Meet Sarah Kennedy, VP of Growth & Demand Generation at Google Cloud. Kennedy earned a spot on our 2024 Marketers to Watch Series, in partnership with The Wall Street Journal, for her work spearheading global customer acquisition and helping shape Google’s AI go-to-market strategy. In her pivotal role, Sarah leads growth marketing efforts around the world, positioning herself at the forefront of rapid tech innovation. Her work spans marketing to individual users and small businesses, extending all the way to large global enterprises.
Prior to joining Google in 2020, Sarah was CMO for Adobe Experience Cloud. She joined Adobe through the acquisition of Marketo, where she also served as CMO, helping orchestrate the $4.75 billion sale — one of the largest in Adobe’s history. A proud Baylor University alumna, Kennedy maintains strong ties to her alma mater, demonstrating her commitment to education alongside her career in marketing leadership.
What book or podcast do you recommend to marketing leaders today?
This might sound like a joke, but I’m currently reading “Think Again” by Adam Grant for the fourth time! It’s apt for this moment we find ourselves in, and it’s based on what Grant refers to as “intellectual humility.” His argument is that when the world is changing so rapidly we can’t afford to be rigid in our thinking. We don’t necessarily have all the answers, and we need to be open to the idea that we might be wrong. There’s power in un-learning and re-learning things. It’s important to “break your brain” — to be curious and to engage in constructive disagreement — in order to keep your thinking fresh and agile.
What’s a prediction you have for growth marketing over the next few years?
My prediction is it won’t be long before an essential skill for a growth marketer will be bringing together a set of related tasks and having them performed by a single AI “agent.”
A good example of this involves what I call “intentionally complicated documents,” which is to say anything written by a lawyer! AI is incredibly good at connecting the dots across these documents. It can sniff out anomalies or red flags in seconds. We already have that capability, and soon we’ll have tools that are accessible and intuitive enough that anyone can build an agent to perform that task on a repeatable basis.
If you apply that principle to growth marketing more broadly there is a lot of low-hanging fruit waiting to be picked — copywriting agents, campaign reporting agents, and project management agents that can schedule meetings, track milestones, and circulate updates. I can see a future where we list the agents we’ve built on our resumes, and we’re actively talking about how we manage them and use them to extend our capabilities
Can you share a recent marketing insight you’ve learned and why it excites you?
“What was old is new again.”
What I mean by this is that traditional forms of marketing haven’t gone away, they’ve evolved. For example, my team runs a lot of physical events, and after the pandemic I wondered if demand for them would fade. What actually happened is it surged. Now we talk about them being “momentum moments.” They’re a chance for people to see examples first-hand, and they provide more engagement and feedback than anything else we do. We’ve also been able to weave in countless digital elements; we livestream, content is instantly available in any language thanks to AI translation, and agendas are automatically curated.
Events bring you closer to your audience than any other form of marketing, and I’m really excited that we get to advance what best-in-class looks like.
What’s an innovative or exciting project you’re currently working on?
We’re trying to walk the walk in everything we do. I want Google to be “Customer Zero” for any and all applications of AI in marketing. The #1 question I get asked is “What’s Google doing with AI?” and when we’re the most advanced adopters of our own technology, that’s when we can enable customers based on our experience.
Everyone is experimenting, everyone has a test of some sort. That’s great, but you can’t get stuck in “pilot purgatory.” At some point we all need to commit.
For example, we’re in the process of centralizing a lot of our marketing operations. We need to ensure we’re building a robust data foundation, and a single view of the customer journey. We need a rigorous approach to evaluating tools and potential partners. It’s a big decision, but I think it’s the right one, and it’s a calculated call because with that infrastructure and process in place we can scale our chosen AI solutions much more effectively.
What’s the most pressing business challenge you’ve faced in the last year and what have you done to solve it?
There’s been two but they’re closely related, and dealing with them together is an interesting challenge.
First, we need to help our teams get up to speed with AI. We’ve been running regular cross-functional training, creating lots of bite-sized videos that highlight particular use cases, and we’re about to hold the second installment of our “Dragon’s Den” program in which marketers from all over the world can pitch their ideas with the hope of seeing them funded and brought to life.
Second, we’ve been making plans while the technology is still rapidly developing. It’s not unusual to see projects get mothballed within weeks of being green-lit, simply because a more capable model or a new product feature can handle the task without the need for additional engineering.
We’re encouraging our teams to get comfortable with this uncertainty because the only way to counter it is to keep educating yourself and working on your skill set. When I find something that works and feels like it has longevity, I move heaven and earth to scale it and keep it moving.
What leadership muscle is most important for marketers to exercise?
Leaders have got to get their hands on the tech. We need to roll our sleeves up and demonstrate an extreme passion for learning. I came across this quote the other day and it really resonated: “The future doesn’t belong to the ones who know the most — but to those who learn the fastest”.
Marketers are the tip of the spear. We’re the first ones to find out how AI is remaking work. When change happens this quickly if you’re not learning something new every week then, respectfully, you’re falling behind.
We have to see this as an opportunity. I want my team to see me using AI and learning what it’s capable of. I want them to see the mistakes as well as the successes. I want fewer shiny case studies and more real-life live demos. I want them up close, not standing back. And I want to encourage that sense of sharing and spontaneous collaboration. The best five words I can hear anyone on my team say are “Hey, have you seen this …”
What’s the most game-changing career advice you‘ve received?
Early in my career I was offered some extra responsibilities and I wasn’t sure if I should take them. My boss at the time said, “Jump, and find your parachute on the way down!” It stuck, and it’s given me confidence and a real bias toward action.
Marketers to Watch is a recognition series to spotlight highly innovative and forward-thinking marketing leaders in the community. If you have someone you’d like to nominate for the series, apply here.
