at Homebase. I was a chief recruiter for a while. We had small budgets. We were very scrappy. I feel like we did a lot. So a lot of it was really focused on showing up and being part of the community, building the brand in each country.

2:08So I invented lots of things that didn't cost me much, like Doodle for Google, allowing kids in all the schools to pick a theme and design Doodles for our homepage. And we put the winner on the homepage and it was judged by our chief Doodler. Got a lot of press, things like that, that were scrappy, but actually very visible. We do launch events for each country. I remember once my first one was in Spain and I didn't have much budget. So I used a nightclub to do the sort of launch event up Google Spain and then the kitchen caught fire. So it was a bit unfortunate. But the event went fine. Thankfully, no one kind of realized.

2:40The kitchen caught fire because the event was so hot. But OK, so note to self, don't do nightclub launches. I'm kind of interested. You've always, you came out of European marketing, right? And then you moved to the United States. You've always been fiercely advocate for local insight and knowledge and not, even though you're running a global brand. You just want to expand a little bit on this sort of how you think about this. Well, I think everything happens in a country. I came out of the regions, which I think helps versus joining the company in the head office from the beginning. Obviously, I'm Irish and I've worked in many, many different countries across Europe and then now in the US for the last 17 years.

3:12And so I have a very international, very global perspective. I think it's tough when you're, you know, big head office in California. Countries feel sometimes quite distant. So I think I want to be their advocate, be their champion. And at the end of the day, that's where the work runs, where the customers are at. So that said, we've had to work hard to get that balance right. And I think just like every other marketing team, you know, really understanding what's the role of global, what's the role of regional, what's the role of local. We probably got to that a bit late and really spent time defining all of that to make sure that the countries felt supported and empowered, that ideas could come from everywhere.

3:45Something I really care about is ideas can come from everywhere, that no one should ever feel, look, the ideas are coming from the U.S. The ideas can come from everywhere. And we've got so much history in shipping brilliant ideas from one country to another. We're seeing that right now with the World Cup, where a lot of the great work we're doing in Brazil or UK or in India or Japan resonates in the U.S. too. It's wonderful because it's great to see, you know, a smaller team do some amazing work that we then take and ship in a bunch of countries. Marketing industry is famous for having pretty short tenured CMOs.

4:15At this point, you are one of the longest tenured CMOs in the industry. But you just talked about moving to the U.S., difficult transition. Things weren't quite right. But your bosses, your managers let you run with it. So what was the lesson? What were you telling them? How did you navigate that? One of the things that I often talk about is I never even put my hand up for the role. And so the first question should always be like, why didn't I? And again, so I always look for people today who are not putting their hands up. And I really encourage them, talk them into putting their hands up and at least being considered.

4:43But I didn't even put my hand up for the role. And so consequently, like three people at the company came to me and said, you're the only person who can work this out for us. Would you please move to the US and do this? I built a very strong, very capable team in Europe. They had seen me in action. They'd seen what I had done in the region. They wanted that globally. And when you're already doing sort of 25, 30 countries, you can go do 45, 50 countries. And that was their logic. And it made sense. And I had their support from day one. Like that support gave me confidence. That support got me to move and take this role on.

5:12Without their support, I would not have succeeded. And so that was really important. And they all showed up for me. And they were all there for you, whatever you need. And then I also sat down and I thought, well, I've been here six years now. I know a lot about this company now. What are the conditions to make me successful? Why haven't others succeeded in this role in the US? There were very many. There were a number of different CMOs. I wrote a list of things that needed to be true for me to go and take this role on. And they agreed to that list. Can you tell us what's on that list? One was, I wanted all the bits of marketing scattered all over the company, under product folks, under sales folks, everywhere to be pulled into one strong function.

5:47I wanted no exceptions because I wanted us to build a strong function. It was less about, you know, I talked about me having confidence. The marketers I inherited, some of them were junior folks who were in the team then, they had no confidence. And so I wanted to build a function that was strong, highly respected and very confident. And so I wanted it to stand at its own two feet and have all the marketers in the company with career paths and clarity about their roles and all in one team. And so that felt important to me. And two, I wanted to know that when I put a plan together, it was going to get funded, headcount and budget, and that they would be open to that and prepared to fund us.

6:20Things like that. They were pretty basic things, but I knew that they would help me be successful. And I knew that if I could get everyone to buy in and agree to those kinds of things, then the conditions would be in place for me to be successful. You were a woman moving to Silicon Valley, the heart of tech bros and stuff now. Was that playing on your mind in the decision? No, I have never felt at Google that being a woman made any difference. In fact, I was pregnant when I moved to the US and nobody gave a damn. Like the guys were like, we don't care. We still want you. We know you're going to go leave a few months after you start.

6:54And we're totally cool with that. They were amazing. You know, in fact, I have had more issues being a woman in the advertising industry than the tech industry because I've sat on creative pitches where they completely ignored me, you know, and talked to the two guys and presented very male. case studies like Gillette. I was sitting there going, you know, do you not understand who's the ultimate decision maker? I was in another meeting with an agency where they asked me to open this guy, turned out, hey, lovely, open my drink for me. And that was the only time he looked at me in the entire meeting.

7:25He just talked to the two guys who worked for me who were across from him. So I've seen far more paper cuts or moments in the advertising industry than I have from any engineers or any of the guys at Google. What I've noticed at Google is it's not like whether the men support the women or the women support the men is that there are some people who just are very good at finding their voice. And there are others who are quieter. That's very typical in engineering. And that can be the men or the women. And so we have a lot of introverted men too, who sometimes find it hard. And I watch out for them as much as I watch out for the women, because I think it's about everybody finding their voice.

7:57So what is it that marketers in a product-led organization like Google bring into the room? What do the engineers learn from us? And what do you learn from the engineers? Well, I think first and foremost, one of the things that I have found the most remarkable, which I probably wouldn't have anticipated is the power of putting engineers in the same room as creatives. Engineers are inherently very creative thinkers. Like they try and solve problems. They're building solutions to problems. That's how they think. So they see a problem and they want to solve it. They want to build something to solve it.

8:24They're inherently very creative and have very creative ideas. They have to, to build the sort of tools and products they build. And when you put them in the room with great creatives, like folks we have on our team, it's extraordinary to see the kind of, you know, sparks that fly in the innovation and the conversations. And so that's been a big unlock for us over the years. The other thing I would say is product marketing as a discipline doesn't get spoken about enough. In the marketing world, we speak a lot about our campaigns and our work and what the world sees. But the hard work of product marketing, which is probably quite unique to maybe tech companies, where you're going deep with product managers and product teams and engineers to help define the products, bring the user insights, customer insights into those meetings, represent the customer so you get the right products and features built, help position those products, help work out what differentiates these products, really push those teams to continue to innovate, to bring helpfulness to people who use our products.

9:17You know, that deep work we do internally is so important in a product-first company. It's how you build trust internally. And it's how you build a permission to then, once that product's ready to bring to the world, you know, you build a permission to then go tell the world about that product and get the world excited about it. One of the earliest projects I got to work on was Chrome. It had already been launched for a couple of years, but the Chrome story is just unbelievably remarkable. I mean, business case studies we've written about it. Tell me your reflections on growing from 0 % to leading browser in the world.

9:47It was kind of a canonical moment for all of us internally as well, because it was really how we defined the playbook that is, I think, how we approach marketing today. So I would start with deep partnership with product with Sundar, who at the time was the product manager for Chrome browser. And just some context, you know, Internet Explorer and Firefox and Safari were huge. We were nowhere. We were this little new browser. We really were determined to make Chrome a hit, but nobody wakes up in the morning and thinks, what's my favorite browser or should I change browser? It's not how the world thinks.

10:14So we knew we needed to, we had hard work ahead of us. We really needed to lean in. And so what Sundar was very focused on was like every six weeks shipping new product features, every six weeks innovating relentlessly and constantly. And I really learned from him just how important that was. Our role then was to get out and sort of spread the word. And we started, as you would expect with Google, digital campaigns, and that got us a long way. But then we realized it wasn't going to get us far enough because it really wasn't something people thought about that much. Which browser should I use?

10:42And so it was the first time we went in and advocated for a major advertising budget. And it was the first time, you know, we layered in like brand campaigns on top of the Dior and all the other work. And it really helped us prove out the immense value of creating work and telling stories that make people feel something and think something, not just do something. And the combination and the power of a brand campaign together with great DR and great performance work and how all of that can be performance marketing together while also being very emotional and shining a light on a product, but by putting the user first and telling a very emotional story.

11:14So we did all of that. We did it systematically. So it was the first time we ran systematic campaigns, country by country, quarter by quarter. Slowly but surely, we became the world's most popular browser. So it was a brilliant case study for the power of marketing and the role it could play in helping make a product successful. One of my big learnings coming out of that overall campaign, and you sort of articulated, you talked about brand and performance, but it's brand with performance. Of course, it's all performance. It's all performance, but the emotional storytelling, the connection, and then the continuous sort of reinforcing loops with when people are ready to make the action.

11:46I agree. And I also think when you're a technology company that builds software, these are not, you know, products and services you can hug. These are products and services inside your device, that it's even more important to show up as humans and to make sure our storytelling is full of humanity and is relatable to the people who we care about, who use our products each and every day. And so we can demystify a bit this company and these products, this technology, and just make it feel more helpful, more human for everybody. I love what we did last year when, or I think it was last year when Mo Salah scored like one of the winning goals to win the Premier League and he picked up a Pixel phone and that picture ended up being the front page of every national newspaper in England.

12:27That took planning. It looked organic, but just scrappy, clever, fun. And we've taken that idea and taken it around the world. Well, in that case, it was just really about training the person who runs social media for the team up on the phone and its capabilities. They did the rest. I thought that was very clever, is to train the folks who need to create content for the teams. As you've gone up and down the Quazette this week, has there been a meeting or someone you met with who's like, that was just incredibly productive or insightful? I'm just amazed by the, you know, the YouTube creators, how they think about marketing, how they think about building their audience, retaining their audience, how they build their brands.

13:01I think there's a juxtaposition here at Cannes between a lot of the old guard of marketing, the folks I grew up with, maybe the CMO community and how we've always done things. And then what I would call almost new age marketers. I find it fascinating spending time with some of the creators. They take a very different approach and you have to trust them that they know how to work their audience, use their strengths to tell a story their way. And it just feels very authentic, but it's a very different way of working than just creative or traditional advertising campaign. You have to let them go do their thing and trust that they know what they're doing.

13:32But they know what resonates with their audiences. And I think that's the huge opportunity. That's what's exciting about it. So just talk a little bit more about that, because we say this a lot. Get in the creator's universe. Don't try and dictate to the creator. You're a character in the creator's universe. But the reality is it's hard to let go of the brand, the thing that you've built so carefully. How do you do that? Well, we've made mistakes. We've learned the hard way. So we've definitely been guilty of trying to over-script creators. You really have to trust that they know what they're doing.

14:00You obviously want to partner with folks who love your products, who get your products, who use your products, who care about your products. So it's genuine. So if he's authentic to them, then you want to help them understand what you're excited about, about your products, and then let them go have at it. their way, their style to their audience. Getting that right has been a bit of a journey for us. And I think now you can sort of see when it works, it's amazing. It's almost like you're describing what we're doing with Gemini and AI right now. The fundamentals of marketing don't change whatever decade we're in, right?

14:28Yes. We're on Frontier CMO. What does it mean for you to be a Frontier CMO? Something you and I have always spoken about, which is I care deeply about us being customer zero for the industry. And so if we can be at the frontier, if we can, given where we sit, work with the product teams and the engineering teams understand the products and features they're building, use them first, be amongst the first to actually try them out. I think there's two things that come out of that. One is we can help make those products and features better for everyone. We're customer zero and we understand what marketers want and we can help make them better.

14:59And secondly, we can help people, others in the industry, you know, our colleagues and peers across the industry, adopt them and understand how to use them and learn from, you know, what we're doing. I've always really cared about that. And so I think that's a big part about being a Frontier CMO is you're leading the way for others. You're helping others get there, especially through these tough moments of change. So I think that's one thing. The other thing I'd say, though, that I think is an important part of being a Frontier CMO is agility, having an agile mindset, not being afraid to change, understanding that these moments will come like we're living through right now, probably one of the most disruptive eras we're going to see in our lifetime in marketing, and just not being afraid of that, leaning in and going, OK, here we go.

15:34Let's work this out together and bring people with you. I think that's incredibly important, too. And then I would also say A frontier CMO, in my mind, is going to be a CMO who is unafraid to advocate internally on behalf of the customer, to agitate internally, to disrupt internally if necessary, and interfere to make sure the whole company gets it and is really solving for the customer, solving for people who use your products, solving for user trust. And really, you know, I think you have the permission to do that as a CMO because you really represent the customers who use your products and you can go in and lean in and work with different teams and do that.

16:11And I think that's what you see really great CMOs do. No one's perfect, Lorraine. You must have made some mistakes or seen some things go wrong and then obviously corrected them. So I guess what are the biggest learnings and mistakes you've kind of gone along the way? Well, we've definitely learned the hard way a number of things. We spoke earlier, for example, about working with creators, not always getting that right. And so I think we've definitely learned a lot along the way. And I think that's what makes us better. You and I have often talked about that, like what makes us better, what we do is just learning from every moment.

16:37I mean, there were product areas where we worked really hard and our teams really leaned in on things like Google +, which was not a success. But out of that came Google Photos. And so you always have something that's super valuable. Google Glass was likely way ahead of its time. And I think now we're actually at the point where we could build the product we wanted to build, but it didn't have a good use case then to really make it a hit. and those were sort of product examples where we worked really hard on those and learned a lot. You know, there's times we've shift campaigns that just aren't memorable.

17:02They're good, but not great. They didn't move the needle. And I think at our scale, results matter, impact matters. And so I think, you know, you learn from that. There's times when we've done work where we thought it was great, world didn't think it was great. We failed to leave our bubble. We failed to understand that we actually need to put ourselves in the shoes, walk the talk of real people who are, you know, living their lives and being interrupted by this creative and it's just not resonating with them. They don't agree with it. You learn from that. All of that, I think, makes us better at what we do and allows us to do better work.

17:29I think one that, you know, you and I have talked about a lot is focus on the wins, focus on the wins, focus on the prize, because marketing teams love to come up with loads of great, we have loads of great ideas, loads of projects, loads of initiatives. Really, are they moving the needle? And so something we've talked about a lot over the years is Epic or Scrappy. Either do a big systemic campaign like Chrome, like we spoke about, or just something really cool, a quick win that gets you somewhere. But it's that messy middle where you have campaigns that are neither of those things, take up a lot of work, but don't really move the needle because they're not big enough to make a difference.

18:01We've made mistakes like that. And at our company's size and scale, that's not where we're going to win. We're a large marketing function. And you've built that over the past 20 years. Hiring is probably the most critical thing that you've really ever done. Talk about your hiring philosophy. Well, first of all, I do think hiring is one of the most critical things I've done. So my whole first year in the US, I was really hiring. And I made mistakes. There are times when I didn't listen to my gut. Or a few times people felt really strong. We should hire this person. This person's great. And then I'd meet them and wasn't fully convinced.

18:29But everybody else seemed to know them and really think that they were great. And so I sort of went with the flow. And always a mistake. Always a mistake. And so I learned if I don't feel like it's the right fit, if it's instinctively not there, I shouldn't hire them. There's not a single person in my team today who I inherited. Like not one. So we built this from scratch completely. I had to work out what culture I wanted, who are the right fit people for our company. How do we define marketing at Google? What looks right for us? It took a few false starts for me to get that right. And I did probably listen too much to some of the referrals that came our way versus just judging myself.

19:03There are certain things I look for, like humble, hardworking people who just lean in our team players, but are immensely capable and quick twitch and can move fast. You need an agile mindset because change is constant. then it is like a cliche, but it's like at Google, it's at times a thousand. So you need someone who's going to totally deal with that. There are certain types of people who I think fit well in our culture. I don't put domain expertise above all else. I put intellect, agility above all else and curiosity and team player mindset. And then if they happen to have lots of relevant experience, that's a bonus.

19:35Athletes work well in our environment, people who can adjust and mentally adjust and have that kind of, you know, agile mindset. It seems like today, you know the pendulum sort of swings but athletes today seem more important than ever in this ai world where we can all do a little bit of everything yeah having that five tool skill set or whatever it is it seems like a really important thing for us all to be cultivating well i certainly think people who can pivot to different activities are coping quite well right now because they have to learn it's a high speed learning curve that said i will say that i think now more than ever you also need specialists because we're looking at the specialists to define how best we use the tools for each of those activities.

20:12Let's just look at our research and insights specialists. They're helping define the research and insights agents that we're all going to use. Our creative specialists are helping to co-create the creative AI tools we're all going to use. Our media measurement specialists are the ones defining how we invest in AI tools for media measurement. And so now the specialists who've always been very important to us, they're actually kind of defining how we're going to use AI for each of their specialties as a whole collective team as we move forward. Leraine, you've grown a large team. You've seen people progress from most junior person to most senior person.