Navigating the AI Landscape: Insights from Google Cloud's CMO

0:00How do I increase AI literacy, not just have spiky parts of my team that leaned in really early and have those be the go to people for all things AI and everybody else not really getting comfortable. we have to lift the AI literacy of everybody on the team. 45 % of organizations report improved employee productivity, which is a Gen AI. We now within Google overall have essentially an AI marketing toolbox to use all of the different technology. So every week there's a new essentially AI challenge that goes out. It's a little 10 minute learning experience where you learn about a technology like Gem and then you try it.

0:36And so it's one of the ways that we are training up our whole team to see all the technology that's available and these kind of bite-sized learning experiences.

0:49Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Marketing Trends. This is your host, as always, Jeremy Bergeron. I'm super, super excited. This legitimately has been a guest that has come on. It's been almost five years since this epic human being has come on this show. I know when I took over hosting this show, Alison Wagenfeld was at the top of our whiteboard of like, let's get her with an asterisk back on the show. At some point, let's get her back on the show. So Alison Wagenfeld is the chief marketing officer of Google Cloud. Think of Google Cloud Platform and Google Workspace. She's been at Google for over eight years.

1:30We laugh and say, you blink, it'll be 10 years. So this is someone who's been through some major moves when it comes to, I mean, I don't know, think about rebranding G Suite to Google Workspace. That was a big one. Also continuing to position Google Cloud as a major leader in AI data and hybrid cloud, right? I mean, this person has seen many, many things. So, Allison, we can talk about your incredible achievements. I know we will not be able to do that all in the time we have, but we want to talk about your journey. Before we get into any of that, thank you so much for being on Marketing Trends.

2:06We're super excited to have you. Thanks so much for having me. This is fun for me to be able to chat with you about all things marketing. And of course, now it's going to be all things AI and marketing. Seriously. I mean, you blew our minds right when you hopped in before we pressed record, which Let's just get right into it, Alison, because I was chatting with Hillary about the future of marketing trends and where podcasting and media is going and AI is weaving its way into every part of the world of media and storytelling. And then Alison hops on the show. She hops into the recording studio and she's, I'm not going to steal your thunder, Alison, could you please just take us into what you just showed us?

2:42Because I think this is where we're headed, people. Yeah. So we were just talking about some of my favorite AI tools that I use every day. and I referenced Notebook LM, which is at the top of my list right now. So those of you who are not familiar with it, it's basically a product that Google has put out where you can drop in a PDF or a link or a video or docs, drive whatever, and it will create a summary and questions. But one of my favorite parts is it creates a podcast, a synthetic podcast. And so I had asked Jeremy, I said, are you gonna have a tough time if I actually show, like include on your show, a podcast about marketing trends.

3:24And he's like, no, bring it on. So I said, okay, well, let me just share it with you. So you know what it's going to be all about. And he's like, okay. And so now I'm going to play for you something that I just purely by dropping in the link of marketing trends, this new podcast emerged. So let me go ahead and play it. All right. So you're looking for the rundown on Missions Marketing Trends podcast. Right. Well, buckle up because this deep dive is going to break it all down for you. We're going to tell you what it's all about and most importantly, why you should absolutely be tuning in. You know, it's the access that gets me.

4:01I mean, listening to this show, it's like you're sitting in on a master class in marketing leadership. It's straight from the people who are actually out there shaping the industry. Who kidding? We're talking some serious heavy hitters here. Oh, yeah. You've got folks from ESPN, Campbell Soup, Morgan Stanley, 3M. It's a who's who of marketing. Like getting a peek behind the curtain. All right. Seeing how they actually think, not just what they do. Exactly. And the topics, super diverse. I mean, one episode, you've got Linda Lee, the CMO of Campbell Soup. Oh, yeah. I remember that one. All right.

4:33So that was purely based on one link of putting in. And so it got out there and sharing. I would have played for 12 more minutes if I let it and probably done a rundown of whatever Notebook LM could find on your website. But that was created in about, I don't know, maybe 60 seconds from dropping in the link to getting that podcast. And you can now adjust the voices, adjust the length, target it on different areas. So as I said, it created a synthetic podcast using AI. Wow. I mean, absolutely incredible. I mean, and again, like I can't emphasize this enough. This was just the hyperlink to our marketing trends webpage.

5:16This was go to our website, click on marketing trends, and that's all this information was being pulled from. And now I have another tab open on my computer, thanks to you. So Notebook.LM is definitely going to be, I'm going way deeper there. I mean, it's like having this clearly is like really intelligent assistant that's analyzing and summarizing and organizing these things effortlessly, right? And we're talking about some legitimate, actionable insights based on, you know, very little. And that's incredible. So you saw it first, people. You saw it first. Yeah. So super fun. But that's just one example of what we're starting to see.

5:53And now the key is figuring out how to use this incredible technology as marketers. And some of it's, you know, to play around with it, but some of it's really to integrate it into our workflows. So it's all over the place. But when I kind of think back from when I started in 2016 here to where we are now, So that's part of what blows my mind is the speed of the technology improvement, particularly the acceleration in the last two years as AI has really permeated effectively everything that we do. I got to ask just about kind of utility, like in your role, right? I'm sure that you have to pull on some mini tools in the Allison tool belt, right?

6:28There's strategy and leadership and managing and conflict resolution and all the things that you get to pull on this massive tool belt that you built over the years. Where is AI coming along to support, accelerate, augment, like just what you do in your role leading global marketing for Google Cloud? Yeah, it's super interesting because we're living right now at this intersection of marketing AI and using AI for marketing. And it's part of what makes the job and the work we're doing so fascinating. So in the second category, how are we using AI for marketing? I say it really runs the gamut. It's everything from within Google Workspace.

7:08I don't know if you're a Workspace user, but within the website, we have Femini for Workspace. And so I keep my side panel open. So that's rolled out now where within Docs, asking questions or summarizing, I use it within Slides to generate images. I've been using it now. Our team is using it too. For B2B marketing, sometimes it used to take like a week or two to take an asset and create a landing page and get it all up and going and make sure that all it's like sliced and diced in all the different ways to get it out different channels. That now takes a minute or so because we're building out this marketing studio.

7:43So it's effectively all over the map, but increasingly I've been using Notebook LM. Sometimes I'll get a set of customer feedback, you know, maybe from like a focus group or something, or if we're testing some new positioning, can drop it in there and get a summary. We recently ran a MLB campaign. I don't know if you watched the World series, but hopefully if you did, you saw some of Google Cloud in there. And we created some different ad spots and would put in some of the scripts for the ad spots and essentially ask AI, like, how might this type of audience perceive this? How could this be better?

8:15Is it clear? So it's effectively assistance built into all parts of our days, but increasingly I think will be a core part of our workflows as now we're really building in some lead follow-up in those aspects as well. Yeah, incredible. There's something that I'm just like, I got to have an understanding of your experience kind of overseeing such a big portfolio of products, right? I mean, again, we're not talking about one little product that's serving a small segment. You're talking about major, major products that all have their own initiatives and their own technology and leaders and the teams that are supporting those leaders.

8:57Just how do you look at the ecosystem that is Google Cloud? Like one thing that I see is you've been there for as long as you have, which tells me you've been able to keep this really beautiful, you know, balance of, okay, how do we, how do we lead? How do we know where the puck is going? How do we get there in a really efficient way? But it's a massive, it's a massive product suite. It's a big team. It's got all of challenges. How do you hold it all as a leader? How do you know where to go in and where to, yeah, I just imagine it being so much intel and information that you've got to assess where you're focusing and prioritizing and how do you do that?

9:34Yeah. I mean, that's one of the hardest parts about being a CMO in any context is that there's so much inputs and priorities. Yeah. Just to scope the business right now. So we just crossed over a$44 billion run rate. And that's the part of Google Cloud. We just had our earnings last week. Amazing. Great growth and quarter over quarter for Google Cloud. Well, actually, it was great earnings for Google overall. And also profitability, which has emerged in the last couple of years. Because when I started eight years ago, maybe we were like$2 to$3 billion business and not profitable at that time. So really, really hyper growth, period.

10:12And so in terms of my role, so it's across all of Google Cloud, which is essentially Google Cloud Platform, which is everything from the infrastructure, so something we call AI hypercomputer, all the way through Vertex AI to build with AI and building AI agents, to databases, to BigQuery, to analytics, to security. So a big Google Cloud platform set up portfolio, as well as Google Workspace. And so the apps that everybody loves for their personal or for their kids, everything, the Docs, Sheets, Drive, all of that. So we sell all of that in a business context for organizations. And we're truly global business.

10:54And so the challenges are really thinking about what do we need thinking 2025? Where do we want to be focusing on more next year? how do we think about the portfolio that we have of marketing initiatives? How are we using our events? For example, our Google Cloud Next event in April to highlight all of the new that's coming. How do we think about reaching out to developers? That's been an increasingly important aspect, particularly because developers are such the tastemakers for AI right now. And so, of course, we're marketing and thinking about how to reach decision makers, but it's really the kind of twofold part of the developers and the decision makers.

11:34So we think about the different audiences, we think about the different products, we think about the ecosystem with our partners, all of these pieces coming together. And also think about how do we live within the broader Google ecosystem? Because of course we use Gemini within what we're marketing and producing in Google Cloud, but Gemini is also a key part of the rest of Google. So hopefully people use the Gemini app and chat with that. And so how do we integrate with the best of all of Google, but also highlight specifically for our audience? What does that mean? I don't think there's a magic formula for this.

12:07I think it's having a great team. I think it's having really clear OKRs. Google manages through objectives and key results and having a really clear set of target outcomes that we're thinking about, ensuring that those are lined up and And everybody in the organization understands how their role ladders up to the core objectives that we're trying to do, always keeping our customers at the center of it and making sure that as marketers, we're spending enough time with the customers directly and with our sales team and all of the go-to-market teams that are working with the customers while also spending time with all of the technology leaders, the GMs and the product leaders, the engineers, so we know what's coming.

12:47and within marketing, our CMO of all of Google, Lorraine Tuhill talks about this concept of know the user, which in our case are all of the users of Google Cloud, know the magic, which is all the technology, and our job of marketers is connecting the two. And so if we keep that top of mind of connecting the users and the magic, that is always a good North Star. Amazing. It's amazing. And it's also, you know, there's the intangibles about being a CMO such as yourself with the experience and perspective that you have. I mean, there's ability just to lead leaders, right? And again, across a portfolio of products that are really changing, especially introduced AI.

13:28And we're talking about acceleration of everything now. if you could kind of think about the last several years, what do you think from a soft skill or just, you know, what's some of the things that you think have been able to position you to, again, be the one that they're trusting? Hey, like in some ways you've had to see where this thing's headed and you've gotten it right in many ways. You're still there kicking ass and taking names. So how do you, yeah, how do you build a trust there? What do you think, what's been able to position you to be consistently strong in that role of leader over the past almost 10 years?

14:07Yeah. I think one of the things that I've gotten much better at and with the help of our team is what we call rhythm of the business and really being able to think every quarter, we have a quarterly marketing review of looking at all of our objectives of that quarter. And it's focused on what did we learn, not just what did we do. And so that we're constantly learning from each other and then using that to inform the future of where do we want to go. And being in that kind of learning organization and being able to have the hard conversations as a team with each other and say, like, is this working or is this not working?

14:43And if this isn't working, how do we work together to make it work better? Or what do we think we can do next year? Because it's a journey, whether we're building campaigns or we're trying to connect the campaigns we build to the revenue outcomes all the way through. There's a technical element of being able to link together all the systems to really understand how the inputs affect the outputs. And I think it's having both a short-term view, like this sense of urgency, but also a longer-term view of where are we trying to get 6, 12, 18, 24 months from now so that we can build toward the future that we want to be marketing in and being able to make the best decisions with the right information.

15:24Yeah. You have an ability. One could say that as you're planning out the next 12 months, as you're kind of shaping the strategy for Google Cloud and Google Workspace and where this business gets to head. I mean, Google as an organization, they have an ability to, there's not unlimited, but virtually unlimited resources and abilities to move things quick, to test and iterate, to fail fast, to so many things you get to do. And you're also sitting kind of, again, at this intersection where you've got, you know, the major players, AWS, you know, and Microsoft and Google, we're all kind of sitting, we're all sitting at the table and each of these organizations have access to talent, access to resources, access to seeing where they think the puck is headed.

16:09Knowing that you have that ability and capability, and you've got the team of amazing people that are supporting this. And you also look to your right and your left and you see the competition and you see innovation, how do you view like the best way to move forward when you can do many things and so can they? And they're, you know, and these are often happening, but I get how I'm thinking about just prioritizing where you think the puck is going, knowing where the competitors who are also fiercely moving fast as fast as they can to like, it takes into kind of your thought process there and how you evaluate that.

16:41Yeah, I mean, certainly looking at the competitive dynamic is critical and it's evolving. So two years ago, we would have not said OpenAI and ChatGPT was a key competitor. Of course, now they are increasingly showing up in enterprise conversations that we're showing up in. And so we can't even have a, oh, is it a fine set of competitors? I mean, of course, AWS and Microsoft are big competitors as well. But there's also a number of startups that we keep eyes on as well. So we have to spend time looking externally and looking out to the market and seeing what's happening, but can't get overly rotated on what competitors are doing.

17:19Because what I was talking before is kind of know the magic. We know what technology we're building. We know where we have really great technology strengths. So for example, we have an integrated and optimized set of technology that starts with the chips and the TPUs that we have all the way through to the agents that we can bring to market and allow people to build with. And we have to really understand, okay, why does that matter? And what cases is that working for? Where are our customers happiest? And really starting with customer success as a core North Star element, because if we are delivering for our customers, then we can keep leaning into that and really using our customers as the best storytellers and having it not just be Google says or Google Cloud says, but having customers like Carrefour or Warner Brothers or some of these Puma all recently, Snap shared stories about, for example, how they're using our AI and highlighting them as the best ways to tell what's possible.

18:20You mentioned AI agents. I want to kind of click on that. I know that's been one of the many hot topics that a lot of brands have been talking about lately. I know Salesforce, Dreamforce, they spend a bunch of time talking about their agents. And I'm talking to a lot of technologists and it seems like there's a race in this world of AI agents and the capability of an AI agent. I know Google is right there as well. Just give us your perspective and opinion on AI agents as a utility and the use cases that you're seeing are really exciting. And then again, using that word, kind of where's the puck headed regarding AI agents and kind of where do you see it all going?

19:00Yeah. So I think about AI agents in a number of different categories. So we have, for example, creative agents where we would highlight how a company like Puma has built an agent to help them create customized creative specifically for their audiences. And then they can customize that creative and it does better in market when it's relevant. If you're marketing in Japan and you show a Japanese landscape or cityscape, that audience there will feel like that marketing is more relevant and it performs better. So there's agents like that. There's employee agents where it's helping employees better draft or communicate.

19:39We recently shared a story of Randstat, which is one of the world's biggest recruiting companies and helping their employees move faster to create the best job descriptions in any language around the world. And so we think of agents as a collection of technology that uses AI as a core part of it, but to achieve a set of outcomes, often a business set of outcomes, as opposed to just a single piece of technology. But it always starts with the why, like what are you using this agent for and what outcomes do I hope to achieve with this? Or if it's to be able to better engage with customers so we can answer their questions faster than we might use agents to help customer service reps, or this is our customer engagement suite, for example, like a packaged application, which is an agent to help customers be able to get their questions answered.

20:28So I think you'll increasingly hear the concept of agents in terms of being built. What I think we will start hearing more is, are agents working on behalf of a whole team, or can individuals have agents that are working on their behalf? And I think that's a lot of what will evolve over next year. And will agents ever be able to communicate with each other? And if you kind of built an agent, you know, as an agent to agent communication, as opposed to human to human or not as opposed to, but in addition to, and what would that supplement look like? And these are what we're building together and experimenting with and what makes it so interesting.

21:09And then Vertex AI agent builder is also a thing that people can use to deploy agents now, right? Yeah. So what happens is people go into Google Cloud platform and then they can use Vertex AI. And within Vertex, we have something called the Model Garden, which allows you to choose Google's models like Gemini to build with. Or you could use third party models like Anthropics models, Claude, for example. And then you can, there's technology built in there to create an agent that allows you to achieve an outcome. For example, and some companies might not call these agents, but we recently showed a story for Warner Brothers where they enabled people to create captions much faster.

21:54So it used to be humans would type up captions after listening to a recording or an event or something like that. And now they have essentially captioned AI that automatically generates the captions. And then the human basically approves and gets it done. And she talked about how what used to take hours can sometimes take minutes now. And being able to make that shift so that the humans on the team can then work in higher value-added areas. And so these are just different types of examples where AI is coming into play. Yeah, it's incredible to, yeah, one, to just be witnessing it. And also there's also a part of us like that are, that's contributing to the, to where this is all headed.

22:35I'm always thinking of, okay, what's next and then what, and then what, you know, and how rapidly we're getting there. And just, and these, the utility of some of these agents, like you said, across these different functions of customer or marketing or creative, you know, content, et cetera. Like it becomes this real superpower. Have you, do you spend much time with, with GPT and claw? Why do you kind of keep those as kind of part of your tool belt to use and test and keep your hand on the pulse there? Or are you just only Gemini all the way, all day, every day, Gemini? I certainly play with some of the other products as well.

23:10And sometimes we'll try a certain prompt with Gemini and then try it with other, you know, ChatGPT or other areas to see how it's diverging. It's been great to see the speed of improvement of Gemini. I know early on we were playing catch up a little bit, but now I feel like Gemini is a really good place. And there's a lot of times where I hear from friends and others that used to use ChatGPT and now they're like, oh, Gemini is really working for me now. And the integration of Gemini with some of our workspace apps and others really makes a difference from our productivity standpoint. I was going to ask about productivity just in like what you're seeing.

23:48I mean, I saw it was like, what, 40, 45 % productivity increase or something. but some kind of stat I saw that's just incredible to see. Are you seeing that in the marketing org and seeing how fast AI has accelerated productivity? Yeah, I mean, so I can share some data from a study we did recently about the ROI of Gen.AI. And that's where we saw it, where 45 % of organizations report improved productivity, employee productivity, which is of Gen.AI. So the question is like, where is that showing up and how is that showing up? And so we've been doing some surveys on our own team about how you're using AI.

24:26And even between the first quarter of this year and the second quarter of this year and the third quarter, the change within our own team of how much they're using AI, what went from weekly to now daily, it's changed dramatically over the course of this year. And we now within Google overall have essentially an AI marketing toolbox to use all of the different technology. For example, we have something called Gems that we use that you can kind of create a little kind of custom use case. For example, like each week at the end of the week, our team creates snippets of essentially what's gone on across around the world.

25:02And it used to be somewhat tedious where somebody would type up a snippet. This isn't an unusual thing to kind of create like a summary report. But often what now you can essentially train it so it can just read an email and create like a three line snippet from that whole email that somebody might have written. after a really great Google Cloud Summit in London. So there was all of this data and it does a fabulous job if you train it correctly and to create this. So we have on our team something called AI Boost Bites where our team created that every week there's a new essentially AI challenge that goes out.