Google CMO Lorraine Twohill Talks Product Marketing And Chocolate Chip Cookies

[Music] welcome to the CEO's guide to marketing I'm Seth matlins I've spent my career in marketing both in and Advising the SE suite and I'm now the managing director of the forb CMO Network so look there's data showing that if I were taller I'd have a much better shot at being CEO of a major company which makes me wonder how different things might be if my mom hadn't been 5'2 more relevantly there's also data showing that if I were the CEO of a major company I'd be one of only 10% with any marketing background whatsoever

fully 90% of the chief Executives of the world's largest companies have none which in turn makes me wonder how much more stakeholder value could be created and Enterprise growth driven if more did if more understood how marketing Works how it doesn't what to expect what not to and on what timeline but because they don't have the experience and often don't understand despite sometimes thinking that they do too often too many of today's CEOs and CFOs are suboptimal stewards of the resources given to their Chief marketing officers in order to drive sustainable profitable growth obviously this

serves no one and no company but it does create the opportunity and obligation to increase the sees marketing literacy which brings me to this podcast in service of creating more growth and stakeholder value through a series of candid and connected conversations we're hoping to raise the SE sues marketing IQ and ensure CMOS are best positioned to do their jobs which is to create and capture the demand that drives growth and value with that let's get into it I'm old enough that I remember when in a predominantly cpg World product and brand were inextricably linked parts

of the marketer's remit and I've been thinking a lot about how in a tech driven World they become increasingly separated organizationally engineers and product developers here marketers over there so I wanted to talk to someone who understands product marketing arguably as well as anyone ever and better than almost anyone ever for this episode I'm talking with Lorraine tohill the longtime CMO at Google where she manages a global team responsible for telling the story of Google's brand and bringing to life how its many tools products and services both help millions of businesses grow her teams overseed

Global Marketing for some of the most used brands in the world including Google search Android pixel YouTube Google cloud and the company's expanding Suite of AI tools Lorraine's a native of Carlo Ireland and among a long list of accolades was inducted into the forb CMO Hall of Fame in 2022 I should also note that I first met lurine in 2011 when I interviewed with her for the CMO job at YouTube which as any casual review of my own LinkedIn profile will make clear was a job I did not get I wanted to talk to line

anyway not just because she's an industry Legend but because there are few who understand product marketing and marketing at a product first company better than she does let's get into it all right lorine as you know part of part of what we do every one of our um CEO's guide to marketing episodes is is we ask we ask our guests to give us uh fill in the blank answers to 10 questions in less than 5 minutes so this is the lightning round and we just start it right up front Okay you ready yes sir I

mean I'm not really going to time you but I am going to I do have high pressure now I'm feel I'm feeling a little under pressure now Seth I'm need to have my coffee all right let's let's go you ready marketing is a human connection oh I love that I love that a human connection between what and what well it's in service of the value you create and communicate to your customers yeah what is the human connection between a company and your customer love that a brand is a promise the hard promise you have to

keep yeah now what happens when you don't keep it because inevitably sometimes it's hard to keep it yeah it's in fact probably the hardest thing of all because you've got to deliver it through your product through your customer experience you've got to deliver through your team so if you damage you know break that promise it affects trust it affects your user trust you know I think it's so interesting and of I'm going to I'm going to not count this time against your five minutes thank but but you know you make such a good point that

I think so many marketers missed which is it is delivered through your team through customer service through every touch Point anyone has um with brand product it's not even just telling marketers and again this is not counting against my time but it's I'll be the judge it's you're the boss you're the boss today it's it's the whole company you know it's part of your internal job it's to tell the whole company listen no matter what we do over here if we screw up over here this really is breaking the promise that we've made well that

that that's one of the things you and I have talked about this over time but but what was once in a cmo's quote unquote control is no longer right as marketing's become democratized decentralized often times siloed which we'll get into everybody is a marketer in some respect and fashion or everybody has responsibility for brand I think that's a better way to say it everyone has responsibility for brand I do think that everyone thinks they're the marketer I've always told my whenever you're presenting to the management team of the company any other presentation we get quite

deep into the presentation but in marketing they're interrupting by the agenda yeah you know it's like I went to school so I have an opinion on education so you know everyone everyone has an opinion on marketing right they've seen ads I I I used this line um just because you seen uh Blue Ivy dance at a Beyonce show doesn't mean you can dance doesn't mean you can dance all right so what's the actually I think we're kind of touching on the next two questions what's the hardest part of being a CMO I think for me

you know it's learning how and when to say no and that might mean to a product manager no you can't have your 17 features in one spot or it might mean saying no to all of the crazy asks coming in the door so that you can focus on the bigger wins or it might be saying no to the short-term pressure versus the long-term benefit but you have to learn how to say no yeah you do um especially in a world of unlimited opportunity massive noise but scarce resources whether those resources are are capital time or

human what from your perspective is the hardest part of being a CEO I think driving change trying to change a company I think trying to change strategy while simultaneously keeping morale high and keeping the Mojo strong keeping the culture strong in a company like keeping the culture while driving change is very hard yeah I mean because culture should be part of the change agent thing yes right humans don't like change no and you matter how much you tell them you're joining a company that's a high performance company that has tremendous agility and tremendous change humans

like to know the plan we well but but there's a difference between not liking change and wanting to know the plan right because it's of course the leadership's responsibility to make sure everybody understands if not the plan than the reason why yes right but you know one of the things that that I talk a lot and think a lot about is kind of the the the architecture of the brain hasn't changed in thousands of years right we're still primed to survive and I kind of have have come up with this to call it a thesis

overstates it but I think the reason we don't like change the reason we adhere to the status quo speaking broadly even when we know it doesn't serve us is because it didn't kill us and it's literally like we're walking down the planes wearing a loin cloth and if that lion you know we knew to be afraid of that lion but if that you know kitten was there like it didn't kill me right the status quo didn't kill us the folks took the risk didn't come back that's right often times yeah okay um next question question

number six we're halfway through Brands and businesses grow when when you innovate when you take risks experiment have a culture of experimentation make mistakes learn have a learning agenda we're all students back back to the status quo starting to be a killer a category not a category killer but a brand of business well certainly complacency is yeah yeah by the way that's a great distinction between the status sometimes your status qu might be very good and it's about maintaining it in a healthy way you're AB don't rather than changing everything yeah yeah yeah all right

well let me ask you I I think it's the inverse Brands and businesses die when when you stop listening when you stop listening to your customers when you lose trust when you stop caring about learning having a learning agenda yeah when you get complacent yeah yeah yeah complacency is is a killer of course well actually so so so good Segway to the next question knowing that this is a very broad question the answer depends on a million variables competitive Advantage comes from in my view because of where I've grown up in marketing I I think

it's differentiated product I think you have to start with the offering so from from I think differentiated product comes first and then I think a strong brand that people trust I think you need both of those things I think you can't get there with just one of them yeah um how do you measure for true incrementality so to put it in the context of this you measure for True incrementality by experimentation and testing AB testing um control control groups right eliminating cities countries right so you can truly understand the lift so it's on and off

on and off different varibles testing testing and testing okay so speaking across the landscape and not of course about Google if you could wake wave a magic wand and immediately address one seite misunderstanding about marketing and marketers what would it be well I think this Probably sounds obvious but that marketing is a really important not nice to have but essential long-term Strategic investment that drives business impact versus a short-term quick win Quick Fix uh expense how do you think we've gotten to a place where that even needs to be said because I agree it absolutely

needs to be said and that it does just blows my freaking mind well I think it's back to your previous question about uh incrementality and measurement you know that's always been uh uh a challenge for us is we're taking on a lot of companies investment and we have to you know prove the impact and so that's a big part of the job and continue to demonstrate that and I do think you need to have enough power in a company to convince the company to back your thinking for enough time yeah to be able to build

a rigorous and robust measurement framework it doesn't happen in the in a quarter it's over time that you build in the learning the knowledge the models the framework to actually be able to predict and improve the real business impact you're driving it just takes a few years to get that in place and it gets better each year like it gets better over time so it's optimizing is crit is is a critical part of it and so you need the permission to go and get that hard work done so you can really demonstrate the that really

impact your driving I also think there's something so super important in what you said which is you know with optimization being kind of sop right if you're not optimizing back to your point about complacency in the status quo right and I wonder if it also requires a reframing by marketers internally of when things don't work when things go AR right because while it may not serve the moment it can absolutely serve the learning for optimization I big I'm a big believer in under promising and overd delivering yeah I think sometimes we are our own worst

enemies because we're big Believers in the highlights and here's why it's going to be great and we're trying and Sell Hard you actually do need to manage expectations and and bring people with you yeah that was how I got my wife I under promised and barely overd delivered we need to ask her yeah Fair um all right last question before we get into it but it's the perfect question for getting segueing into the conversation the the relationship between a product or a service and a brand is between a product and a brand is symbiotic I

don't think you can have one without the other okay great so that takes me to um a quote that I think is perhaps Bill burn balks I I I'll I'll fix it if I got it wrong in the notes to the podcast but he said every brand can have a product at its Cor not every product has a brand at its core for somebody who has been marketing inside Google right one of the great product companies in the history of companies how do you ensure and how do you work with your product teams um and

a culture of innovation to ensure that a brand is getting carried through and baked in not just depended when engineering throws it over a proverbial transom it's a great question something we work hard at every single day and in our company and I think in many especially tech companies you have a a part of marketing that I consider to be almost the most important part of marketing which is product marketing and that is a know the team who sit day in day out with the product managers and the engineers in all of their core meetings

involved from the moment an idea gets a code name a project name um bringing insights and research bringing points of VI odds that the next product Innovation at Google could be code named Seth well no one will know that's the key thing I will know sorry I interrupted please no problem I I'll give them that feedback that will be my one contribution in the next product meeting uh um sometimes that is the contribution is you know what what what are we naming the project but you know the they and they care deeply about that by

the way a lot of thought into it so but I think it's it's being in those meetings being in the room where it happens all the way through long before launch certainly when I first joined typically marketing were pull pulled in like a week before launch hi we need a name for this thing we need a a blog post we need a a video ideally with the product manager in it telling you what this thing does and that's just not that that is not a recipe for Success so you've got to get involved way way

earlier be in the room add value in the room bring in insights bring in res so Champion the customer Champion the user uh um have a deep deep deep knowledge of the product so that you have a feel for what features new features would be successful what use cases will drive you know more usage what what what scenarios and features and you know use cases matter the most to your customers so that you can really uh inform in those sessions in those meetings and really add value I have two questions coming out of that I'm

going to ask the second one first because it's it's most direct which is if marketing needs to product marketing needs to be sitting with them from the moment it's code named what role do do do the product team does the product team play the engineer the technologist whomever um in campaign development do they get to sit in too and kind of say that doesn't actually feel like what we're trying to communicate do they or is their job done on the engineering side and then it's up to the to the um the professionals as it were

well they certainly have a strong point of view and they know their product best so I like having them not sit in through the whole process but I like checking in with them at the beginning of the process saying do we believe and again this is really where product marketing job is the product management team trust the product marketers to actually work with go to market teams and the brand teams to nail the product but I do like to bring them in at the beginning and say hey we're going to focus on these features these

use cases these types of scenarios does that makes does that resonate right and then I want to I want at the end what I say to my team is look I want them to be proud yeah like I want to do work where that so the product teams engineering teams want to show their families want to go home and say hey look this is my my my my baby come to life this is this is the world getting excited about something that I've killed myself on for weeks or months and and so for ultimately if

I can I often think of a lot of our external work is actually internal work and that if I can show it internally to all of our engineers and product teams and they are so excited about it then I feel like okay we've nailed this let's go show the world something I just want to like reinforce is what you just said a lot of our external work is internal work and I think I think that is lost by so many um your toughest audience is internal by the way yeah and actually that I'm going to

still get back to that other question but it it raises for me exactly what you just said they're the toughest audience I think again because of what we were chat I mean tell me if you disagree because of what we were chatting about before which is they think they know marketing but they don't really know marketing and while they might know the product best they don't know the customer best they don't know how to communicate the essence of what matters most so that people will buy use Andor buy Andor share right I agree in all

of that but they're also the most invested they care so much they really it is there baby and and they want the company to be successful and they want work out there that they're proud of and they want having done all the hard work to build these features they want them to be successful they want it's no point doing all this hard work if nobody uses or wants or buys the product yeah so they they're very invested in its success so they want to know that we're going to nail it we're going to get out

there and get the world excited about this thing whatever that thing is so you they they have a strong point of view so one of the things you said a moment ago was that you know when you first got there um um there was a real divide a divorce if you will or certainly an absence of integration from a process perspective as to when product marketing got involved yeah what did it take you and maybe even how long did it take you to begin to change that expectation um and process because obviously you have and

obviously it's been a a SE change for one of the most important companies in the world well first of all I don't know that it was that that there was a sort of division it was more that a misunderstanding of the role marketing could play or a belief that marketing's role was defined in a certain way and and I was lucky that when I joined I joined in Europe and it was at a time when we had basically just search and then we had Google Maps coming and Gmail and none of these products were rolled

out outside of the US and so what I learned very early on very quickly is that if you lean in on the product side of the house if you help them get the products to a better place for example there were a bunch of features needed to be successful in European countries that I was they were obvious to me I could give that feedback to them you know I heard folks who could sit with them literally at the computer and say listen you need these features these features these features so I put you know Junior

product marketers sat in with Engineers saying to be successful outside of the US here's what it's going to take and it was building that Product Trust at the product level with the product teams helping them be successful with their product so that we actually ship something that's fit for Market um before you even get into any conversations about what's marketing's role or what should we go do or what campaign should we run or you know what should we invest it was literally just Hands-On person by with person building great products and you build trust that

way and and since then any senior person I've hired in who's come from other uh marketing organizations I have said to them no matter how great a leader you are no matter how great you are going out in the world and telling extraordinary stories and driving tremendous impact if you in the room as an individual cannot add value with the product team on their product which they deeply care about in that room in those meetings you're not going to be successful here yeah there has to be a value exchange or you're just taking up space

and time the following segment features paid content from Rock Doug from Rock's perspective what's the seite need to better understand about what's right and wrong today yeah the most important thing to think about getting right is the customer experience it's a gold an opportunity to meet the consumer's expectation and nowhere is this more important than at checkout capitalizing on consumer desires the the checkout moment the transaction moment offers a chance to blend time efficiency with contextual awareness to really bring things together in a more personalized and and relevant way and that diminishes card abandonment I'm

assuming absolutely in fact 73% of consumers say that they often experience some form of frustration or barrier at checkout and so when you think about leveraging rocks technology it really helps you to unlock the moment that matters most when customers are buying to learn more about how to unlock the transaction moment go to rock rt.com that's rocked rt.com Forbes now back to our program what do you think a chief executive a CFO aboard anyone for that matter who doesn't really understand and um and it's it's because of an absence of experience the difference between product

driven growth and brand driven growth um because they are in fact different across categories right cpg might speaking broadly painting with a big brush be more brand driven though you and I actually I know you disagree you're going talk about the chocolate chip cookies well you know uh I I just think you need both I think that there I I worry and I get this question a lot you know how do you decide between a product campaign and a brand campaign I think that they great work can be in service of both has to be

has to be you don't have the resources for it not to be yeah and you did your dividing and it every single piece of product work and I do agree that you know you're a product first company every piece of work that's in service of a product should also be in service of the brand just like we spoke about earlier every touch point in the company's in service of the brand so is every piece of work we put out in the world which is effectively ultimately all you see is the work we do and each

piece of it needs to be service of the brand and so that's the CH you know you and I would have a strong point of view about which chocolate chip cookie we prefer they're not all the same so you know there's a product piece and product differentiation you can actually make better cookies and then there's the brand piece and uh the story you want to tell around it so in fact chocolate chip cookies are a good example because there there's a real tangible difference right which is tastes good doesn't taste good to me but in

a lot of a lot of categories service and and product we're we're living in a time of good enough products and services right which is the difference between X and Y it's just not meaningful to me which is why I I I think it's something like my data is a little old but 80% of searches on Amazon for products are by category not by brand so in a world of good enough products and services what is the role of brand from your perspective obviously the product needs to be as good as it can be and

the best that it is but a lot of people may not understand the true distinction it may not matter what's the role ofand also I agree with you I think also in some spaces and some businesses it's easier switch like it's just moving across and picking a different product in other cases it's whether it's switching a bank account switching phone switching subscription switching costs can be super high super high so it's it's just good there good enough then there switching costs are high in a lot of categories and then there's just the power of the

habit and the I would I would have switched to I'm not even kidding I had the most frustrating customer experience with my sell provider where it took an hour and a half to get a shipping label yeah and like it was ridiculous I would have drop them like a hot potato except for the switching cost it was just too it was it was just going to cost me more time and so but I digress yeah keep going but we do have to I mean part of the job is to fight the The Power of Habit

and the inertia yeah it's part of the job I mean that's how you you you have to demonstrate value to Consumers and try and create a sense of urg urgency try and find a reason to switch a reason to to to make the move and also there would always be some people you know your typical early adopters that be folks ready they like to be different different anyway and and maybe are ready to to to try your product but that's the job yeah so I I wonder if if something you said a moment ago about

you know work has to be supportive of both brand and product because if it's not it's dilutive of one or at best it's neutral and that's a bad use of of resources and you you you also talked about this at the top when we were going through the questions but but how do you ACR I mean you have such a broad purview and and actually I don't want to make it about what you do but how you see the world and how you see marketing how would you advise People based on your breadth of experience

and remit to balance the short and long term how do you I mean I suppose it's situational right which is some days it's X and other days it's y but how do you think about do you have a framework for approaching it I think it for for sure it's situational so in in our world for example you know Sunday Ticket subscriptions there's a few months before the season starts and you can't miss it when you launch a new phone those first six weeks really matter so there there when you launch a new feature short term

is the long yeah so you so you need clearly the situational and you have to you have to nail the short term there's no there's no avoiding that you have to nail the short term but the short term can be in service of the Long Haul and I think that's really important like a lot of short terms add up to to a long haul and so you can't have them be separate things you have to know that it's not a start stop so you can get you can nail the the launch you can stick The

Landing you can get the the the the the first six eight month weeks of that window right but then you have to keep going and it's just the start you have to see the short term as just the start right and that's really and you have to everyone has to understand that that you know especially if you're getting given funds internally to go do something I'll be very clear to people look this is a 5-year plan or it's a three-year plan is a minimum three we're going to commit we're going to go do this we're

going to iterate and get better at it and we're going to give it a strong start but it's just a start I I wonder if there's a distinction between kind of product launch shortterm right where you got to nail it up front because if you don't it's over and kind of just um for for people who are for for businesses that is who are kind of selling the same chocolate chip cookies day in and day out right the recipe is it's a hundred-year-old recipe it's magnificent and you know one of the things that our community

the marketing Community has been you know faced with is is this by false narrative and bifurcation of brand and performance so if we think of you know bottom of the funnel marketing as the short term um a conversation I'm hearing from a lot of marketers lately is yes we've been so focused on demand capture we've forgotten about demand creation which means that our Market is not growing we may be taking a bigger piece of the pie but we're not growing the pie and of course that's where growth come from comes from how how um for

those folks might you think about balancing um let me reframe it from short and long with bottom of the funnel and top of the funnel again a question I think that you and I both you know get get a lot I think it's incredibly important to do both and to not create this division between performance and brand in my view brand is performance it's all performance so well-run brand campaigns Drive extraordinary performance and I think there's a language change we need to make here in terms of creating this this Division I have proven time and

time again that when I layer in brand work it drives greater performance across all the direct response and all the other work so it needs to be integrated and I'm sorry to interrupt but and you going back to something you answered when I asked about how you measure for incrementality can can you just share with our listeners a little bit about how methodologically how you've proven that well we will have control groups and we'll run for example digital only or or or direct response only then layer in brand and you know when we see stuff

working and so you'll see the difference we'll also have control control locations control countries control cities depending on where it is because we have to do this globally so I will AV test a lot so we have a lot of of really robust and rigorous testing and measurement methodologies in place and we have an in-house measurement team dedicated to that I think that's very important you need experts who are really good especially in an engineering culture data culture uh of of of having that robust uh measurement structure in place before you even start so you're

set up to prove out the value and what always you know there will be there will be wins and there'll be you know definitely room for improvement but over time you start to create a picture that's very very clear I interviewed uh Kristen cavalo who you know longtime uh um CEO at Mullen low Global um a few months ago right before she left the industry and she said something that just you know landed super hard with me which is that she says data has robbed a lot of CMOS of Courage coming from I don't know

if you're not the most data driven company in the world you're at the top coming from that environment what do you think and thinking about marketers again broadly not just your own experience in your own company what do you think about what what she said I think um it depends how you define data so you can sit with anybody in any company and say look do you care if I ask people does this brand matter to me and they say no right and everybody any senior exec including the CFO will say yes of course I

care about that and so okay then you you care about that you care about our customers saying I don't I couldn't care L about this brand or you know this brand matters to me and then we need to invest in that brand so that is a data point that you can measure and so it's really about changing the conversation to be about questions like that anding bringing in data to show how people feel about your company how they feel about your products how they feel about your brand whether you matter in their lives those are

important conversations to have internally do you I love that question and nobody has framed it that way and and it it is kind of you know proving the positive by asking what the reaction would be to the negative we and it makes me think of something I think you and I might have talked about this when we were together last week which is for the chief executive the CFO the board member who member who who who doesn't have a marketing experience and who again painting painting with a broad brush you know is questioning the role

of marketing questioning the role of the contribution of the CMO the role of brand one of the things I can't figure out is how they consistently because these are very competent people deny their own lived experience the shoes they're wearing the clothes they're wearing the watch they wear the bag they carry the car they drive the neighborhood they live in where they go on vacation blah blah blah as if all those things just happen to be I know but I do think you can also use that as a as as a powerful weapon I have

sat in rooms when I've discussed for example the budget I need to establish a premium phone like pixel very tough space and said listen what's the car you drive and why do you drive that car and why do you pay that versus perfectly perfectly good car that will do the same things you know and you know you can you can you can you can use that as an opportunity with people to say look this is what it takes because people care deeply about the brands they associate with especially when you're a very high price product

so you have to invest in that I think you can use so you use it as an opportunity I think which is I think a great a great um way into what's going to be our last question unless we continue to digress which is good um and it ties to actually your very first answer um which is you know when I ask you um what marketing was you said it was um you find it as a human connection what's the process by which um you think marketers and what as cor's Chief Executives need to understand

about how you figure out what is compelling to human beings and and what really matters well I always think of it very simply as our role is to to know the user know the customer like inside out then know the magic that your company builds the products whether they're cookies or a phone or search product or subscription know them in set out and connect con the to in a way that drives that human connection I spoke about which is why I really care about all work being a service of the brand because great work should

not just make people do something which is why I believe all companies need more than just for example direct response which is really about do something take an action they need work that makes you think and makes you feel yeah and if you do work that makes people do something think something and feel something well over a period of time then you're going to to drive tremendous business impact make your product successful and build a truly deep human connection that's all in service of a strong trusted brand in the world lurine tohill thank you so

much that should absolutely be be the final word thanks Seth thanks for having me as you know I love these conversations with you yeah and you know I was going to say it up front but now that we're done with the formal part I would just want our listeners to know how Lorraine and I first met which is oh God I got so far so it's 201 2011 I think right yeah it's 2011 Gary Briggs who was was working for you at the time had been a client of mine and he introduced us um and

I interviewed for um what maybe would have been the first CMO at uh YouTube Right would have yeah uh needless to say for anybody who's uh looked at my LinkedIn I did not get that job um which In fairness I couldn't have been less qualified for but always say that Lorraine sent me you sent me um the nicest uh absolutely no note I've ever gotten well out of that came a great friendship yes so I think I won way I we both won because you would have fired me months later had I gotten the job

thank you again than Seth again thank you for everything you do for all of us I appreciate it inspiring thanks for listening Today's show has been brought to you by Rock and you can find the CEO's guide to marketing wherever you get your podcast don't forget to juice that algorithm smash that subscribe button and leave us a review so others can find us too we'll see you next time