Coworking with Priya Gill

Each week, we spotlight Marketing Brew readers in our Coworking series. If you’d like to be featured, introduce yourself here.

Priya Gill is global head of marketing at SurveyMonkey. Prior to joining SurveyMonkey, she spent nearly six years at Box, and she has also worked at HP and Boeing.

Favorite project you’ve worked on? One of my favorite projects was leading our corporate messaging and visual identity refresh. Through deep internal and external analysis, I helped the company align around a clear target audience, sharpen our core value propositions, and create a unified corporate messaging strategy that better reflects who we serve and what we offer. At the same time, we refreshed the brand’s visual identity to be more modern, relevant, and aligned with our updated positioning. This ensured we not only spoke more clearly to customers but also showed up more powerfully across all touchpoints. It was a rewarding project because it wasn’t just about a fresh new look or shiny new language; it was about setting the foundation for the brand’s future growth.

What’s your favorite ad campaign? I loved our recent NBA All-Star campaign, aligned with the 2025 NBA All-Star weekend in and around Chase Center and throughout downtown San Francisco during the event. Coined, “You may not be an All-Star. But you can survey like one.” This out-of-home campaign leveraged billboards and pillars, LED mobile trucks, and SurveyMonkey-branded wrapped cars (which circled the event during Saturday night and all day Sunday). This ad campaign took a playful yet strategic approach, tying the core of what we do here at SurveyMonkey (gather feedback to make better decisions) to a big cultural moment. By aligning our brand lightning strike with a high-visibility event, we were able to tap into a conversation already buzzing with excitement and engagement. It was a great example of meeting people where their energy already is. And I have to admit, it was so fun seeing all of our branding shared between our team, and also from friends and fans who saw it in the wild.

One thing we can’t guess from your LinkedIn profile: My background includes both engineering and culinary school (among other areas)—an unusual mix that deeply informs how I lead. Engineering taught me process, structure, and the power of data-driven decision-making. It’s how I keep my team focused on solving the right problems and making the smartest decisions with the information we have. Culinary school, on the other hand, sharpened my creativity and adaptability, two skills every marketing leader needs in today’s fast-changing digital landscape. One thing I have learned throughout my career is that whether you’re in the kitchen or driving a cross-functional marketing campaign, success depends on being open to new ideas and unafraid to take creative risks.

What marketing trend are you most optimistic about? Least? SurveyMonkey recently asked marketers if they use AI to generate content, and a third said they do, making it the No. 1 use case. I’m excited about how AI is helping marketers to work smarter, not just faster. It’s giving us superpowers when it comes to turning insights into action, understanding our audiences more deeply, and scaling great ideas across formats and channels. But the magic really happens when you pair AI with human creativity and empathy. The best marketing still feels personal, relevant, and real, and AI can help us get there more efficiently if we’re thoughtful about how we use it.

I will admit I am a little wary of marketing that leans too hard on AI without a clear point of view. Just because we can generate endless content doesn’t mean it’s meaningful or memorable. In a world full of AI-generated noise, authenticity is what cuts through. People want to feel like there’s a real human on the other end who understands them. That’s the bar, and it’s not something you can fake.

What’s one marketing-related podcast/social account/series you’d recommend? I’d recommend Lenny’s Newsletter, a podcast/video series with transcribed content. It isn’t a traditional marketing resource, and that’s exactly why I love it. It started with a focus on product management and growth and has evolved into one of the most practical, real-world guides for anyone involved in building, scaling, and growing a business. The insights are tactical, grounded, and just as relevant for marketers as they are for product or growth leaders.