Future of Marketing

Katrina Wong is the Chief Marketing Officer of New Relic, a $1 billion revenue observability platform that went private in a $6 billion deal in late 2023. She joined in May 2024 as the company’s first CMO, responsible for brand evolution, demand generation, and market expansion. She previously held marketing leadership roles at Segment and Salesforce and has been part of seven successful company exits across her career. She studied environmental toxicology before moving into tech, and applies a scientific approach to hypothesis testing and measurement in marketing.

We discuss:

* Why stretch goals, not achievable targets, create the conditions to overachieve pipeline

* How New Relic moved from 3x to 5x pipeline goals with the same budget and eventually eliminated the lower goal

* How sprint-based demand gen works: setting numeric goals Monday, checking trajectory Wednesday, hitting targets by Friday

* Why the sprint facilitator’s role is to probe the how, not just receive status updates

* When database growth plateaus, how distribution through partnerships, communities, and influencers unlocks pipeline within weeks

* How defining ICP through compelling events in top deals, not firmographic patterns, enables targeted lookalike motions

* How Katrina uses customer advisory boards and co-innovation sessions to identify emerging problems before they surface broadly

* How New Relic moved from claiming “intelligent observability” to naming a specific pain point: engineers troubleshooting AI-generated code at 3AM, at a scale that can’t be solved by humans alone

* Why AI reduces the manual work of marketing and restores space for creativity, storytelling, and brand building

* How Katrina rolled out AI adoption bottoms-up through a monthly marketing showcase, then layered in top-down governance

* Why the CMO role means wearing the company hat, not just the marketing hat

Where to find Katrina Wong:

* LinkedIn

Future of Marketing is brought to you by the Upside AI Revenue Intelligence and Attribution platform, Graphite Growth Research-Driven SEO & AEO Agency and XYZ Venture Capital and is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thefutureofmarketing.substack.com

In this episode of Future of Marketing, hosts Camille Ricketts and Mada Seghete sit down with Wendy Werve, Chief Market Officer at Comply, to challenge one of marketing’s most foundational concepts: the funnel. Wendy shares why traditional funnels and MQLs no longer reflect how buyers behave, how AI enables real-time, signal-driven marketing, and what it takes to build trust and drive revenue in complex, high-stakes markets.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thefutureofmarketing.substack.com

In this episode of Future of Marketing, hosts Ethan Smith and Camille Ricketts sit down with  Idan Koren, CMO of Verkada, to explore what it actually takes to build a technical marketing organization in the AI era. From structuring a high-performing MDR function to using first-party data for real personalization, Idan explains why the biggest gains don’t come from flashy AI demos but from building better systems, infrastructure, and decision frameworks.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thefutureofmarketing.substack.com

In this episode of Future of Marketing, hosts Mada Seghete and Camille Ricketts sit down with  Lindsey Irvine, CMO of Square, to explore how marketing is evolving beyond the “AI bubble” and into the real world of SMBs. Lindsey shares how customer obsession, global market nuance, and a dual mandate of marketing to both humans and AI agents are reshaping modern go-to-market strategies. She also dives into how AI is transforming workflows, team structures, and even how marketers build and present ideas.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thefutureofmarketing.substack.com

In this episode of Future of Marketing, hosts Ethan Smith and Camille Ricketts sit down with Cecilia Stallsmith, CMO at Lovable, to explore what it takes to market a product in a category that’s still being defined. Cecilia shares how to win over developers and non-technical users at the same time, why brand and identity matter more than most teams admit, and how AI is reshaping both marketing execution and team structure in real time.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thefutureofmarketing.substack.com

In this episode of Future of Marketing, hosts Ethan Smith and Camille Ricketts sit down with Sheila Vashee, CMO of Figma, to explore what it really takes to scale a product-led growth company into an enterprise powerhouse without losing its soul. From community-driven movements like Config to AI-native workflows like Figma Make, Sheila shares how Figma balances craft, collaboration, and rapid innovation in a market flooded with automation. The takeaway: user love isn't a tactic. It's the strategy.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thefutureofmarketing.substack.com

In this episode of Future of Marketing, hosts Ethan Smith and Mada Seghete sit down with Kate Johnson, CMO of Dscout, to dismantle one of marketing’s biggest myths: single-source attribution. Kate shares why chasing “what channel won” is the wrong question, how deal storytelling reveals the real drivers of pipeline, and why small, cross-functional teams can outperform larger ones when structured around outcomes, not silos. The future of marketing isn’t about replacing humans with AI. It’s about freeing them to think.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thefutureofmarketing.substack.com

In this episode of Future of Marketing, hosts Camille Ricketts and Mada Seghete sit down with Sara Varni, CMO of Datadog, to explore how marketing teams must rebuild, not just automate, in the age of AI. Sara shares how to navigate developer-first go-to-market without losing executive buyers, why PLG and enterprise should operate as one funnel, and how AI should eliminate low-value work while preserving creativity and authenticity.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thefutureofmarketing.substack.com

In this episode of Future of Marketing, hosts Ethan Smith and Mada Seghete sit down with Dave Steer, CMO of Webflow, to explore why trust has become the real competitive advantage for brands navigating an AI-driven market. Drawing on leadership roles at PayPal, eBay, Cloudflare, and Webflow, Dave shares the trust equation modern CMOs need to survive, why most marketing teams fail to prove incremental ROI, and how AI is reshaping the marketer’s role into something closer to a go-to-market engineer.

Learn more about how Webflow helps marketing teams create, manage, and optimize personalized web experiences that drive real results.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thefutureofmarketing.substack.com

In this episode of Future of Marketing, hosts Camille Ricketts and Mada Seghete sit down with Lena Waters, CMO of Notion, to explore how AI is reshaping not just marketing workflows, but how teams work together. They unpack how Notion integrates AI natively into its product and go-to-market, why “show, don’t tell” beats traditional enterprise selling, and how to scale brand, PLG, and enterprise motion without losing warmth or clarity.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thefutureofmarketing.substack.com