In this interview from Google Cloud Next 2026, Jeff Follestad, senior manager of GCP partner sales at EPAM Systems, joins Sonia Fife, global leader of consumer packaged goods, strategic industries at Google Cloud, to talk with theCUBE's John Furrier and co-host Alison Kosik about how agentic AI is transforming marketing, commerce and operations across the consumer packaged goods industry. Fife explains that CPG companies are deploying AI agents to move from reactive campaign cycles to near-real-time marketing optimization, using the Cortex framework to connect YouTube creative placement directly to sales outcomes. Follestad adds that feedback loops once requiring six to eight weeks can now close in near real-time — enabled by a "sales lift engine" built through EPAM's 15-year Google Cloud partnership that dynamically reallocates ad spend across channels based on live consumer sentiment.
The conversation also explores synthetic consumer data as a competitive accelerator, with both guests detailing how brands can now assemble a virtual testing audience in minutes rather than months of traditional focus group research. That compression in time to market lets companies fail fast before committing significant resources to underperforming concepts. Fife introduces the "invisible shelf" — the next frontier of retail driven by agentic commerce — and notes that CPG brands must ensure their product information and DAM data are agent-ready to remain discoverable in an AI-mediated buying environment. Follestad points to the Universal Commerce Protocol as the connective layer enabling frictionless, agent-driven purchasing across merchant catalogs and payment platforms. From supply chain route optimization to Google Cloud's manufacturing data engine powering enterprise-wide agentic workflows, both guests outline how a fully integrated AI stack is enabling CPG companies to cut costs, accelerate innovation and compete in an AI-native market.
Forgot Password
Almost there!
We just sent you a verification email. Please verify your account to gain access to
Google Cloud Next 2026. If you don’t think you received an email check your
spam folder.
In order to sign in, enter the email address you used to registered for the event. Once completed, you will receive an email with a verification link. Open the link to automatically sign into the site.
Register for Google Cloud Next 2026
Please fill out the information below. You will receive an email with a verification link confirming your registration. Click the link to automatically sign into the site.
You’re almost there!
We just sent you a verification email. Please click the verification button in the email. Once your email address is verified, you will have full access to all event content for Google Cloud Next 2026.
I want my badge and interests to be visible to all attendees.
Checking this box will display your presense on the attendees list, view your profile and allow other attendees to contact you via 1-1 chat. Read the Privacy Policy. At any time, you can choose to disable this preference.
Select your Interests!
add
Upload your photo
Uploading..
OR
Connect via Twitter
Connect via Linkedin
EDIT PASSWORD
Share
Forgot Password
Almost there!
We just sent you a verification email. Please verify your account to gain access to
Google Cloud Next 2026. If you don’t think you received an email check your
spam folder.
In order to sign in, enter the email address you used to registered for the event. Once completed, you will receive an email with a verification link. Open the link to automatically sign into the site.
Sign in to gain access to Google Cloud Next 2026
Please sign in with LinkedIn to continue to Google Cloud Next 2026. Signing in with LinkedIn ensures a professional environment.
In this interview from Google Cloud Next 2026, Jeff Follestad, senior manager of GCP partner sales at EPAM Systems, joins Sonia Fife, global leader of consumer packaged goods, strategic industries at Google Cloud, to talk with theCUBE's John Furrier and co-host Alison Kosik about how agentic AI is transforming marketing, commerce and operations across the consumer packaged goods industry. Fife explains that CPG companies are deploying AI agents to move from reactive campaign cycles to near-real-time marketing optimization, using the Cortex framework to connec...Read more
Jeff Follestad
NA Partner Sales SR ManagerEPAM
Sonia Fife
Global Leader, CPG Industries GTMGoogle Cloud
In this interview from Google Cloud Next 2026, Jeff Follestad, senior manager of GCP partner sales at EPAM Systems, joins Sonia Fife, global leader of consumer packaged goods, strategic industries at Google Cloud, to talk with theCUBE's John Furrier and co-host Alison Kosik about how agentic AI is transforming marketing, commerce and operations across the consumer packaged goods industry. Fife explains that CPG companies are deploying AI agents to move from reactive campaign cycles to near-real-time marketing optimization, using the Cortex framework to connec...Read more
exploreKeep Exploring
What is your reaction to the trend that the most successful agentic solutions in consumer packaged goods are those with strong data discipline (good data hygiene) and that prioritize revenue-driving workflows from the start rather than sprawling use cases; do you agree and what would you add?add
How is AI being used to improve marketing creative and measurement—specifically to connect creative placements (for example on YouTube) to sales outcomes?add
What is the current state of agentic commerce—how far along is its progress, are there production use cases today, and how should retailers or brands get started?add
How will agentic commerce and conversational-AI “agents” change the customer experience, and what must retailers and CPG brands do (in terms of data, catalogs/PIM/DAM, and platform architecture) to prepare and take advantage of platforms like Gemini?add
How can AI and agentic tools help consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies improve supply chain and manufacturing operations—such as route and assortment optimization, demand sensing, and reducing inventory carrying costs?add
>> Welcome back to Google Cloud Next 26. We are streaming live here in Las Vegas. I'm Alison Kosik alongside John Furrier, and we are about to talk about driving profitable growth with AI and marketing innovation. This is an important topic.
John Furrier
>> I mean, everything is a consumerization of AI is impacting all the world and this next segment's going to really unpack that. So looking forward to it.
Alison Kosik
>> Let's bring in our guests. We've got Sonia Fife. She's a global leader of CPG Industries, GTM Google Cloud. Welcome to theCUBE.
Sonia Fife
>> Thank you. It's great to be here.
Alison Kosik
>> And Jeff Follestad, is at Google partner, EPAM?
Jeff Follestad
>> That's right.
Alison Kosik
>> Yes, welcome to theCUBE-
Jeff Follestad
>> Thanks for having me....
Alison Kosik
>> as well. Look, not a household name. Why don't you talk us through first what EPAM is and talk us through how your partnership has helped with this marketing innovation alongside AI.
Jeff Follestad
>> Absolutely. Again, thanks for having me. EPAM is a long time Google Premier partner. We work closely with Google across multiple industries, specifically in consumer packaged goods. We've worked together for, I think, 15 years, helping to build and deliver products and solutions to clients who are using Google Cloud.
Alison Kosik
>> And what stood out to you about the partnership that you have with EPAM?
Sonia Fife
>> Well, the partnership with EPAM has really been one that has really endured and created a lot of value with Google Cloud, and particularly in the area of consumer packaged goods where when you step back and take a look at the context of the industry today, consumer goods companies are really struggling to be able to drive more growth and to be able to increase profitability in the bottom line. A lot of the work that we've been doing together is really helping to accelerate that and drive value in the industry.
John Furrier
>> Yeah, the big conversation here about agents and context has been centered, Gemini, getting a lot of headlines, but the data cloud, the infrastructure advancements are powering a lot more capability. We're hearing about tokenomics, costs and value. CPG businesses have always been data driven. And so we're seeing the consumer goods area highly adaptive to gen AI. So I'd love to get both of your thoughts on this because when you look at all the successful agent parts, the ones that we've been tracking, the ones that go out of the gate strong are the ones that have good data discipline. They got the hygiene, they know data, but they focus on revenue workflows right out of the gate, not like a sprawl.
Jeff Follestad
>> Sure.
John Furrier
>> And this seems to be a pattern. What's your reaction to that trend? Do you agree and add to it?
Sonia Fife
>> Yeah, I absolutely agree. I mean, I think when you think about the trends and what's needed in terms of CPG right now, as I was saying earlier, a lot of that is about being able to drive growth. And so you kind of begin there with how we can help to create that value in the industry. And in CPG, beginning to really accelerate the growth of our brands, being able to accelerate the ability to be able to do marketing and innovation is really going to be transformed with Agentic AI. And certainly we're seeing that in the marketing space. One of the areas that our consumer packaged goods take a look at is how they can really help to drive that engagement with consumers, but also how they can do that profitably and really drive value. So on the revenue side, we're seeing agents really be able to drive that transformation, looking around corners to understand what trends are coming. And then marketing, helping to take those trends, transform them into resonant concepts and campaigns. But as we know, the ability to do great agentic marketing and agentic innovation begins with Agentic Data Cloud. And so it's rooted in the commitment to be able to understand how to ensure that you're getting that value out of your data and we're seeing that a lot with some of the work that we've done with EPAM.
Jeff Follestad
>> Absolutely. Yeah. Unlocking that vast amount of data that you described, some of that data was collected years ago. Some of that's been aggregated on more modern platforms, and that data can inform how a lot of organizations like some that we see here today are making decisions about where to place marketing bets, how to personalize that marketing in a way that resonates with their clients or the organizations that maybe resell some of their products. And there's a more complicated go to-market structure for a lot of CPG where there might be a direct to consumer component, they're reselling through a large retailer, and leveraging that data, making informed decisions, and then understanding where to hedge bets and make informed purchases of ad spend, for example, like where we've worked with Sonia's team, we'll call it a sales lift engine. We can help CPG organizations in real time, perhaps market in TikTok where Instagram wasn't as effective. So optimizing that spend in an industry that's highly sensitive to margins has been really effective and we've worked well together in that area.
John Furrier
>> Yeah, CPG also has a lot of touch points. I mean, you just mentioned a few of them. I had a conversation last night with a brand marketer and it was kind of a little out there, but I'll just share. Yeah, AI is like the brand brain. And he was going to a place that was like really like, "Okay, AI's going to make the brand smarter." So okay, so who curates that? That's going to be the brand owner. So AI is being wired by the humans to do things. So that's one, sales, campaigns, product launches, matching up the cadence of product build to launch versus, "Oh, here's the product. Now let's get a campaign going." So you started to see some efficient, very agile use cases. So this is some of the narrative we've been hearing. What are you guys seeing? What are you doing? Where are you focusing your time? I guess that's my question. Where's the action? Where do you start?
Jeff Follestad
>> Do you want to go first there?
Sonia Fife
>> Sure. I mean, I think that you're absolutely right. When we think about how brands are transforming with AI, it is truly the brains it's helping to unlock across the process, going from finding those trends and those ideas, the concepts that resonate the most, taking that into not just the brief that's given to the agency, but the ability to be able to produce such a higher level of content and be able to ensure that our consumers are able to leverage that, to be able to drive conversion, and then ultimately to be able to activate it. A key element that we're also seeing today is the brands are not only needed in the creative, they're also need in the area of measurement. So one of the pieces of work that we've done with EPAM, leveraging some of the placement of creative on YouTube is really being able to connect that with sales. And one of our large snacking customers has really been able to see using the Cortex framework, the ability to connect the actual event with the actual outcome to be able to drive efficiency. So AI is helping to really agentify the process of marketing, help marketers become a lot smarter in that process, but also to create real value, which is really needed today.
John Furrier
>> Can you scope that benefit because that is amazing, by the way. So first of all, I love that. Compare that to the old way. Because what you're basically getting at is the closed loop, but there's now new loops. So there's new things happening. Explain the old way. What would it have happened? How many people would work on it?
Jeff Follestad
>> That's a great question, John. Traditionally, let's say a CPG organization runs a campaign. It could take four, six, eight weeks to run that campaign, measure the impact of that, bring those reports back into the organization, make adjustments to my media marketing mix, my M&M. In this new world, in literally near real time, that dial or that adjustment of my marketing spend assortment can be impact ... As Sonia described, if an event is impacting that, if we see customer sentiment shift, there's some event that triggers more effectiveness on one channel than another, you can optimize that to great efficiency. And so that's where we're seeing a big impact at that snacking company that you described. I think also in that process, you gather that feedback and can make some faster adjustments to what the market wants. So AI gives us that ability to not only test how an audience receives an ad, but maybe even how an audience reacts to a particular flavor of something, which again, you can see on display down the hall here today with the folks at Mars.
John Furrier
>> Awesome. We will stop by and we'll check it out.
Jeff Follestad
>> Plus you can need some M&Ms while you're down there. It's a pretty fun interactive display. Do see it.
John Furrier
>> Yeah. Maybe before our last interview, energy.
Jeff Follestad
>> That's right. That's right.
Alison Kosik
>> Sonia, what does real data look like for a CPG company in this moment of time?
Sonia Fife
>> Yeah. When we think about rail data for CPGs, often one of the primary challenges for CPGs is that they sell most of their business through their retail partners and they don't have that touch point directly with a consumer. Increasingly, what we're seeing is the ability to be able to gather data from a multiplicity of different multimodal touch points, which is enabled by AI, is allowing CPGs to be able to get more trends and insights, whether that's trends from search or sentiment analysis or from ratings and reviews, to be able to integrate that data so that agents can help to look around corners and really be able to help drive the direction of both innovation, but importantly, not only in innovation and marketing, but really across the entire value chain. More and more, we're seeing the unlock of the ability to take these trends and insights, to be able to have that impact how demand planning is being done in the enterprise, impact really how the entire enterprise is able to respond and become more efficient. And so the idea of having real data or just in time data is something that the Agentic Data Cloud is really helping to enable to and reinforce through many of the capabilities that are embedded.
Alison Kosik
>> Do you want to jump in? You look like you wanted-
Jeff Follestad
>> I think she answered that one perfectly. Yeah. Yeah, that was great.
Alison Kosik
>> Okay.
John Furrier
>> The data piece is great. I want to drill on this because one of the things we heard again here at Next this year, as well as last year, this year more prominently is the word digital twin. And digital twin kind of invokes, "Okay, I want to do some simulation." Synthetic data has been big. So when you have a lot of these unknowns, Sonia and Jeff, you'd have to run scenarios before, get some statistical calculations, do a press on distribution, all these things that people do. Now you've got agents and synthetic data going to work on use cases. This kind of feeds into one market, but also on the commerce side. It kind of hits both sides. Your thoughts on how this is going to be a new tool or a trick in the bag for marketers?
Jeff Follestad
>> Absolutely. Sonia and I actually had a great conversation about this last week. There's a tremendous expense for a CBG or a retailer to pull together a panel to interview individuals about which coffee do you like or a myriad examples of things that you can test that way. But the efficiency, we're talking about you can set up a synthetic testing audience in five minutes with the power of this compute. And if you've got your data in a place where it's ingestible, if it's clean enough or it's organized enough, and even that debatably doesn't have to be perfect to do this, you get real time results. And again, I think there's good examples with food, but that notion of just crowd testing without a physical crowd creates such velocity to get a product to market, but it also allows you to fail fast. So if you've developed something in a vacuum and you test it quickly, you can retreat from that product and focus on something else, whereas you may have taken six months to get to that point in the past. And so it's, again, in an industry very sensitive to margins and running very lean and very efficiently-
John Furrier
>> I'm sure test marketing too, and in market.
Jeff Follestad
>> Absolutely.
John Furrier
>> And you don't have to go to Des Moines, Iowa anymore to do tests. You can run them and simulate ... Sonia, this is a key, unlock.
Sonia Fife
>> Absolutely. Absolutely. Having spent years in the industry, one of the things to your point of before and after we'd be doing is finding those test markets cases, going directly to consumers to be able to understand them and to be able to drive those results. And as Jeff said, I think one of the key unlocks for us now in terms of being able to leverage the synthetic consumer data is to be able to accelerate time to market. One of the customers that we've worked with, another large CPG was able to significantly shrink the time that they were taking from the first start of the ideation, the development of campaign, and seeing that realized. And with synthetic consumer data, you can very quickly, not only reduce your cost, but really accelerate your time to market.
John Furrier
>> Are there certain workflows that lend itself out of the gate? How do you guys look at the end-to-end workflows? Obviously the marketing side commerce is probably a big one there, but how do you decide what to work on first? I mean, I said revenue because that sounded better, most people say. Every company's different in CPG. What do you guys decide on? What's the order of operations? Is it intentional?
Sonia Fife
>> It's very intentional. And as we've been talking a lot, it usually begins with having mind opening innovation, to be able to differentiate yourself as a brand, to be able to market that and reach consumers in a way that really helps to drive conversion and engagement with the brand. But then of course you also want to have this really with the consumer, by the customer. And as we know, today one of the areas that we have talked a lot today on the floor is the transition that's happening from the physical shelf to the digital shelf and now to the invisible shelf with Agentic commerce. And so being able to make that transition really allows or really requires that a brand to be ready for this transformation that's taking place.
John Furrier
>> How is commerce ... I guess my question is, where are we on the progress of agentic commerce? Because you guys have the payment stuff that you open sourced. So you got payment rails, you got A2A, MCP, it looks like it's all teed up. Are there use cases that you're seeing in production for agentic commerce today and what do they look like?
Jeff Follestad
>> Yeah-
Sonia Fife
>> No, please go ahead.
Jeff Follestad
>> I'll share a great example. And in fact, Wayfair spoke earlier, and we do some work there, so I feel like we can reference them because they did a great presentation. I think that the question for most retailers is where do I start? There's a big answer, but the quality of your catalog and your assortment, the way that you've enriched that catalog so that your products are ready to be surfaced through this new world of looking for things differently as Sonia described. So Fiserv and others did some really great work that they've shared here around how the UCP protocol hands off from that assortment in your merchant center to the retailer, to payment platforms like PayPal, who's part of that launch. But a lot of that comes back to that question of where do I start? And I think I would defer to Sonia if she feels differently, but I think what we hear is focus on that catalog, focus on your assortment, make sure you have overtime clean data. It's not prerequisite to start, but it's a good place to start. And to your point, the UCP protocol, which is really just the language that each of these platforms or these Agentic interactions happen, it's a language. GECX is the true commerce platform that big organizations that you'll see all over the event. I'm not going to rattle off the names, but the majors in the industry, the big retailers support this. So I would say from our perspective, start with that data, have a clear vision of where you're trying to get, and it's easier than it seems, you can get started pretty ... It's a pretty straightforward process to get started.
Sonia Fife
>> Yes. I mean, I completely agree. I mean, the objective of agentic commerce after all is to make the experience frictionless for the customer, for the consumer. And as we've talked, when we think about enabling this frictionless experience, the universal commerce protocol is certainly going to be able to enable that. Just as retailers will start with ensuring that the catalog is ready. In CPG, they've got to start by making sure that their brands are discoverable, which means that when they think about their PIM data or their DAM data, they need to make sure that it's agentic ready in the context of where we are. But having said that, there's also a tremendous opportunity for them to really engage with consumers in a different way. And our Gemini enterprise customer experience platform is really going to enable the quick building of agents, whether that's shopping agents that will become a part of the repertoire for many D2C brands, or even brand agents that are driving a whole level of experience. So this is really a time of transformation, but as Jeff said, it begins, first of all, as always with the data.
John Furrier
>> Yeah. And by the way, the enterprise platform, Gemini, the trend is, I won't say headless because that's an older term, but customization.
Sonia Fife
>> Yes.
John Furrier
>> I mean, the interface to the application can be anything now. And some will say headless. I've heard people just call it headless, but I prefer that to more retail, but this is where the customization value comes in. That's just the perfect storm to have a great experience, "Not, here's the software, you can customize the software," a completely different touchpoint.
Sonia Fife
>> Yes. The Agentic experience is really going to be different for brands. As we know, capabilities around conversational AI, the ability to engage with consumers in a very different way using voice or text is really going to be transformed with these capabilities.
John Furrier
>> Okay. We talked about the profitability, the go to-market value, the commerce, tech. I'd be remiss not to end on a more profit note, which is margins. Operational resilience, operations are seeing three personas emerge as the superpower, builder, operator, investor, all in one person. Investor, meaning if you save money, you can reinvest it into the projects, not like an invest to the CFO, because if I got a budget, I want to maximize that budget for the more tokens, more projects. So the ideal triple threat skill set is I got to build, operate, and invest. What would you say operationally AI is doing for CPG to hit those areas? Because speed is key, results are key. Where's the operational value?
Jeff Follestad
>> Yeah. And if I'm reading the question back, in terms of the supply chain operations or sort of the underpinning-
John Furrier
>> Yeah, anything....
Jeff Follestad
>> all of the complicated processes that a CPG has for warehousing, product, ensuring sell through the cost of sitting on inventory as you described. So that supply chain conversations, it's pretty complex, but in a simple way, there are a myriad AI tools and agentic tools that you can use for route optimization, assortment optimization. And if you're doing a better job of listening for those signals in the market and assorting products that you have a better sense of the potential sell through, there's a heavy cost to carrying inventory, right? So I think that's one area where we see that efficiency gain. I'm sure Sonia has a perspective on that. You work in that-
John Furrier
>> Yeah, you have the data that's going to see it. What are your thoughts?
Jeff Follestad
>> Yeah, please. Yeah.
Sonia Fife
>> Yeah, absolutely. I mean, as we think about the productivity in CPG, a lot of that is rooted in areas of the operations. And as Jeff said, a big part of that is supply chain transformation, but also manufacturing transformation. So capabilities like the manufacturing data engine that bring together data and enable you to be able to then unleash agentic use cases are really part of that transformation. So every part of the fully integrated stacks that we have at Google is really helping to unleash that value from the agentic data cloud rooted in the AI infrastructure and the agentic defense capabilities, but all the way through and unleashing the agents that are now going to be able to help you hit those key areas that you mentioned, right? Reduce the costs, be able to save on time to be able to get to some of these outcomes.
John Furrier
>> That's the full stack right here, that's the show.
Sonia Fife
>> That's the full stack right there.
John Furrier
>> You just summarized the keynote. Well done. Thanks so much. Great insights. I love the consumer package good area right now. Retail is booming, CPG transforming superfast. The question is who's going to have the best edge on all this? So we'll see. Thanks for coming on.
Alison Kosik
>> . Thank you.
Sonia Fife
>> We're very excited. Thank you very much.
Jeff Follestad
>> Thank you for having me today.
Sonia Fife
>> Thanks, Alison. Thanks, John.
Alison Kosik
>> And you've been watching theCUBE, the leader in live technology coverage. We'll be right back.
Alison Kosik
John Furrier