Kevin Twomey believes marketing succeeds or fails on one measure: whether a campaign moves the needle, repeatably. As Head of Portfolio Marketing at Sprout Social, he puts that belief into practice by pushing his team to prove marketing effectiveness rather than assume it, using AI-powered analysis to trace which activities actually drive pipeline growth.
Twomey’s path to his role at Sprout Social wound through music PR and record labels, where he had a front-row seat to the release of Justin Timberlake’s FutureSex/LoveSounds, home to the smash hit SexyBack, ad agencies in Dublin and Amsterdam, a stint advising more than 1,200 startups at Toronto’s MaRS Discovery District, and four years building NewsWhip before its acquisition by Sprout Social. Wherever he’s worked, he’s chased the same question: How do you build a repeatable formula for messaging that lands.
Named to our Marketers to Watch list, Twomey shared his perspective on why he expects an AI cooling as marketers return to the fundamentals of the craft, what he learned launching an AI-powered media monitoring agent, and why “managing up” might be the most underrated skill in marketing.
What book or podcast do you recommend to marketing leaders?
I’d point every marketer toward Paul Dervan. With over 20 years of experience building global brands, he’s written “Run with Foxes,” a reaffirming, no-BS account of what it actually takes to build a brand. What resonates with me is his obsession with proving marketing effectiveness and his ability to mix the art and science of the craft.
He also runs a Substack on AI and marketing that’s one of the more useful resources I’ve found for practical, applied ideas rather than hype. I’m particularly drawn to his “Brief Agent,” which critiques your marketing brief, asks the questions any good strategist would, and helps sharpen it before it goes anywhere near an active campaign. A weak brief leads to weak marketing campaigns, so getting it right upfront is critical.
And the usual essentials still hold up too: “How Brands Grow,” “Crossing the Chasm,” and “Obviously Awesome” are worth every marketer’s time.
How are you and your team currently using AI?
The biggest benefit I’ve found with AI is that it’s democratized data, in particular Salesforce and pipeline data. Pre-Claude, it would have taken me two to three days to complete a monthly pipeline analysis. Now it’s done in half a day. Each product has a unique project containing targets, ICP, personas, and a connection to the relevant Salesforce dashboard. Within a few minutes, I can see how we’re tracking to target, month-over-month performance, segments we’re winning and losing, and how much of our new business fits our ICP. It also shows me which marketing activities are driving the most pipeline.
Having easy-to-consume, near-real-time analysis has meant sales, marketing, and CS can quickly see an issue and put a plan in place before it’s too late. We’re no longer waiting for the monthly look-back report to take action.
One of my favorite examples from the team is a colleague’s competitor intelligence agent. He’s built it so a fully formed analysis comparing Sprout Social to any competitor is ready in minutes, freeing up far more time to strategize with sales on how to win the deal instead of assembling the research. I put it to the test after taking on product marketing for our Influencer Marketing product and needing to get up to speed on our primary competitor fast. It got me there in no time.
What’s a prediction you have for marketing over the next few years?
Marketers love the shiny new thing, and we’re currently chasing our AI tails. It’s AI this, agents that. But we forget that we work inside a bubble that’s obsessed with innovation and technology.
Our customers don’t always see the world the way we do, especially when it comes to AI. According to Pew Research, 50% of Americans are more concerned than excited about the increased use of AI in daily life. There is mounting backlash against the data centers that power the LLMs, with 70% of Americans saying they would oppose data center construction in their area. Furthermore, around two-thirds of Americans said they would be “less likely to purchase from a brand that uses AI-generated ads,” while 73% said they would be “less likely to trust an ad” they suspected was made using AI.
So my prediction is that there will be an AI cooling or hiatus. Companies will continue to use AI for internal efficiency gains and workflow improvements, but AI’s perception problem will force marketers to return to the fundamentals of their craft: creative excellence built off deep consumer insights, thoughtful segmentation, and unique positioning.
What’s the most innovative or exciting project you’ve worked on recently?
Typically, NewsWhip, which was acquired by Sprout Social, sells to comms teams at big global brands; they might look after a family of brands and could have an issue on their hands at any moment. Their biggest fear is getting an email from their boss asking about a story they’re unaware of.
The tools and technology they use have traditionally been dashboard-heavy and require a lot of manual digging. To help them get ahead of this, we built the world’s first real-time and predictive media monitoring agent. It automatically detects new stories relevant to your brand, determines if they’re predicted to grow, and identifies if there has been an uptick in coverage or a spread of geographic interest. It then decides whether you need to be notified and, if so, in less time than it takes to make a cup of tea, it delivers an exec-ready report into your inbox.
We were first to market and were sure we’d see a surge in inbound interest: who wouldn’t want their very own custom agent monitoring their brand? But, unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. While our brand customers now depend on it as part of their daily workflows, we didn’t get the inbound demand we’d hoped for.
There were lots of lessons to be learned from the launch, but the main one for me is a reminder that we are not the customer. Our excitement for agentic monitoring wasn’t shared by the broader market: we didn’t appreciate their concerns about trusting AI, or whether workflow automation might equate to job replacement.
If I were to rewind the clock, I’d focus more on managing internal expectations, reminding colleagues that we are not the customer, and investing more in building the market’s trust in this new feature.
What’s the most pressing business challenge you’ve faced in the last year and what have you done to solve it?
Being part of the leadership team at NewsWhip at the time of acquisition was as wild a ride as I could ever have imagined. No sooner had the ink on the agreement dried than attention turned to post-acquisition integration.
My priority was my team’s integration: bringing them along on the journey and making sure they found new, fulfilling homes at Sprout Social was critical.
It also required a re-founding of NewsWhip within Sprout Social and going back to basics. That meant marketing ourselves internally to a much broader team: making sure the frontlines knew what we did, what a good-fit customer looks like, and why we’re different from but complementary to the products they were used to selling.
My one piece of advice for anyone going through a similar process is to start small with the AEs, get a few wins, build their confidence, turn them into internal champions, and only then start to broaden to the full sales team. The frontlines will default to what’s familiar and easier to sell. Changing that habit requires ongoing internal education and incentives.
What leadership muscle is most important for marketers to exercise?
Managing up. Whether you’re an intern or the CMO, being able to manage up is critical to having a successful career. If you’re an individual contributor, understanding your manager’s priorities and perspective will help you present your work in a way that’s easier for them to say yes to. If you’re leading the marketing team, being able to present Marketing’s contributions in a way that resonates with the CEO and peers will build trust and unlock more budget.
What’s the most game-changing piece of career advice you’ve ever received?
“Don’t be sheep-dipped” is a piece of career advice that will stay with me until the day I die. It came from my leadership coach. It’s a farming term for a process in which sheep are dipped in a solution to remove any parasites.
In a business context, employees can fall into the trap of being excessively dipped in a company’s culture and rituals, so much so that they begin to conform, losing their confidence, their edge, and their willingness to ask the tough questions.
A flock of sheep-dipped employees will accept average, move slowly, and fail to innovate.
What gives you energy and inspiration outside of work?
Music. Whether I’m going to a concert, revisiting older artists, exploring new ones, or a Sunday ritual, where my four-year-old son picks out a vinyl record to play during dinner. Music is a source of creative and technological inspiration, a source of escapism, a time machine, and now a source of pure joy as my kids join me on that journey. I’ll hold off on playing “SexyBack” at the dinner table until they’re a little older…
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.
