If you only check one highlight this week:

• B2B CMO? Why it’s time to bank on Google again.

• Product Marketer? Or hiring a Product Marketer? See my interview guide to spot great PMMs

-François

🔍 Google reclaimed the AI crown. Given its massive reach, it’s a big deal for marketers.

Google reclaimed the state-of-the-art (SOTA) LLM crown with Gemini 3 this week.

Gemini 3 Pro now leads most benchmarks, despite OpenAI and X AI releasing their 5.1 and 4.1 models, respectively, earlier this week, to try and undermine that launch.

Here’s where Gemini 3 improved vs. 2.5:

• “State-of-the-art reasoning and multimodality: Analyzing complex, diverse data (like video and X-rays) at once for deeper, faster insights.

• Powerful agentic coding and front-end creation: Rapidly prototyping and generating full front-end interfaces from a single prompt.

• Advanced tool use and planning: Giving AI the power to execute long-running, real-world tasks across your enterprise, such as financial planning and contract reviews.”

Most of us will not see obvious differences in our day-to-day use vs Gemini 2.5 (and less so vs ChatGPT 5.1 or Claude 4.5). But improvements are real and we will push our AI-game. And the convenience of AI embedded in our daily tools is a real productivity booster.

Here is where this matters most for marketers: Google has regained the lead in AI, and the reach of its products makes it inevitable.

That means:

• For its reach, targeting and engagement options, Watch for AI Mode advertising innovations. Google has massive incentive to figure this out with us.

• For their convenience and productivity boost: Tap Google's AI tools more: Gemini in Chrome, Drive, Docs, Image and video Gen, NotebookLM, etc.

Consider this for Search only:

• Sure, among AI tools “only”, ChatGPT dominates with 61% of chatbot traffic, followed by MS Copilot (14%), Google Gemini (13%), and Perplexity (6%)…

• But…Gemini 3 launched simultaneously to 2.65 billion users across Search (AI overviews & AI mode), Workspace, Android, and Cloud. Day one reach that OpenAI cannot match

• The Gemini 3 release also came with ads in AI Mode (this is just the beginning. Google has an insanely massive incentive to figure that out with us).

• Google is rolling out generative experiences in AI mode results (mini apps created on the fly just for us) to answer our questions.

So AI mode will improve fast. AI overviews will deliver better, more personal, interactive, and complete answers, right in the search results.

All this will bring new opportunities for advertisers, since AI search queries are much more detailed (i.e., more fine-grained intent data and targeting opportunities!) than classic Google searches.

And now consider AI usage:

I don't know about you, but even before these improvements, I caught myself running fewer searches in ChatGPT and more in Google. Why?

• Quality & Relevance: AI overviews have been really good lately (even before Gemini 3).

• Brand trust: Google has earned our trust as a search brand over two decades. ChatGPT is associated with AI hallucinations.

• Convenience: I dictate (using Wispr Flow) a detailed question directly in my Chrome address bar, hit Enter and voila: a great AI-generated answer. When in a Google Doc or on a web page, I click the Gemini icon in the top right and ask a question there. The answer effortlessly pulls together my own context in that doc plus all the web’s info. Doing this in ChatGPT requires more effort.

👉 There is now a real contender to ChatGPT in consumer AI, and it's an advertising and productivity behemoth.

It’s going to be fun figuring that out, especially when many expect OpenAI to launch advertising solutions soon.

P.S.: for the history of AI at Google, check out this Acquired podcast episode - “Google: the AI company.” It explains how Google had the initial lead in AI, lost it, and then regained it while navigating the classic innovator’s dilemma.

P.P.S.: I have been using Claude's deep research recently, and I've been super impressed with the results. They are thorough, relevant and the analysis is impressive.

My PMM Interview Bible: How to Vet Product Marketers (PMMs) - especially in AI, DevTools & Cybersecurity

Annoyed with myself for sometimes walking away from PMM interviews, unsure whether a candidate was great or not, I reviewed my PMM scorecards and built this complete interview guide, including "Good Signal vs. Red Flag" rubrics.

Instead of keeping it to myself and my clients, I shared it on LinkedIn.

I tested it this week myself, and it's already given me better signal

And these comments made my week :-)

My selection of tips, news and workflows

🤖 Six things GPT 5.1 does better than vs 5.0

This podcast recaps what GPT 5.1 does better than 5.0. The improvement is greater than what a 0.1 suggests.

tl;dr:

1. Simple Work Tasks with Instructions

• Higher fidelity to arbitrary but important instructions

2. Strategic Decision Making

• Makes clear commitments instead of hedging with "both/and" answers

• More articulate reasoning with confident recommendations

3. Improving the Prompter's Thinking

• Shows its work and reasoning process

• Helps refine your thinking for future similar queries

4. Comprehensive Planning

• Better at mapping multi-step projects

5. Writing

• Higher quality across creative, technical, and persuasive writing

• Less synthetic feel, better rhythm and clarity

6. Interacting (Personal and Professional)

• More eager, tries harder, shares the thinking process

• Less sycophantic, more genuine, shows self-awareness about helpfulness

🛠️ ChatGPT Group Chat coming soon

I got super excited by this announcement. Working solo with ChatGPT has been a game-changer. Imagine doing the same with a few friends or colleagues in the same chat?!

And then I read what's in bold below 😔.

But hey, it's coming soon. Imagine crafting campaigns, riffing on headlines and taglines, building entire plans collectively in the same AI thread. Will the planning session of the future take place in ChatGPT?

“To start a group chat tap the people icon in the top right corner of any new or existing chat. You can invite others directly by sharing a link with one to twenty people...

Group chats can be found in a new clearly-labeled section of the sidebar for easy access.

You can also manage the group settings—tap on the participants’ icons to name the group, add or remove people, or mute notifications.

You can set custom instructions for how ChatGPT responds in each group chat, whether that’s sharing more context or giving specific tone or personality.”

And now the bad news:

“For logged-in ChatGPT users on ChatGPT Free, Go, Plus and Pro plans in Japan, New Zealand, South Korea and Taiwan. This pilot is a small first step toward shared experiences in ChatGPT.”

👉 Who wants to work on 2026 planning with me in New Zealand to try it out? It’s summer there…

💡Growth today

In this LinkedIn post, Elena Verna called out two things worth unpacking (I also agree with her other points, by the way)

Yes, AI model upgrades and new AI products and features are so powerful that they deliver more than incremental improvements: they unlock completely new use cases. As a result, they get our attention and the coverage of an army of influencers. You're much better off launching AI features quickly and frequently, rather than waiting to have your full marketing arsenal ready. Influencers will market it (if you have done all the essential upfront work of enlisting and equipping them - see final words way below)

Case in point: OpenAI launched ChatGPT 5.1 on Monday with fewer launch assets than usual and even 5.1 Pro, later this week, with a single tweet. Why? They probably knew Google was launching Gemini 3 this week. So they most likely accelerated the release to avoid Google claiming all the limelight this week. They also knew influencers and reporters would handle the reviews. And they did…

✨Wiz’ KubeCon booth inspiration

You can make B2B marketing boring...

Or you can do this:

Final Words

Thanks for sharing these highlights with busy marketing execs around you.🙏 

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François | LinkedIn 

I'm a CMO, advisor, and "CMO Wingman". Yes, that's a thing :-). Ask my clients: in this AI era, CMOs need a strategic proactive advisor more than ever. I’m former CMO at Twilio, Augment Code, Apollo GraphQL, Decibel, Udacity and Head of Marketing for LinkedIn Talent Solutions.