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

Summary

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

Host: Jeremy Bergeron
Guest: Allison Wagenfeld, Chief Marketing Officer, Google Cloud
Release Date: December 4, 2024

In this insightful episode of Marketing Trends, host Jeremy Bergeron engages in a deep conversation with Allison Wagenfeld, the Chief Marketing Officer of Google Cloud. With over eight years at Google, Allison shares her extensive experience in steering marketing strategies amidst the rapidly evolving AI landscape. This summary encapsulates their discussion, highlighting key points, strategic insights, and actionable advice for marketing professionals aiming to thrive in the age of artificial intelligence.

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Elevating AI Literacy Across Teams

Timestamp: [00:01]

Allison opens the discussion by emphasizing the critical need to democratize AI knowledge within organizations. She states:

“We have to lift the AI literacy of everybody on the team. 45% of organizations report improved employee productivity because of Gen AI.”
– Allison Wagenfeld [00:01]

To achieve this, Google Cloud employs tools like NotebookLM, facilitating bite-sized learning experiences that enable team members to experiment with various AI technologies. Weekly AI challenges allow employees to engage with new tools, fostering a culture of continuous learning and adaptability.

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Demonstrating AI Tools: The Power of NotebookLM

Timestamp: [02:50]

Allison showcases NotebookLM, a tool that transforms diverse content into actionable formats. She shares a live demonstration where NotebookLM generates a synthetic podcast based on the Marketing Trends website, illustrating AI’s capability to streamline content creation:

“It's effectively like having a really intelligent assistant that's analyzing and summarizing and organizing these things effortlessly.”
– Jeremy Bergeron [05:10]

This demonstration underscores AI’s potential to enhance productivity by automating routine tasks, allowing marketers to focus on strategic initiatives.

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Integrating AI into Marketing Workflows

Timestamp: [06:54]

Allison delves into how AI is interwoven into her role, enhancing various aspects of marketing operations:

• Content Creation: Using AI to generate ad scripts and evaluate audience perception.
• Customer Feedback Analysis: Summarizing focus group data to inform marketing strategies.
• Campaign Management: Accelerating the creation and deployment of marketing assets through AI-driven processes.

She highlights the transformative impact of AI on productivity:

“We're building out this marketing studio so it's effectively all over the map. But increasingly I've been using NotebookLM... it's like having a really intelligent assistant.”
– Allison Wagenfeld [05:54]

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Managing a Vast Marketing Portfolio

Timestamp: [09:39]

As CMO of Google Cloud, Allison oversees an extensive portfolio that includes Google Cloud Platform, Workspace, and emerging AI technologies. She outlines her strategic approach:

• Clear Objectives and Key Results (OKRs): Ensuring that every team member understands how their role contributes to overarching goals.
• Customer-Centric Focus: Maintaining close interactions with customers and sales teams to align marketing efforts with market needs.
• Technology Integration: Leveraging Google’s internal technologies like Gemini to enhance marketing initiatives.

Allison emphasizes the importance of a cohesive narrative across global markets:

“Our job as marketers is connecting the users and the magic that is always a good North Star.”
– Allison Wagenfeld [13:15]

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Building Trust and Leadership in Marketing

Timestamp: [14:13]

Discussing her leadership philosophy, Allison highlights the importance of fostering a learning organization. She introduces the concept of Rhythm of the Business, which involves quarterly reviews focused on learning and adapting strategies based on performance insights.

“It's always about learning from each other and then using that to inform the future of where do we want to go.”
– Allison Wagenfeld [14:13]

This approach ensures that marketing strategies remain agile and responsive to both internal and external changes.

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The Competitive AI Landscape

Timestamp: [16:46]

Allison addresses the dynamic nature of AI competition, acknowledging both established players like AWS and Microsoft and agile startups such as OpenAI. She underscores the necessity of balancing awareness of competitors with a strong focus on Google’s unique technological strengths.

“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.”
– Allison Wagenfeld [16:46]

By prioritizing customer success and leveraging advanced AI capabilities, Google Cloud differentiates itself in a crowded market.

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The Rise of AI Agents

Timestamp: [19:05]

Exploring the burgeoning field of AI agents, Allison categorizes their applications:

1. Creative Agents: Enhancing marketing content tailored to specific audiences, as exemplified by Puma’s customized creative assets.
2. Employee Agents: Assisting internal teams in tasks like drafting job descriptions, demonstrated by Randstad’s implementation.
3. Customer Engagement: Streamlining customer interactions through intelligent agents that provide swift and accurate responses.

She speculates on the future of AI agents, pondering their potential for team-based operations and inter-agent communications.

“What would that supplement look like? And these are what we're building together and experimenting with and what makes it so interesting.”
– Allison Wagenfeld [21:15]

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Enhancing Productivity with Gen AI

Timestamp: [23:12]

Allison shares compelling data from a recent study indicating that 45% of organizations have seen improved employee productivity due to Generative AI. She elaborates on practical implementations within her team:

• AI Boost Bytes: A weekly 10-minute learning module introducing new AI technologies.
• Synthetic Reporting: Automating the creation of summary reports from extensive data inputs.

“We have to lift the AI literacy of everybody on the team... Boost Bytes has been a real winner.”
– Allison Wagenfeld [24:07]

These initiatives demonstrate Google Cloud’s commitment to embedding AI into daily workflows, thereby enhancing efficiency and fostering innovation.

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Fostering an AI-Driven Culture

Timestamp: [26:23]

Beyond structured training, Allison emphasizes the importance of organic learning and collaborative experimentation:

• Idea Incubation: Platforms akin to “Shark Tank” where teams propose and develop new AI-driven initiatives.
• Peer Learning: Encouraging chat groups for sharing AI successes and challenges.

“It's really all over the map. It's everything from organic learning to some type of training to building in workflows.”
– Allison Wagenfeld [26:50]

This multifaceted approach ensures that AI literacy permeates all levels of the organization, driving sustained technological adoption and creativity.

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Sales and Marketing Alignment in the AI Era

Timestamp: [37:12]

Allison discusses the pivotal role of aligning sales and marketing teams to capitalize on AI advancements. Strategies include:

• Joint Planning Sessions: Synchronizing sales and marketing strategies during off-site meetings.
• Feedback Integration: Leveraging insights from sales teams to refine marketing approaches in real-time.

“Sales and marketing integration is always a super high priority... having both qualitative and quantitative feedback from the market is what I think makes us all better at our jobs.”
– Allison Wagenfeld [37:46]

This alignment ensures cohesive go-to-market strategies that are responsive to evolving market dynamics.

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Advice for Aspiring CMOs

Timestamp: [40:34]

Concluding the episode, Allison offers strategic counsel for up-and-coming marketing leaders:

1. Embrace Risk and Innovate: Seek out white spaces and be willing to propose and experiment with new ideas.
2. Foster Personal Relationships: Build meaningful connections within the organization to unlock collaborative opportunities.
3. Stay Externally Informed: Continuously monitor industry trends and competitor strategies to incorporate fresh perspectives.

“The first phase of my tech career... that opportunity for me in my mindset of like, oh, let's bring it.”
– Allison Wagenfeld [40:34]

Her advice underscores the importance of proactive engagement, continuous learning, and strategic networking in achieving sustained success.

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Conclusion

Allison Wagenfeld’s insights provide a comprehensive roadmap for integrating AI into marketing strategies effectively. By fostering AI literacy, embracing innovative tools, and maintaining strategic alignment between sales and marketing, organizations can navigate the complexities of the AI landscape. Her leadership philosophy, rooted in continuous learning and customer-centricity, serves as a valuable guide for marketing professionals aiming to lead in the digital age.

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Notable Quotes:

• Allison Wagenfeld [00:01]: “We have to lift the AI literacy of everybody on the team. 45% of organizations report improved employee productivity because of Gen AI.”
• Jeremy Bergeron [05:10]: “It's like having a really intelligent assistant that's analyzing and summarizing and organizing these things effortlessly.”
• Allison Wagenfeld [14:13]: “It's always about learning from each other and then using that to inform the future of where do we want to go.”
• Allison Wagenfeld [37:46]: “Sales and marketing integration is always a super high priority... having both qualitative and quantitative feedback from the market is what I think makes us all better at our jobs.”
• Allison Wagenfeld [40:34]: “The first phase of my tech career... that opportunity for me in my mindset of like, oh, let's bring it.”

---

This episode of Marketing Trends offers a wealth of knowledge for marketing leaders seeking to harness AI’s potential. Allison Wagenfeld’s experience at Google Cloud exemplifies how strategic integration of AI can drive innovation, enhance productivity, and maintain competitive advantage in a dynamic market.

Transcript

[Allison Wagenfeld]

This is mission.org how 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 because of 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 minutes learning experience where you learn about a technology like Gem and then you try it. And so it's one of the ways that we are training up our whole team to see all the technology that's available in these kind of bite sized learning experiences.

[Jeremy Bergeron]

Hello everybody. Welcome back to Marketing Trends. This is your host as always, Jeremy Bergeron. I'm super, super excited. This, this legitimately has been a, 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 Allison Wagenfeld is the chief Marketing Officer of Google Cloud. Think of, you know, Google Cloud platform and Workspace. She's been at Google for over eight years. We 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, this person has seen many, many things. So Allison, we can talk about your incredible. Achie know we will not be able to do that all in, 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. We're super excited to have you.

[Allison Wagenfeld]

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.

[Jeremy Bergeron]

Seriously, I mean you, you blew our minds right when you hopped in before we press record, which, let's just get right into it, Allison, because I was chatting with Hillary about the future of marketing trends and where podcasting and media is going, and AI is weaving its every part of the world of media and storytelling. And then Allison 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. Take us into what you just showed us, because I think this is where we're headed, people.

[Allison Wagenfeld]

Yeah. So we were just talking about some of my favorite AI tools that I use every day. And I reference NotebookLM, 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 going to have a tough time if I actually show, like, include on your show a podcast about marketing trends? And 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.

[Jeremy Bergeron]

Rundown on missions marketing trends podcast.

[Allison Wagenfeld]

Right.

[Jeremy Bergeron]

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.

[Allison Wagenfeld]

Should absolutely be tuning in. You know, it's the access that gets me. I mean, listening to this show, it's like you're sitting in on a masterclass in marketing leadership. It's straight from the people who are actually out there shaping the industry.

[Jeremy Bergeron]

Ooh, kidding. We're talking some serious heavy hitters here.

[Allison Wagenfeld]

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.

[Jeremy Bergeron]

Seeing how they actually think, not just what they do.

[Allison Wagenfeld]

Exactly. And the topics, super diverse. I mean, one episode, you've got Linda Lee, the CMO of Campbell's Soup. Oh, yeah, I remember that one. All right, so that was purely based on one link of putting in. And so it got out there. And sharing it would have played for 12 more minutes if I let it and probably done a rundown of whatever notebooklm 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 those. 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.

[Jeremy Bergeron]

Wow. I mean, absolutely incredible. I mean, and again, like, I can't emphasize this enough. Like, this was just the hyperlink to our home, like, to our Marketing Trends webpage. Like, this was. Go to our website, click on Marketing Trends, and that's all this information was being pulled from. And, you know, now I have another tab open on my computer, thanks to. Thanks to you. And so NotebookLM is definitely gonna be. I'm going. I'm going way deeper there. I mean, it's. It's like having this clearly, it's 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. That's incredible. So you saw it first, people. You saw it first.

[Allison Wagenfeld]

Yeah. So super fun. But that's just one example of what we're starting to see. And 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, 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.

[Jeremy Bergeron]

I got to ask just about kind of utility, like, in your role. Right. You know, I'm sure that you have to pull on some mini tools in the Allison tool belt, right? There's strategy and leadership and managing and, you know, conflict resolution and all the things that you get to, you know, 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.

[Allison Wagenfeld]

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. So I don't know if you're a workspace user but within workspace.

[Jeremy Bergeron]

Absolutely.

[Allison Wagenfeld]

Of Gemini 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 to 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 so it's effectively all over the map. But increasingly I've been using NotebookLM. 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 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? Is it clearer? So it's effectively assistant 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.

[Jeremy Bergeron]

Yeah, incredible. There's something that I'm just like, I gotta have an understanding of your experience kind of overseeing such a big portfolio of products. Right. I mean again, we're not talking about, you know, one little product that's serving, you know, a small segment. You're talking about, you know, major, major products that are, that all have their own initiatives and their own, you know, technology and leaders and the teams that are supporting those leaders. Just how do you look at the ecosystem that is Google Cloud? Like one thing that, 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, how do we lead? How do we know where the puck is going, how do we get there in a, in a really efficient way. But it's a massive, it's a massive product suite, it's a big team, it's, it's got all of its 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?

[Allison Wagenfeld]

Yeah, 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.

[Jeremy Bergeron]

Amazing.

[Allison Wagenfeld]

Great growth and quarter over quarter for Google Cloud. Well actually it's great earnings for Google overall and also profitability which is emerged in the last couple of years because when I started eight years ago, maybe we were like 2 to 3 billion dollar business and not profitable at that time. So really, really hyper growth period. And 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 setup portfolio as well as Google Workspace. And so the apps that everybody loves for their personal or for their kids, everything the Doc sheets drive all of that. So we sell all of that in a business context for organizations and we're truly global business. And so the challenges are really thinking about what do we need thinking 2025, what 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. So 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 thinking 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. I think it's having a great team. I think it's having really clear okrs. Google manages through objectives and key results and having really clear set of target outcomes that we're thinking about, ensuring that those are lined up 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. And 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 that's if we keep that top of mind of connecting the users and the magic that is always a good North Star.

[Jeremy Bergeron]

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 across again across a portfolio of products that are really changing, especially introduce AI and we're talking about acceleration of everything. Now if you could kind of think about the last several years, what, what do you think from a soft skill or just, you know, what's, 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 the trust there? What do you, what do you think? What's been able to position you to. To. Yeah, to be consistently, you know, strong in that role of leader over the past almost 10 years.

[Allison Wagenfeld]

Yeah, 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 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? And 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, 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 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.

[Jeremy Bergeron]

Yeah, you have, you have an ability. You could, you know, one could say that, you know, 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. There's so many things you get to do and you're also sitting kind of again at this intersection where you've got the major players, AWS 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, knowing that you have that ability and a 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 again how they can 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 too, like takes into kind of your thought process there and how you evaluate that.

[Allison Wagenfeld]

Yeah, 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, but 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 always a defined 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. Because where 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? In 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.

[Jeremy Bergeron]

You mentioned AI agents. I want to kind of click on that. I know that's been one of the many hot topics that have 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's right there as well. Just give us kind of your, 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?

[Allison Wagenfeld]

Yeah, 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 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. We recently shared a story of Randstad, 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, is like a packaged application which is an agent to help customers be able to get their questions answered. So 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.

[Jeremy Bergeron]

And then Vertex AI Agent Builder is also a thing that people can use to deploy agents now, right?

[Allison Wagenfeld]

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 Anthropic's 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. So 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.

[Jeremy Bergeron]

Yeah, it's incredible to. Yeah. One to just be witnessing it. And also there's also a part of us like that that's contributing to the, to where this is all headed. I'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, the utility of some of these agents, like you said, across these different functions of customer or marketing or creative, you know, content, etc, like it becomes this real superpower. Have you, do you spend much time with, with GPT and Claw? Do you kind of keep those as kind of part of your tool belt to, to, to use and test and keep your hand on the pulse there? Are you just only Gemini all the way, all day, every day. Gemini.

[Allison Wagenfeld]

I certainly play with some of the other products as well. And sometimes we'll try a certain prompt with Gemini and then try it with other 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 in 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 a productivity standpoint.

[Jeremy Bergeron]

I was going to ask about productivity just in like what you're seeing. I mean I saw that was like what, 40, 45% productivity increase or something, but some kind of stat. I saw that. Just incredible to see. Are you seeing that in the marketing Org and seeing how fast AI has accelerated productivity?

[Allison Wagenfeld]

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 because 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've, you're using AI. And even between the first quarter of this year and the second quarter of this year and the third quarter, like the change within our own team of how much they're using AI, you know, what went from like weekly to now daily, it's really like changed dramatically over the course of this year. So. 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. You know, 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. And it used to be somewhat tedious where somebody would type up a snippet. This isn't an unusual thing to kind of create a, 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 Bytes where our team created that 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. And so it's one of the ways that we are training up our whole team to see all the technology that's available in these kind of bite sized learning experiences. And that seems to be working well with our team because I imagine all of your listeners are who are working in organizations are how do I increase AI literacy and 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, you know, really getting comfortable. We have to lift the AI literacy of everybody on the team and we've been experimenting with different ways to do that. And Boost Bytes has been a real winner.

[Jeremy Bergeron]

I love that. Just what a way to upscale which is, you know, that reminds me of Google was doing that when I was there. I was there and I left in 2016. I think you were just coming on board in 2016. But it's just a testament truly to how much they think about how do we invest in the whole org and make sure everyone's upscaling. Is there anything else you're doing besides the bite size? I love that concept. Like hey, here's what's new, check it out. Try it. Anything else that you're doing to kind.

[Allison Wagenfeld]

Of level up everyone, all kinds of things. So we have within Google and something that's almost like a shark tank type of thing, where people are bringing up new ideas about how they could be using AI and sharing those and judges voting on the best ones to go put into practice. We have chat groups all the time that everyone's sharing. They're like, hey, I just tried this. This worked really well for me. Or I have this project that I'm trying to get done in the next 24 hours. Anybody suggest how I might be able to use AI to speed that up? So a lot of the learning is just happening organically across teams at the same time. So it's really all over the map. It's everything from organic learning to some type of training to building in workflows. And so there's a change management type of opportunity as well. But I think overall literacy coming up is going to help every part of that.

[Jeremy Bergeron]

That's amazing. Is there also like, ELT AI literacy happening just amongst the folks kind of in the elt, like, hey, this is how the CFO has been navigating or using this thing. And is there chatter amongst the ELT separately about how AI is impacting your roles individually?

[Allison Wagenfeld]

It's across the board. I mean, I see it at kind of all levels. And then even at like Cloud Next last year, which is our big conference that we had in Vegas, we had a session there where a number of leaders, like one of our sales leaders, myself as a marketing leader, HR leader, shared with our customers some of what we're using with our own technology. And sometimes we talk about we need to be customer zero of everything that we're building to make sure that we can be, get users, test it out, work with our engineers to improve it, Improve it. But at the same time, I feel like I'm learning from other marketers all the time as well, where they share something that they did. And I'd be like, oh, that's cool, we need to do that as well. So it's just this period of, it's one of the most fun times to work in. Marketing is a rapid innovation and everybody simultaneously feels a little bit behind because you always feel as if somebody else is doing something newer, cooler, more interesting, more integrated. And then you have these like sparks of like, wow, that's super cool. I got that done and I couldn't, you know, much faster or better than I did before. So it's keeping it all in balance again.

[Jeremy Bergeron]

I feel like, the balance is another key superpower that you have across the. There's no way that CV you've been able to do what you've done so well if you couldn't access balance. I mean, it's got to be. It's a clear tool in the superpower tool belt. And that's challenging, especially in such a fast, again, such a fast moving space. Allison?

[Allison Wagenfeld]

Yeah, I guess you'd have to ask my kids or my family if I'm keeping it all in balance but doing the best that I can.

[Jeremy Bergeron]

Heck, yeah. Yeah, imagine. So. Think about your zoom out and think about just the past eight years, eight years plus at Google, leading Google Cloud and Google Workspace, and take us into, like, a recent challenge that a problem you had to really help solve. What was something, you know, bring us into the moment of, like, okay, you wake up and here's this really big challenge that's on your desk now or in your inbox or however it got to you. And I want to just kind of get an understanding of how you thought about how you thought about solving that problem and what you did to solve the problem and who you kind of brought in and what was, you know, kind of the end result of that. I want to let people see, like, how you think about solving problems at the level that you're at now and some of the things that, again, come on your plate, like, okay, okay, roll up the sleeves. Allison's going to have to do some, you know, some. Some deep diving here. What's an example of that in the past eight years?

[Allison Wagenfeld]

Yeah, I would give an example of about two and a half years ago when, if you went and, you know, the old concept of put all your marketing up on a wall and what does it look like it may be two and a half, three years ago, if we had. I mean, most of our. A lot of our marketing is digital, but let's just say you kind of put it up and it's kind of the digital wall. It did not have a cohesive story. Maybe in one part of the world. We talked about one set of features. Somebody else we were talking about, we weren't really talking as much about AI, but there was not a cohesive and consistent narrative. And so we basically working together with our product marketing team, our demand team, and our creative and brand team and said we need to have a platform that we're all kind of essentially saying the same thing. And of course, we can have variations of it around the world. And so that's when we put together a brief and started working with an agency and built out the platform that we have now called the New Way to Cloud. And so we basically said, well, what is it that we're trying to show? That there's an old way, which is really what our competitors are all about, Microsoft and aws. And there's a new way, which is how Google Cloud is coming to market with fresher technology perspectives, more collaborative tool sets like Google Workspace, different forms of investment in AI. And so we had to set up this distinction between the old way and the new way and did this through this new brand platform called the New Way to Cloud. And then it's not just about rolling it out, it's about, it's not about introducing it, it's about how do you make this part of everything that we do. And so it was part of our Cloud next experience where we based everything about what's the new way to do something. It's in all of our cloud summits around the world. It's in all of our digital campaigns where we highlighted the old way and the new way. And now even this year, we've recorded over 150 customers in what we've built out called Transformation Studio, where they share what they're doing in the new way using our technology and now have a whole customer series called New Way now, which is they're showing like I used to do things this way, or our customers used to have to search for a new product this way. But now in the new way, they can upload a picture of the product they're trying to buy and we can instantly tell them where to find it and how to buy it. And that's the new way. So we've had to come up with a common platform, integrate it into everything that we're doing, train everybody on our team about how and when, essentially like brand guidelines effectively, and then bring all of our customer storytelling into the same consistent framework. And now we're two years into this. And now at least as we build something new, even when the work with mlb, which they catch the game like never before, what's the new way to watch a baseball game? Well, now it has integrated statistics into it. So how do we tell that story that when you used to watch a game, you only could hear what the announcers knew from something in the history, but now Fox Sports can within seconds pull new statistics out because our Google Cloud customers, well, that's the new way of doing a broadcast. And so it's become a much better way for us to do customer storytelling in A consistent cohesive manner around the world. And I feel like we've made progress on that. It's not perfect, nothing. You know, marketing is always an evolution, but it's one of the areas that it was a big problem and I'm proud of how we have helped kind of move things forward.

[Jeremy Bergeron]

Do you feel like you, I mean I'm thinking almost five years ago you came on this show thinking about some of the, the bets that you made, like saying okay, this is where I think again, I think where it's headed, I think where we're going. What were some of the things that you were right about and what were some of the things maybe that you were like, oh, you know what? I thought that by this time we'd already be here. That maybe hasn't happened if at all.

[Allison Wagenfeld]

It's interesting. I think the bets have been pretty consistent. You know, five years ago we would have talked about AI, would have talked about security. It's more about how we leaned into those bets or even talking about developers. And the challenge is always kind of staying the course when there's new opportunities or when you maybe we did an acquisition and so we changed our security messaging some as the Mandiant came in. And you know, it may seem like Google has unlimited resources but you know, we're constantly striving and focusing on profitability and that like challenges how much we can invest in marketing in other areas. And so we're constantly making trade offs about should we invest more here or there. And so I think over time we've turned up and down different parts of our investment and put resources in. And so I think the broad categories probably haven't changed but how we've invested behind them and reminding ourselves sometimes like okay, if we had stayed the course a couple of years ago in some areas we might be in a different place now and being able to at this time of year, as we're planning for 2025, where do we want to place bets and stay the course? But also we have to constantly shave off the areas that are less productive or less successful. Or sometimes the long tail of events can really drag down a team because you can use up so much people time of managing those and being really good about just making prioritization. It's just a constant struggle.

[Jeremy Bergeron]

Do you see more in person events being a big part of the, you know, the flywheel for growth on the Google cloud product side and more, more IRL events happening in 25 or were you still doing a lot of hybrid stuff like where do you See kind of, yeah, the actual in person events driving growth next year.

[Allison Wagenfeld]

So I think it's kind of leaning behind some of the big ones like our cloud next, our cloud summits around the world we have this concept of live in labs AI live in labs where we have a lot of hands on activities for developers. We've increasingly invested more and shared events with some of the other parts of Google. Like for example we now do a CMO AI labs together with our ads counterparts where we can show CMOs how to use AI technology and really productive ways for marketing. So events are you know, live events certainly critical but that is not the only thing that we do and we have to constantly make sure that we trade off those and think through carefully about what we do as Google hosted, first party hosted and in connection with third party hosted events where we can show up at industry conferences, HIMS or NRF or some industry sectors where we need to be there or sometimes with partners. You know, we've important partnerships with companies like SAP or Salesforce and show up together with them at their events. So it's, that's certainly one of the biggest sets of prioritization trade offs we need to do at this time of year. Thinking about for next year how much we invest and where we invest.

[Jeremy Bergeron]

The other thing that I think it would be interesting to know is sales and marketing alignment. What's if again think about you know, just your past eight years there, right. What's become more important now for sales and marketing alignment? What's working well to align sales and marketing because clearly you gotta be, you gotta be nailing that to continue to grow like Google has. Are you seeing. Yeah, new approaches, new strategies that really support sales and marketing alignment in 2024 into 2025. Like what's working really well across those two orgs?

[Allison Wagenfeld]

Yeah. So sales and marketing alignment is super critical for us and love working with our sales team and so we work in on a regional basis and then we work with central teams across sales and we actually for the first time this year had our planning off site the same as our leadership planning off site the same week at same location as the sales leadership planning off site. So we did some shared sessions together where we tackled some of the biggest opportunities we have for next year which I loved. And it was just really great to be able to trade ideas together and be like okay, this is how we could do it differently for next year. And so that's, that's just core to what we do. And we think about it with our sales team, the Go to market teams more broadly, our partner teams. I mean, those are relationships that are 100% essential to how we go to market. And getting as much feedback from our sales teams now is critical so that we can really lean in together and help set them up for success next year.

[Jeremy Bergeron]

Do you think that there are, are there kind of table stakes tools, technology that just need to be there for sales and marketing now that maybe weren't, weren't as priority before? Are there things like, okay, we gotta have these, this tech or we gotta have this approach, whereas maybe in the past that wasn't as a high priority.

[Allison Wagenfeld]

I think that sales and marketing integration is always a super high priority. It's whether it's how much data you have to drive that which is evolving. And so being able to be data driven of like, okay, these types of campaigns work better or these types of shared content works better. And being able to have both qualitative and quantitative feedback from the market is what I think makes us all better at our jobs.

[Jeremy Bergeron]

I knew this time would come when the end of our conversation is here and I'm like, this is where I want AI to help us stop time, Alison, so we don't have to have these conversations end so quickly. But I want you to think about one is there's a certain segment of our audience who are up and coming CMOs. Right. We have, we certainly speak to your peers, other, you know, Fortune 1000 CMOs, but we also have another ton of director level and managerial level and boots on the ground marketers and marketing leaders who really aim to be where you are and are inspired by your journey. What would you share with them? What would you kind of give to that part of the audience? Or what advice would you share to someone who really like sees you, who's been able to be so relevant and innovative and you know, at really at the top of your game consistently in a world where you can blink and be, you know, and not be relevant. Right. You've been able to do it so well and really with pride. What would you share to those folks that really, you know, want to be there and are aiming to head that way?

[Allison Wagenfeld]

Yeah, so I would say a few things. One is be comfortable taking some risks. So look for white space. Look for areas where you might have some specific expertise or you're following the market, you're looking externally and seeing, hey, like we might have an opportunity here and be open to proposing a new direction forward and use multiple channels to propose new directions forward. One of them, I would say show up in the office, if you are at a company that's hybrid or has person elements to it, be there at the beginning of the day, be there at the end of the day. You know, show up at lunches or when there's different groups getting together, or if there's a town hall meeting for the team and some people are doing it online and some people are doing in person, be in person. Because sometimes just a little bit of a hallway conversation is an opportunity to pitch an idea. I mean, interestingly, the very first phase of my tech career way back when, and Intuit, when I started the Quicken Loans business, foreign to it, that conversation came about as a hallway conversation with someone who had happened to interview me where I said, you know, the Internet's growing and I think we have an opportunity. And he said, oh, the chairman of the company is looking for someone to investigate the mortgage industry. And it was a hallway conversation. I said, I'll do that. You know, let me go ahead and take a couple weeks to put together an initial business plan and proposed it. But had I never had that serendipitous hallway conversation, I'm not sure what Quicken Loans like, whether we would have started it, launched it, I'm sure some different version of it. But at that point in time, that was an opportunity for me in my, like, 26 year old kind of mindset of like, oh, let's bring it. So that would be certainly, number one is looking for white spaces, and number two is ensuring that you're always kind of keeping a pulse on what's happening outside of the company. It's easy to get very internally focused all the time and to be able to see what other companies are doing well, what other things are not working as well. And bringing some of those fresh ideas into your own company is just an opportunity to move forward. And three is taking the time to build some personal relationships within whatever company that you're in. If you hit it off with someone in a short, you know, digital Google Meet, and you're like, oh, I think I really liked the way that person was thinking, ask them to meet for coffee or find a way to engage, because you never really know where some of those personal relationships will lead and where opportunities will come from. And I feel like one of the outcomes of what happened with COVID when everybody was working digitally for so long is that we missed some of those opportunities to spark conversations and build some of those human connections. And I think some of the most creative work comes from those types of conversations and want to ensure that everybody's really leaning into relationships and the creativity that comes from those kinds of diverse viewpoints that can best be built out together often in person.

[Jeremy Bergeron]

I love all of that. I mean like a truly masterclass mic drop moment in how to be thinking about a career and what are the things that you can do to position yourself to be relevant. I love all of that. Alison, this is exceptional. I mean this to me again. I mean I've been hosting for almost four years. You were one of the ones that I was like we gotta get Allison else and back on. So for me as I shift into other things as well, this has been just a moment in my time here that's been incredible. So shout out to you and the whole squad at Google. I know that I inevitably will be paying attention to where the puck is headed and just what a great conversation. Thank you so much for being here.

[Allison Wagenfeld]

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It's an honor to be able to share my journey and highlight all of the great work that our team has been doing and we know the best is yet to come.

[Jeremy Bergeron]

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