Peter: Hello. Welcome to Demand Dialogues. I’m Peter Murphy, CEO at Datamatics Business Solutions. And we, amongst other things, are a business service provider in B2B marketing.

This podcast is aimed primarily at the B2B marketer, and we’ll cover a lot on demand gen functions, although not exclusively. We’ll also have some topics for those that are connected to, to those roles.

We will look at the changing organizational structures, the techniques, the solutions, being tried and proven with various experts in the field to provide you with valuable insights during your lunch, your workout, your commute, or however you choose to listen to this.

The topics will range from macro to micro, a view of how startups are doing things, to those that are working with Fortune 100 organizations. And if you’re not in marketing, but need to work with marketing, you’ve come to the right place. Whether you’re in sales, but also customer success, in product management maybe, head of finance trying to figure out, “Why is marketing spending all of my free cash flow?” We hope there’ll be something in it for you too. at the top of the show and in our online description, on the various platforms, we’ll highlight a couple of the themes that we intend to cover, and then we’ll get to the meat of, of the conversation.

And there can be no better way, to kick things off with our first guest, someone who’s been at the forefront of marketing and innovation in marketing for over 20 years. He’s been with companies like HCL, SAP, market and markets in his resume, and now he’s leading the charge as head of marketing for one of the largest technology providers. So please welcome the head of marketing at Google Cloud India, Krishnan Chatterjee. Hi, Krishnan.

Krishnan: Hi, Peter. Very nice of you to have me and thank you for the kind introduction.

Peter: Yes. when my CMO Sumantra set this up, he was, really excited, having worked with you in the past. And, as I mentioned, you’ve worked for some amazing well-known branded companies in your, in your career, as well as obviously is your current role. So, I think it’ll be a great conversation just to, to pull all the things that you’ve learned over the years together. I’d love for this conversation to be around like two main themes, I feel. And how long we spend on each one, we’ll just see how the natural dialogue goes.

The first area that I was hoping to cover is that we can maybe take a look at, your view of what an effective marketing engine is. That, I think because of your experiences for some of these like, mature companies, I think helps people who are trying to develop one. And maybe some learnings from that. Certainly, I’m sure it’s changed over the years. and then the second one, the second theme, if you will, that I’d love to cover, given where you work, it’s a little bit of, of the elephant in the room, I feel, is like, how do we see AI starting to impact our working lives? And particularly for those that are working in, departments like marketing.

There’s a lot to cover here. I’m sure you’re seeing a lot of changes at, at, at Google, so hopefully that sounds like a plan.

Krishnan: Yeah, sounds wonderful.

Peter: So let’s kick this off, Krishnan. I’d like to get a little bit of your personal journey, to set us up for, like, how we think that, those experience have helped you take your position, what you’re currently doing today. And give the audience a feel for, some of the things that will be important for them as we look at the marketing engine side. So, maybe just gives a little bit of background to, to how you’ve got here.

Krishnan: Yeah. So, Peter, my work life has actually been three decades. And I think how I’ve got here, each decade has a story to tell. So my first decade was really in the CPG world. So I used to work with a company called ITC, which is India’s largest CPG company, multiple businesses. It’s a conglomerate. And, my first half, half of the decade was, in their tobacco business. And the second half, I was part of a startup, which created a lifestyle retail business, much like a Banana Republic or a Gap. So, that was the decade of B2C in my career.

Krishnan: By the end of that decade, I got a little bit bored of B2C because, in the CPG business, your moment of truth really is standing in front of a retailer, hands folded, begging him or her to take your product. That is the most powerful instant in your life. And the beginning of my second decade, which was around 2004 or 2005, is when I woke up to this, Adam Smith’s invisible hand playing out in India with IT services. it was still fledgling at that time, but I thought, “Something very interesting is happening here.” And, all my career has been about chasing discontinuities.

And that’s when I met up the leadership at HCL Technologies, which at that time was sub-half a billion dollars, largely through inorganic moves. And I joined them to lead their marketing function. So, that was really the second decade of my life. And that was an extremely interesting journey because HCL Tech in that decade went from that sub-half a billion to over $7 billion. So, today, it’s a $13 billion a number. So that was an interesting decade.

Indian IT going global, becoming a source of country competitive advantage, to the extent that today, India provides about 15 million developers to the world, one of the largest developer, populations in the planet. And more interestingly, if I look at India’s economy, that’s about 1% of the population of the country. But if you look at percentage of GDP that technology as an industry contributes, it’s close to 10%. So 1% drives 10%, and that’s extremely interesting and that’s, something that I found very exciting. It made a genuine difference economically to the country.

My third decade is really, I would say, the era of product, so that’s when I joined SAP and, today, I’m with, Google Cloud and so on. But I think the most exciting time is now in this current, in this third decade of my professional life because I think we are in the midst of an innovation super cycle with cloud and AI. And, if I go back to my consumer days when around the year 2000 or in the nineties, I experienced the previous innovation super cycle, which was really the internet and mobile.

Krishnan: When I draw a parallel, back in those days, when I was launching a fashion retail brand, stated wisdom was nobody would buy clothes online. You cannot buy clothes unless you can touch, feel, and try. And, therefore, the way we looked at the internet was the print catalog whacked up on a website so people can see the product and presumably come to the store and buy it. And lo and behold, Amazon, Google, Airbnb, Uber, they completely showed us a different way of life. And I’m expecting the same to happen even more dramatically now, with what AI is, is going to do to us. And, I’m here, with a ringside seat to that particular phenomenon.

Peter: Yes, we’ll get inside the ring in a while on that. I agree that, well, your journey is interesting. I had a career that evolved a B2B to C. In one of my previous roles, I built websites back in the day, and I felt that B2C was always a little bit ahead in terms of the technology because you didn’t know who the person you were trying to talk to really was, so you had to build some personalization around it. So I do think there’s some catching up to do on B2B, but I think the catching up can happen, and maybe, it, it’ll equalize in terms of it’s capability between the marketing engines of how they’re set up. And the learnings that you can get, I think are probably coming from some of that history that you mentioned.

So as you obviously look at Google today, and I have to remind myself, I had to drop a note down, because Google’s an enormous company, right? And people forget that there’s elements to it like YouTube or Waymo and Android that go, “Oh, yeah, that’s, maybe, is that part of Google?” They don’t even realize it. And then of course, Google Cloud, right is not just one product, right? I had to jot this down, as I said. You’ve got, I think there’s compute, there’s storage, there’s data, there’s security, there’s networking, there’s devops. I’ve probably missed a couple of categories.

It’s a lot. You’re probably competing with a lot of different players in a lot of different genres, even though it’s all under this big high-tech space, but you’re a multi-product company from multiple facets of various businesses, and obviously on the consumer side, for sure.

So I’m interested in understanding, in your world today, do you get a sense of how your compacts on the B2C side work with you on the B2B side? Are you two separate engines? Do you guys look at that separately or do you try and find commonality and how would you build that engine out?

And of course, the other fundamental question is what do you see is the components of a good marketing engine?

Krishnan: Yeah. So, this is a vast question and it’s multi-pronged. So, which part would you like me to answer?

Peter: So, let’s go back to the basics of what you see are the components of the marketing engine in a B2B world.

Krishnan: Yeah. I think I want to take a step back because Peter, this is again, a world peace question. There is a lot to unpack here. So maybe if we take this in bite-sized chunks, and I’ll share some insight with you, and maybe on that you can ask and we can deepen the way at least I see the engine.

So let me talk first about the value proposition of marketing. So as part of the business, or if I was the business leader in a B2B firm, what value do I expect marketing to bring to me? Why do I invest in marketing at all? And in my experience, there’s really three parts that, and, all B2B marketers should think, should think of themselves in these three dimensions and see what are they producing, because if you’re not producing on these three dimensions, when we reach the AI subject, I would have serious concerns about the longevity of, of careers who are not touching at least two out of these three.

The first source of value to me is, are you expanding addressable market? So as a marketer… Because in B2B, the GTM largely… Exactly like you said, Peter, is a combination of marketing, sales, and service or support, or, or success of some sort.

Peter: Yeah.

Krishnan: Now, typically, the sales engine and the support engine will be extremely operationally driven. So, marketing will, is the one engine which can actually keep expanding the funnel itself as it were. So, are you finding new use cases? Are you finding new buying centers? And so on and so forth. So that is, is value number one.

Value number two is are you, from the environment, competitive action? And not your com- competitors, the customer’s competitors and so on. Are you identifying compelling events in the market to drive the go-to market around? Because again, remember, the rest of the go-to market engine operationally driven doesn’t have a radar sitting out there to say, “Look, there is a new regulatory action being taken. This creates a new opportunity.” So, are you driving compelling events is the, is the second point.

And the third point, I think which is absolutely critical, is are you driving brand to demand? And if you get stuck in that loop of either saying, “I’m a brand guy. Brand, brand, brand.”

Peter: Yeah.

Krishnan: Because, I have no way of designing a business case for you. Or if you’re the guy who’s just saying, “I’m demand and I keep doing events and tactical activities,” then you have no strategic import. At the end of the day, I could outsource all of that to an agency. So your ability to connect brand all the way, full stack, through to demand, is the third value proposition. So I would say these are three boxes. And whatever it is that you design as the marketing engine has to be able to respond to these three capabilities, propositions, call it what you like.

Peter: Sure. So I mean, overlaying all of that too, you have to be addressing a problem of sorts, right? So you have to be clear about what product you’re building and why, and what it’s actually solving for, so you can get to those three aspects of your addressable market, your compelling, reason for driving that. It’s interesting, you talk about the connection of brand to demand.

And in many instances that we kind of engage with a lot of our clients, I think there’s quite a big disconnect between brand and demand. It kind of, it’s one person or the other person. There’s a pendulum where the money all goes into, “All right, we’re doing our branding exercise for the first six months.” And then you try to turn it into, “Oh, we have to prove this out.” And you’re, you’re rushing to create demand and you’re rushing to create a pipeline.

And then there’s a waiting period, and you see if the branding worked. So it doesn’t seem to be as coherent, I think, in many cases. what, what would you say?

Krishnan: Yeah, so the reason for that typically, Peter, is, actually, let me not ascribe a reason for that. Let me flip it around and tell you what is the unlock on that.

And to me, the answer is what I call customer back. If you always start with the customer, you will solve for all three, all three of these boxes.

And let me explain why I say that, you know? Typically, I think in B2B, where you get stuck is going product forward, exactly the point you made about Google Cloud, for instance. So as you said, right, their AI products, their security products, their data products. There are infrastructure products and, and, and whatever. There’s even productivity suites like GWS, et cetera. So if you design your marketing activity to the product. And I dare say many of your clients will have the same issue. You know, my former, organization, SAP, same thing, right? You have Success Factors, you got Ariba, you got, S4, you got a whole bunch of stuff.

Peter: Yeah.

Krishnan: Problem is it’s the same customer who’s buying all of this. Albeit in different buying centers, different points in time for different business reasons. So if you can just start customer back and says, “What’s going on with who… First, who is my customer?”

And I think that, “Who is my buyer? Who is my customer? Why are they using me? What else do they have available?” you start from there and then work backwards to where your value proposition, your positioning… And there’s a framework I find very useful in covering at least brand to demand, which I call identity, position, proposition, and campaign. So perhaps I could explain that through an example.

Peter: Please do. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Krishnan: So let’s say, Peter, the two of us meet in a party. And, I discover that you’re from GE. Now, I don’t know anything. You might, you might be from a hundred different businesses. But in my head, I’ll think Six Sigma and quality. And that’s your identity.

Now, in our conversation, you end up telling me that you’re part of GE’s lighting business and you guys do the best sustainable lighting products in the world that’s positioning. So I realize you are targeting environmentally conscious people and you are the best at sustainable lighting.

So that’s the second layer, the positioning layer. Then I tell you, “Peter, I have recently bought a house and my wife colored the drawing room wall burgundy, but we’re not getting the color. The lights are not supporting that particular shade coming out.” And you say, “I got a bunch of people there. They understand luminosity angles. I’ll send somebody. They’ll look at it and solve this for you.” That’s proposition.

And then Peter, you go back to your office and you figure out, “If Krishna has this problem, there are a million new home buyers, and I could package this up and take it to market,” and that’s campaign.

So if you see this brand to demand, this stack works if you are seamlessly moving from identity to position to proposition to your campaign, and in which case everything locks. And if you just spend a moment thinking about it, you’ll realize Apple does this really well. And one of the reasons why, they have such a powerful position. But once again, if you realize the heart of this stack is the customer, is understanding the customer.

And if you understand the customer, you are able to understand unmet needs which allow you to expand on which you may have a relevant, offering. Secondarily, it’s not just unmet needs. You are able to convert the products you are selling, to business problems they are resolving, and therefore start crafting solutions. And the solutions may give you significant expansion. A very recent example at Google Cloud is, you may be aware, we’ve launched a platform called AgentSpace.

And, AgentSpace is basically a platform on which companies can build all kinds of agents, including employee level agent builds. But what we did is, and this is something we have done just in India right now, we realized if the biggest use case is going to be employee productivity, then the buying center should be the CHRO. And working with a partner called Quantify, we have launched a CHRO program around a concept called agent thinking. So much like design thinking, but how do you use agent thinking to transform how you look at, employee productivity?

That’s a raging hit with CHROs right now. This is not a buying center Google Cloud was addressing at all in the past. And suddenly, with AgentSpace, it’s become the way. So, that’s just, to give you an example. So if you go back to the point I made about expansion of TAM, finding the compelling event, and connecting brand to demand, all of it starts with the customer. So if you do a great job of identifying the ideal customer profile and work back from that as a marketing organization, you would be able to get these three boxes.

Peter: So in your case, or in other cases there may be multiple customers, right? You have the user customer, right, who’s the person who’s going to be dealing with it. You know, when I was selling. Give you an example. When I was selling software back in the day, and I was solving for some warehouse management solution problem, I had to convince the IT guy who was going to implement that over the course of a period of time, as well as the warehouse manager, the logistics manager. So there was multiple constituents.

Now, I don’t think we did a very good job at it at the time. I think a lot of… Back again in our second generation of our, second decade, it was to put that comparison back to you. I don’t think we were very good at personalizing the branding message in the marketing, how to outreach with personalized no- notations of why it’s important. I think at the sales… That was given to the sales guys to figure out.

So it feels like a lot of the selling, has actually probably moved back into the marketing world. And the pendulum has shifted t- to that, given, you- you’ve broken it out into, the, the various areas around identity, position, and proposition. I think marketing can really take a heavy lift, and then it becomes… Does all the budget then become part of that ecosystem for marketing? Are you seeing that the shift between sales and marketing and the alignment and the roles of that have moved over the last few years?

Krishnan: So actually, to me, the answer is quite simple. It depends entirely on the marketing leadership, quite frankly, Peter. So, and it depends. So I define the zone between your organization and your customer’s organization as the value zone. So just hold that idea of the value zone.

What you’re putting in the value zone, if it is product, then the pendulum shifts to sales. If what you’re putting into the value zone is actually problem resolution or a solution, the pendulum shifts towards marketing.

Peter: Do you think that we should all be heading towards problem resolution as our target?

Krishnan: I think, that’s the school I belong to, Peter. Like, if I look at my overall proposition, I would say even position for Google Cloud, and, don’t quote me on this, this is my view. But my view is you’re aware that at Google Cloud, we have a statement called A New Way to Cloud.

And the way I interpret that statement is a new way to cloud is through your business model and not through your infrastructure. So you look at every other cloud provider, they are infrastructure players. Google Cloud is a business model play.

Now, the minute I make that statement, in order to sell it to you, I will have to demonstrate to you business model transformation, which is even beyond the solution, right? It is a transformation as opposed to a product. And once again, going back to the point, right? That whole host of products across the entire technology stack.

How do they work? They work because the way I would tell this to you is Google Cloud, the new way to cloud through your business model, is through a business model which is user-centric, real-world, real-time, and trusted. Okay? That’s your business model as my customer.

Now, if I unpack those words I used, user-centric, real-world, real-time, and trusted, underlying that I will put all my products. User-centricity is where I put AI. Real world is where I put data. Real time is where I put modern apps. Trusted is where I put security.

Peter: So that makes a lot of sense for, I think, a lot of B2B products that are out there. Right? I think they’re, it’s product… It’s less about product and more about problem-solving.

There’s activities that may be the intersection between, branding and demand, right? So at the very top of that tree, there’s Google knows this a lot. It’s probably not your world, but, advertising, programmatic.

It’s maybe targeted. You know, there’s tools like LinkedIn, tools like the ones that you guys have, going through the media agencies. And then there’s this, outreach of content, um, via syndication providers, some of the things that we do.

It still feels like it’s a lot about product. And I think we have to do a better job to personalize that to what the problem is. And maybe it’s using AI to be able to help, um, convert those engines that are currently product-oriented into problem-solving orientation.

Krishnan: There’s also mixed design issue in, in what you said there, Peter. In again my school of thought.

Peter: Yeah.

Krishnan: Which is, again, now we know that marketing engine, that operating, that demand engine itself. How do you design the engine?

Peter: Yeah.

Krishnan: Now, let me give you one interesting insight, because, I’m going to come back on that largely digital channel. So whether it’s search, performance, et cetera, et cetera, much of which is for net new logo acquisition.

Peter: For sure.

Krishnan: Right? So, now let’s do the math here for a moment. If you take… And we’re still in the B2B realm, right? So in the B2B world, you pick up anybody’s PNL, and you will inevitably see that 90% plus of that year’s revenue is from existing customers.

Typically, in the B2B world, only 8 to 10% roughly comes from net new. Now, here’s the interesting part. When in your mix you go digital, right, performance, LinkedIn, this, that, the other, whatever. And if that’s the primary part of your mix, you are only playing in the 10%. Whereas the 90% is left with, let’s say, things like account-based marketing, executive marketing, customer marketing.

Peter: Yeah.

Krishnan: Which, if you realize, most people do fairly superficial things. You know, there’s some talk. So it’s interesting. And I have a very different view of how I would design a demand engine in B2B. And of the five things I put in the design, digital is the last, and, and actually, probably an area I would invest very little in.

Peter: I think there’s lots of companies, Krishnan, that do the 90% of their modeling, towards customer success, account management. And they spend a lot less than they should do on the same capabilities that they actually use in terms of their, the 10%, the actual difficult part, the acquisition of that.

Andif the mix was a little bit different, It’s like landing and expanding.

Krishnan: Correct

Peter: For someone like Google, you have lots of things to upsell to, lots of things to cross-sell to. And frankly, a lot of, enterprise application providers or solution providers are in the same boat. There’s not as many one-trick ponies. These are usually startup companies, right? So maybe it’s a little bit different.

But I agree, Forrester would have had a view on this. The demand unit continues after you’ve sold. And it continues actually during the sales cycle, which is another thing people tend to take their hand off and give it to sales at a certain point. “Hey, I got this, I got this. Don’t, don’t mess my, my deal up.” Traditional be-, enterprise selling.

But then after you’ve won the business, where does marketing go? And, I think there’s plenty of instances where, there’s an opportunity to continue the brand, to continue the renewal conversation, to continue the upsell conversation, that just isn’t part of the mix. That isn’t the focus.

Krishnan: Yeah. And you said it perfectly, Peter. Land and expand. And actually, if you think land and expand, the funnels become more like a bowtie.

Peter: Yeah.

Krishnan: So you come in, win the land, and then you go down and marketing has to play through that bow tie. And usually it doesn’t. In fact, a lot of times marketers exit, let’s say, at the L2-L3 stage in the top funnel itself. And, as you said, sales takes over. That’s quite challenging.

Peter: So are there things that you guys are doing today, or are planning to do tomorrow that will shift anything in terms of what the engine mix will look like? Or do you think it goes back to those three fundamental breakdowns and you’ve always will, will speak to that, and then it’s just a matter of how, how you turn the dial plus or minus across, depending on where you are in the product lifestyle? You know, like the life cycle of what you have. Is it well known? Is it not well known?

Krishnan: Yeah. So, it’s a tough one. This is not easy. In fact, it’s my biggest current battle. How do I deepen what we do as marketing within accounts?

And even as Google, right? Google is a great calling card. But even as Google, it is not easy. So, again, I always like to think about what success looks like first and then work back. At least one learning I’ve had is for you to really get the bow tie, to play the land and expand game well, the three things which are necessary conditions is, as a business, your champions or advocates need to keep increasing.

Second is, whichever business you’re… So if you remember, if a problem solution is the better approach than product, you need more and more problems.

And finally, whatever it is that you’ve landed on, that you have to deliver that extraordinarily well. And not just have you got to deliver it well, you have to communicate and convince that you have delivered well. So sufficient governance and, and communication. And now in all three of these areas, I do believe marketing has a big role to play.

The expansion of champions, right? Obvious. The discovery of problems, right? How do you pull in more and more buying centers? The CHRO example like, a few minutes back. And the communication of the delivery excellence that your teams are achieving. But again, right, it’s… Then it means it’s a team play. It’s not a beaten path. So there’s a difference.

Peter: Yeah. So I think this has been a, a really interesting conversation, Krishnan, in relation to the engine. In our world, we call the bow tie the, the infinity loop, which I think probably mean the same thing. But I agree that, what you’ve described there now is that you’re including additional stakeholders outside of marketing that have a part to play as part of that infinity loop, right?

Krishnan: Yeah.

Peter: So it is the account managers, but it’s also other stakeholders, the people that are dealing in the day-to-day, the week-to-week, and they’re as much responsible for marketing the brand, right, as marketing, digital marketing has to play in that. In fact, they’re probably even more important because they’re in the weeds on a day-to-day basis, on their weekly updates, their biweekly updates.

And I think communicating that well, having consistent messaging, which comes from marketing, by the way. I think you guys have to drive that, and we have to drive that is important. That it’s not just marketing out to brands, it’s actually marketing within the organization.

Krishnan: Correct.

Peter: So that they can be the advocates for the brand.

Krishnan: So it’s not easy, Peter. That’s why we have jobs.

Peter: You work for one of the biggest technology firms in the world. Google is at the forefront.

I’m a daily user of Google, but there’s other providers in the marketplace that are competing for this space. And clearly, the rapid level of change that we’re seeing, from AI is probably scary and exciting at the same time. In some cases, I think, people in marketing might be starting to wake up, given some recent announcements as to, “Ooh, I’ve have to, I’ve have to think about what my role in this organization is going to be and if I have a role.

So does agentic AI take my job? Or actually, it’s the best thing that ever happened to me because I can do my job five times better than I would have had done so two years ago.”

I’m curious as to your view as to how AI is helping your organization, even within Google, right? It must have an impact. You must be doing this a lot more than others, right? That would be a natural conclusion for now, but what do you see in terms of how this affects the workforce, not only in marketing, but, in other B2B functions that support marketing?

Krishnan: Yeah. So, obviously the, the impact is very, very fundamental, Peter, but, maybe, maybe a way to think about it is Iron Man versus Skynet.

So is Skynet going to come and knock you out? Or will you wear the suit and become a superhero?

Peter: Yeah.

Krishnan: I think both are possibilities. And to my mind, let me start with the Iron Man analogy. AI is the suit. Actually, I must say, that movie was so prophetic because Jarvis was an agent.

And we have a whole bunch of Jarvises available to us. So at the broadest level, if I look at how we are doing things, or how teams, I, my team, how we are working with AI. See, as marketers, there’s fundamentally three areas, that we spend our time on. And one area is around analytics and data, the second is around content, and the third really is around some form of campaigns, through events, et cetera.

All three areas are being fundamentally transformed. And I’m not saying tomorrow, I’m saying today. We’re doing this stuff right now.

In Google, right? Like, in your world today. In our world. So firstly, on the data side, we have multiple levels. So we have our own data. So when I look at governing pipeline progression, how we’re doing on the math, the numbers, we are now working with conversational agents.

So, I can ask questions like, “Which particular area of the business is not giving me… So if last week I didn’t hit my pipeline goal, where did I not hit it? Why didn’t I hit it? Is there a theory? Which segment of customer, which buying center?” All of that is now possible. When I look at my governance model, which I run weekly, in about 30 minutes on a Monday, I know exactly which point has a problem, where I need the team to focus, which part of the business down to which account manager or which sales territory, micro territory we need to do something on. All of that is clarified. So that itself, historically, we could not have done at that frequency.

The second area is on content. You know, in B2B, as you’re aware, Peter, we don’t have the, privilege of working with hordes of agencies, paying them lots of money to devise content, et cetera. But now if you look at the tools we’re using, so if I talk Google, Imagine for image creation, VO3. VO3 is absolutely insane.

I doubt if Hollywood will shoot too much longer, at the level it’s going. But so we are able to now come up, mock up ads, create videos.

The beauty of VO3 today is when I prompt it, along with the video I want, it comes with the voiceover, multiple languages, and with the soundtrack. And it’s doing all of this literally in minutes.

So, content now, all of us across Google marketing have started, even those who work with agencies nowadays, what they’re doing is they use the tools to build the advertising or communication content they want and give it almost like an end product to the agency. Which means now your iteration, your loops, those are banished. Yeah. You pretty much, go from the first brief itself to the finished product instantly.

Even if you’re outsourcing. I don’t or my team doesn’t.

So that’s on the content side. Now, on the campaign side, in the way I look at campaigns, Peter, in B2B is you basically campaign broadly in three streams, which is value, volume and run rate.

Value is where you’re targeting your big deals and big accounts.

Volume typically you would do through the partner channel. So not the large deals, but some significant ticket value, but deals which are replicable. And run rate are those deals which you are selling almost on a credit card swipe.

Google Workspace, let’s say, in my case.

In the value channel, one of the biggest aspects of driving impact with customers is really insight, is relevance, is personalization. When I look at Gemini Deep Research, Peter, the things we do, recently we, in India, we did what we call the, the Leaders Connect events, which is our executive C-suite event.

And we had about 50 C-suite customers speaking.

For every single customer, I and nobody in my team, I have done documents around how their businesses will be transformed through AI. And let me take the example of the CEO of a foods company.

The document was generated while I was on call with him. It took four minutes. It was an 18-page document. It broke down their process from recipe generation to, manufacturing franchising operations, to inbound supply chain, outbound, trade marketing, everything. And it demonstrated the AI intervention in each part of those subprocesses. And it also gave Google Cloud case studies from across the world in that specific area.

That document took me about four minutes. I did it for 50 CEOs. This CEO I’m referencing, the food CEO, while on the call, he took a look at it. He said, “I’d have paid, say, McKinsey a million bucks for this, for these 18 pages.”

We’re doing that every three to four minutes. You can do it. It’s infinitely scalable.

On the volume side with partners, we have now built an AI solution which allows a partner to figure out, to basically look at an organization that they’re going after. And everything that they need, the entire playbook to go after the organization is made available.

On the run rate side, what we have now started doing is we are productionizing educational programs, adoption programs at scale.

We just built one called Bring AI to Work. We are building it. There’s somebody in my team single-handedly who’s put this together. 10,000 people have already taken it. We rolled it out eight days back.

So suddenly, the ability to shape content in that run rate channel, which is of relevance to millions, we’re doing something else. You know, remember you made that point about multiplicity of buyers. You have users and you have economic buyers. The easiest way to look at it in our business is users are developers.

15 million developers in this country. You can check up on this. We’ve created, somebody in the team created this program, one lady, called the GenAI Academy.

The GenAI Academy is the journey which takes a developer from just a developer to an AI-certified developer, which obviously increases valuation and many other good things happen.

That program launched about a month back. It’s already got 260,000 developers who are participating. These numbers we have also not seen in the past.

But all of it is being pulled off by a team of, everything I’ve described to you, by a team of three people.

Peter: So that’s, like I said, it’s exciting and it’s scary, right? For the people that are in the field and they’re looking to how they become and stay relevant.

And I think it’s not just on the marketing and selling side. I think it’s one the buying side, right? What’s going to stop the agents doing the buying and taking some of that scale out?

But clearly, if we just look at what you just mentioned what I’m taking from this is the ability to scale, right, is exploded.

And if we look at our jobs and feel like at the end of the day, the end of the week, I didn’t really get to half the things that I thought I was going to be able to get to. One would hope that whatever you thought you could get done, there’s a better chance of it getting done now from beginning to the end because you have that ability to scale.

Because you can take on more work. I mean, if we ask, if we ask our clients about content and they say, “Well, we haven’t got the ability to generate…” I mean, I’m talking about in the recent past. “We don’t have that ability to generate content. Can you help me with that or can you point me to where we would go?”

Clearly, the tools are out there to be able to generate the right content, to be able to personalize the right content and to have that message and to be able to manage it.

Krishnan: Absolutely.

Peter: I don’t think it takes everybody out of the loop. I just think it takes a lot of people into a place where they can do a better job.

And maybe you’re an extreme case at Google because you have to lead with that technology and prove it out.

But I think for the rest of us, the way I would simply put it, and I’ll give you the chance to give me your opinion on it, is that I think AI actually presents a great opportunity for people that will adopt it and understand it and see it as their cohort in being able to do their job better.

And there’ll be other things to do. Like we’ve had it through the Industrial Revolution.

We had it when Microsoft came out with Excel or Google came out with Sheets. It’s not as if it took out every CPA or financial analyst out of a business. It actually made people more productive, right?

Krishnan: Yeah. It’s the Iron Man analogy then.

So Peter, maybe a good way to think about this is, typically when you think most to serve, you start all. That’s where the threatening noise, comes, right?

I think this is what every innovation super cycle has done. I think capacity to serve, what you described just now, is the fact, personalization requires capacity to serve, which you just do not possess.

So let me take a client example just to explain this.

Recently, with a client in India called Manipal Hospitals we used AI and we did a project. It was one hospital in Bangalore. But what happened there is quite interesting.

The nurse shift handover process used to take something like, 70 minutes. That has now reduced to 20 because of AI.

Now, imagine, India has a population of 300,000 nurses when this rolls out. 300,000 nurses saving 50 minutes every single day as they change shift. Imagine the capacity to serve expansion.

Because the reality is, India does not have the capacity to provide healthcare to one and a half billion people. In fact, at current capacity, if I look at doctor, nurse, et cetera, you probably have to quadruple your current capacity. You can now put this, the world doesn’t have enough food to feed nine billion people as and when we get there, which doesn’t seem to be too far away. All I’m saying is we have enormous capacity to serve issues, exactly the point you made, at your level of scale, which is, you say there are 50 things to do in the week. You can only do 20 because you don’t have. We are going to see massive expansion.

Therefore, things like personalization, which hitherto were impossible, because of that facet will now be possible.

Peter: Yeah. And, it is not just about scale. It was probably unfair to the analogy because I do think it’s about the quality and the value proposition.

Krishnan: Correct.

Peter: Right? So whatever you do, you don’t have as much time being spent on the mundane or the things that you have to do personal research on, and it’s really either putting your hands on the ground and it’s a civil engineer or a nurse, as you said, those knowledge-based workers that actually do things and interact with people, they’ll just do a lot more of it, which is kind of what they want to do anyway. I know for a fact that nurses don’t really want to do administration.

And a lot of us don’t want to do administration. If there’s productivity elements to AI that’s happening today, I’m all in. I really am. I mean, I think a number of us should be. So it’s exciting, as I said, I think people just have to understand, how they adopt it, where they see use for it.

We probably need to take a look as executives to say, “All right, how much do we need to change now in terms of our mix?” Because there is a cost to this. It’s not free. I do think, big players, will make it extraordinarily, commoditized in terms of pricing so you can actually adopt this to help people.

Krishnan: Yeah. And that’s happening. Well, maybe an interesting idea to close this with is Demis Hassabis, the CEO of Google DeepMind, a gentleman who won the Nobel Prize last year for his work on AlphaFold. So Demis and his team really drive Google’s advancements on AI.

And so Demis recently had an interview on 60 Minutes, and something he said there I found very interesting because the interviewer asked him this question, that, “Ultimately, Demis, in your opinion, what differentiates human and AI?”

And his answer, I’m paraphrasing, was imagination. The human being will always bring imagination, and that is not something Demis believes that AI agents will do. I think what you’re saying, right, as you solve for these problems, people will invent a new future which doesn’t exist today. That’s work all of us should be doing. And for marketing people, that should be, straight up their alley.

Peter: Yes. Exactly. The future is bright. We just don’t know what it is, yet. Until we get an AI bot that’ll tell us what the future is.

Krishnan, this has been great. Before we wrap up, I, wanted to, given that you spent a lot of time giving us breakdowns in a very simple, trilogy of answers, if you will, I’m going to ask you some, maybe three questions, and you can give me up to three answers just to get us a little bit more insight into your personal persona.

So these are random questions. I’ll throw it out there, so hopefully this will make sense. Curious to see if I were to ask you in rapid fashion, three musical acts or events that you wished you had been a part of but just didn’t get the chance to be at. Either you weren’t born or you just couldn’t get there. Any ideas?

Krishnan: Yeah. So a very simple answer for me. The Grateful Dead. Lynyrd Skynyrd. They passed away before I got into this act. And I would say, the third really would be, Pink Floyd at their most magnificent. So once again, now that Gilmour-Waters are apart. So, none of those three are available to me, unfortunately.

Peter: So sounds like 1971, 1972 is your era of music.

Krishnan: Yeah, yeah. That is my decade. You’re absolutely right.

Peter: Hotel Mars. I was listening to that at the weekend. And Pink Floyd, tremendous. So I like your musical taste. How about some, three places that you haven’t been to, like on a bucket list, that you are hoping to go to?

Krishnan: I’m, fortunately or unfortunately, Peter.

Peter: You’ve been everywhere.

Krishnan: Wherever I am, I’m happy there. So I never really feel the need to go somewhere. But just to answer your question, the first I would say is, Arunachal Pradesh, which is at the northeast of India. It’s an extraordinary state. You need permits to get in there. But one dream of mine is to go there and spend some time. The second I would say is, Chiang Mai in Thailand.

Peter: I’ve been there.

Krishnan: Yeah.

Peter: Been there.

Krishnan: Unfortunately, we always end up going to the beachy places.

Peter: Yeah.

Krishnan: I really want to go into the hills of Thailand. Love the culture, love the food, and, so on and so forth.

And the third area I would say is. So, probably Ireland.

Peter: That’s not a bad place.

Krishnan: Yeah.

Peter: It’s because I’m from there. You’re being very kind.

Krishnan: Just because there’s so much music and, such great vocals come out of that place, so just to go and hang out and figure out what’s going on there.

Peter: I’ll recommend Ireland. I’ll give you that. Lots of crack, as they say, back home. And the music is great. And so are the people, I hope.

Krishnan: Right?

Peter: You just have to bring your raincoat.

The third question, I’ll finish up with you, Krishnan, is, yeah, just some things that you, three things you’ve read or a podcast that you’ve listened to that, you found interesting.

Krishnan: Actually, I don’t listen to too many podcasts. I do read a lot, Peter. So books that I keep going back to, or I can pick up and read at any time, one is The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which I thought was a truly a remarkable piece of writing.

Peter: Yeah.

Krishnan: The second is Of Mice and Men, and there’s a bit of a personal angle there as well. I empathize, with the context, in that. And, the third is Catch-22, which I find increasingly more and more relevant, every year that passes.

Peter: I’ve not read. Is this a war novel? I’m trying to remember.

Krishnan: Which one?

Peter: Catch-22? Yeah.

Krishnan: Catch-22 does have a war in it.

Peter: Yeah.

Krishnan: You should read it.

Peter: I will. I haven’t read that. I’ll write that down.

Krishnan, I really appreciate your time. I’ve enjoyed the conversation. I hope you have as well.

Krishnan: I did, Peter. Wonderful chatting with you. And, I look forward to meeting you sometime physically.

Peter: Yes

Krishnan: In the flesh. Perhaps in one of those bucket list places…that might be Ireland.

Peter: Well, if you do make it to Ireland, I’ll certainly meet you there.

But good to catch up. Thanks, Krishnan.

Bye-bye.