Diverse companies get better results and are having a lasting impact on shaping AI
Disclaimer: The opinions represented here are those of the individual and do not necessarily represent those of their current or former employer.
The rules of modern marketing are shifting fast. AI is reshaping workflows, privacy changes are upending targeting, and customer expectations are rising by the day. So how do today’s senior marketers keep pace and stay ahead? Jenny Kay Pollock, Silicon Valley growth advisor and co-CEO of WOMEN x AI, has spent years navigating exactly these challenges. In a recent interview with Adikteev, she shared powerful strategies for leading teams, driving retention, and building smarter campaigns.
Watch the full interview below, or read on for a selection of key takeaways.
Key Takeaways
- Apply AI to lifecycle friction points. Stop guessing where users drop off and use AI to diagnose and optimize stuck points for real retention lift.
- Diversify who’s in the room. Diverse voices in your AI, UX, and growth decisions lead to better products, faster fixes, and stronger results.
- Collaborate with AI, don’t just automate. Treat AI like a teammate with clear goals and boundaries, and you’ll unlock smarter, faster decisions at scale.
- Break silos with growth squads. Form cross-functional teams that align on hypotheses, test fast, and iterate with purpose, because better alignment equals better outcomes.
- Let your community create with you. Co-create content with users and employees to foster loyalty, generate UGC/EGC, and scale marketing without scaling spend.
Use AI to Turn Lifecycle Bottlenecks into Breakthroughs
It’s easy to pitch “AI-powered marketing,” but much harder to implement it meaningfully. Pollock suggests starting with a simple question: Where are users dropping off? Identify those bottlenecks in your customer lifecycle and apply AI there to unlock growth. Unlike static “set-and-forget” campaigns, AI lets you create truly adaptive, intent-based journeys that evolve for each user. In practice, that might mean dynamically adjusting message timing, frequency, or offers based on real-time behavior and predicted intent. Pollock stresses that AI-driven lifecycle flows will beat static cohort campaigns every time because they deliver the right message to the right user at the right moment.
“What can you take that’s a bottleneck and unlock that? … You can batch campaigns and make them truly adaptive. You can have intent-based journeys at scale. So if you find places where you’re getting stuck in the lifecycle, that is where you want to include AI. Lifecycle flows powered by AI are so important, and they’re going to outperform static cohorts every single time.”
Amazon’s recommendation engine uses AI to tailor product suggestions, emails, and in-app experiences based on each user’s behavior. It’s deeply integrated into every stage of the customer journey, surfacing the right products at the right moment. These personalized touchpoints now drive 35% of Amazon’s total sales, illustrating just how powerful AI can be when it’s used to meet individual needs at scale.
Ready to take your mobile game’s retention to the next level? Adikteev specializes in re-engagement campaigns and personalized retention strategies. Contact us to learn how our solutions can help you keep players coming back.
Turn Inclusion into a Competitive Advantage in Tech and AI
When teams move fast, inclusion can feel like an afterthought. But according to Pollock, that’s a big miss. If only a narrow group is making the calls—on algorithms, on messaging, on user journeys—you risk building with blinders on. But inclusion is rocket fuel for better ideas and faster problem-solving. Pollock puts it simply: audit who’s at the table. Who’s helping you shape your product? Who’s guiding your AI? Inclusion brings nuance, creativity, and often, a much stronger bottom line.
“One of the key mistakes I see is people building AI products without these voices in the room. They’re building something for everyone with only a couple of voices represented. Inclusion isn’t just about who you hire; it’s about who shapes your algorithm, who’s having those conversations about how we are using AI, which AI to use and how to use it. I always recommend startups audit who’s at the table when talking about training data, user personas, and user experience. … Inclusion doesn’t have to be a cost center; it’s actually a competitive advantage.”
It’s no secret that companies with diverse leadership tend to perform better. Studies from McKinsey have shown that organizations with gender and ethnic diversity in executive roles are more likely to capture new markets, innovate faster, and deliver above-average profitability. Why? Because diverse leaders bring broader perspectives, challenge groupthink, and make decisions that better reflect the real-world needs of diverse customer bases. In high-stakes fields like AI and mobile marketing, this means fewer blind spots, more creative solutions, and ultimately, a stronger bottom line.
Let AI Scale Human Work
As marketers, we often rely on intuition and manual optimizations. Pollock’s advice: don’t be afraid to hand some control to AI, especially where massive data-crunching can uncover patterns we’d miss. Machine learning models can analyze far more data at scale than any human, from predicting churn to optimizing bids hourly. Trusting AI to handle these complexities can supercharge results, but it requires viewing AI as a teammate. Human and AI collaboration will outperform either alone. You still steer the vision and values, but the AI drives day-to-day adjustments in real time.
“It can be really hard when people start using AI because you have to let go of some control… But machine learning models can look at more data than you or I can, at a massive scale I can’t even begin to comprehend as a human. You don’t want to let the AI completely run loose, it makes mistakes too. But when we work together with AI, that’s when you’re going to unlock a lot of this magic.”
Companies are waking up to the value of using AI to strengthen their workforce. It’s become such a powerful market driver that Amplitude, which helps app developers understand user behavior, has gone as far as to acquire entire companies to better apply this concept to its offerings. In July 2025, Amplitude bought Kraftful, a startup that uses AI to analyze and distill customer feedback with minimal human oversight. Such tools allow marketers to tap directly into what Pollock is saying, freeing up time and resources to work on value-adding tasks like new features.
Unite Your Teams in Cross-Functional “Growth Squads”
Pollock emphasizes that the fastest-moving companies break down silos between marketing, product, data science, and design. Embedding marketers into product development cycles means user insights inform features early, and data scientists ensure proper tracking is in place from the start. Pollock recommends building a “hypothesis library,” or a living list of ideas to test, drawn from all corners of the team. Run rapid testing sprints and document the results. This way, learnings are shared and remembered.
“What I see working is when you get growth marketers in cross-functional groups, working super closely with product and data science, and that means before the product’s even done. That means using the user data you have to help define what you’re building next and what data you need to collect. For me, when I’m looking at experiment velocity, it’s: how can you test things and get clear data from that? You can iterate faster when you have what I like to call a hypothesis library. You go through these testing sprints, get information, then decide what to do.”
Rideshare company Lyft attributes much of its growth to this cross-functional approach. Lyft organizes each line of business with its own cross-functional growth team, mixing engineers, product managers, data scientists, UX researchers, and growth marketers in one unit. These teams meet daily to share insights and coordinate experiments, rather than working in isolation. As a result, the company has seen growth as high as 125% year-over-year, and it credits its nimble, hypothesis-driven culture for that success.
Co-Create with Your Users and Employees to Build Community
Looking ahead, Pollock sees a shift toward co-creation in marketing. Content creation is becoming “decentralized” thanks to easier creative tools (often AI-powered) and the rise of both user-generated content (UGC) and employee-generated content (EGC). Pollock believes using all the levers you have – from your super-users to your board members – is critical as part of your extended marketing engine. AI comes into play by providing creation tools and by helping scale up personalization of that content. The role of the marketer shifts toward curator and facilitator of a vibrant community conversation, rather than sole author.
“Creative assets are getting easier to create. It’s really getting decentralized. Teams are using AI to co-create and they’re creating with their users. You’re seeing UGC, and we’re also seeing what they’re calling EGC (employee-generated content). We have UGC and EGC. To me, that’s so important because if you’re creating content and creating community, you want to be using all the different levers you have, your users and, in my opinion, also your employees and your board. You want to really use everybody that’s with your company and focused on your success in marketing and reaching out. I think that’s where the fun’s going to come in – when you see all of these people collaborating with AI.”
Look at Coca-Cola’s “Share a Coke” campaign. By personalizing Coke bottles with people’s names, Coke effectively turned millions of customers into content creators as they shared photos of “their” Coke on social media. The campaign reversed a decade-long sales decline, increasing U.S. Coke sales by 0.4% year-over-year after 11 years of drops. The simple act of co-creating (customers finding and sharing their named bottle) built community buzz that traditional ads alone couldn’t achieve.
Bring the Magic Full Circle
As co-CEO of WOMEN x AI, Jenny Kay Pollock is opening doors for underrepresented voices in tech and helping startups navigate the shifting terrain of AI, growth, and inclusion. If you’re a senior marketer looking to stay relevant, her insights are a roadmap. For more from Jenny, check out WOMEN x AI, Luminizing Growth, or connect with her directly at jennykaypollock.com. She’s shaping the future and inviting you to help shape it too.
As a senior marketer, you don’t have to navigate this new landscape alone. The right partners and platforms can help you implement these ideas quickly and effectively. If you’re ready to apply these insights to your own growth challenges, consider leveraging Adikteev’s expertise and technology. Get in touch with Adikteev’s team to explore how our platform can help you drive retention, revenue, and marketing “magic” for your business.