Welcome to ExtraMile by HiTechNectar, an exclusive interview series where industry leaders discuss innovations, tech trends, marketing tactics, and expert insights.
Join us as we dive into an insightful conversation with Sheila Morin, the Chief Marketing Officer at Coveo, a leading enterprise AI platform that brings AI search, recommendations, and generative AI.
With over 20 years of experience in marketing and branding, Sheila has been instrumental in shaping the company’s global brand strategy and driving innovative AI-powered solutions. Discover how Sheila combines creativity and strategy to enhance digital experiences and lead Coveo in its mission to empower businesses through AI.
Hello Sheila, we are glad to have you with us!
Q1. You have a diverse background at multiple renowned companies. Can you share an overview of your career and discuss how your journey has been as the CMO of Coveo?
Ans. I began my career in sales at Procter & Gamble, and after two years, transitioned to a marketing role at L’Oréal. Throughout my 12 years at L’Oréal, I held various positions, working both in Montreal and Paris. Following that, I joined Danone, and in 2017, I joined Cirque du Soleil. In 2019, I got my first CMO role at Cirque du Soleil. However, when COVID-19 hit, Cirque du Soleil was significantly impacted, and most of the team was let go. I remained part of the smaller team that stayed on longer, but eventually, I realized it was the right moment to explore new opportunities. That’s when I was introduced to Louis Têtu, CEO and Chairman of Coveo, a tech company that is a leader in AI search, recommendations and generative answering. Louis convinced me to dive into the tech world. It’s been an incredible journey ever since—I’ve now been at Coveo for almost 4 years, and I love every moment of it!
Q2. Having a long experience in leadership and marketing, how do you combine creativity and innovation within your team? What strategies do you use?
Ans. In my experience, creativity and innovation thrive when people feel they have the space to explore, experiment, and fail fast—but more importantly, to learn even faster. By fostering a safe environment where mistakes are seen as opportunities for growth, I encourage my team to take risks without the fear of setbacks.
During my time at Cirque du Soleil, I also learned an invaluable lesson: to be truly creative, you have to embrace uncertainty. We worked closely with Dr. Beau Lotto, a neuroscientist, who taught us about the human instinct to avoid uncertainty. In early human history, uncertainty often meant danger or death, like not knowing whether a predator was nearby. While modern uncertainty doesn’t have the same life-threatening consequences, it still triggers anxiety and stress, leading people to shy away from it. At Cirque du Soleil, however, we embraced and even nurtured uncertainty because we believed it was the most fertile ground for creativity. To truly innovate, you must accept that you don’t always know the destination. Instead of thinking you’re moving from point A to point B, you have to be open to moving from A to “not B.” If the end result is already known, creativity becomes limited.
When we were developing campaigns for a new Cirque show, we often didn’t have a finalized show yet. We had to work with what was available and refine as we went along. This uncertainty pushed us to be even more creative—it forced us to innovate on the spot and trust the process.
In marketing, great creativity stems from curiosity, the willingness to test and take risks, and the ability to embrace being wrong along the way. It’s about having fun and finding joy in the process, knowing that the journey is just as important as the outcome.
Q3. Along with software development, Coveo is known for its AI-powered search and personalized digital experiences. What key strategies do you use in the overall development process?
Ans. I do not work in the Product & Innovation department, but what I can tell you is that It starts from the user’s needs – What are we solving for?
We work closely with our customers and prospects to ensure that we’re solving their most pressing challenges. By gathering continuous feedback and using data to inform decisions, we can tailor our solutions to meet specific industry demands and user pain points. With AI at the core: AI isn’t just a feature; it’s embedded in every aspect of our development process.
Q4. Can you share some recent achievements or milestones in Coveo’s software development? How have these accomplishments contributed to the overall company’s success?
Ans. We received several prestigious awards recognizing our innovations and leadership in AI such as the “AI Search Innovation Award” at 7th Annual AI Breakthrough Awards. Additionally, we were named a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Search and Product Discovery in Commerce, highlighting our commitment to delivering cutting-edge solutions.
One of our most significant accomplishments was the launch of our Generative Answering solution, which we rolled out across all our business areas—website, commerce, customer service, and workplace. Not only did we successfully launch it, but we’ve also seen outstanding results with our customers. They are providing faster, more accurate, and trusted answers to their users, leading to significant improvements in business outcomes, including higher customer satisfaction and increased efficiency. For example, our customer Xero saw a 20% increase in self-service success on their Xero Central support site, Forcepoint 14% Improvement in Self-Service Success Rate on the Forcepoint Community hub, F5 11% Improvement in self-service success rate on the My F5 community portal. When you can solve more problem in self-service with AI, there is less call at the call center and companies are saving millions of dollars.
We also recently introduced our Relevance Augmented Passage Retrieval API. This new API will enable enterprises to leverage our best in class search retrieval to bring content from across the enterprise into their GenAI apps and copilots to make them more relevant, secure and successful.
On top of that, just last week, we announced a strengthened partnership with Salesforce, expanding our integration into Data Cloud, which will open up even more opportunities for innovation and growth.
This combination of new product launches, strategic partnerships, and industry recognition has positioned us at the forefront of the AI and digital experience space.
Q5. According to you, which elements assist in constructing a robust marketing strategy? How does this contribute to achieving organizational goals?
Ans. Building a robust and successful marketing strategy isn’t just about selling a product. It’s about analyzing and being able to address each customer’s unique needs all throughout the marketing funnel. And that requires a very nuanced and dynamic approach.
Many elements need to align for a successful marketing strategy. For me, the most crucial elements stem from a holistic understanding of our product and our customers/prospects. Having a clear and multifaceted understanding of our customers and prospects helps to inform not only who we are targeting, but where they are, how we are targeting them, what are their pain points, how we can customize our reach for optimal conversion. Knowing our product allows us to really hone in on what differentiates us from our competitor and why a customer might choose our product versus a competitor’s so we can build out crisp, differentiated messaging.
Another really important element for us is maximizing ROI. We’re always juggling priorities so one of the ways we can ensure that we’re investing in the right places is to see what strategies and tactics have worked well in the past and continue to invest in, and build on, those successes.
Q6. Why is it important to initiate customer centric marketing campaigns? What is the role of personalization in this regard?
Ans. One size fits all messaging does not work anymore. Customers and Prospects expect brands to do better, to personalize our campaigns to them. As I mentioned, having a deep understanding of our customers and prospects is essential. It allows us to anticipate how they behave, what their concerns are, how they will engage with our product. Customer centricity is at the core of any successful marketing campaign. Once we’re able to harness all that insight we have about our customer, personalization then becomes the backbone of our campaigns. We can create and deploy a truly customized experience for our customers all throughout the funnel.
Q7. What challenges generally arise while implementing effective marketing campaigns? Can you suggest some methods to overcome them?
Ans. One significant challenge is navigating the complexity of our customer’s and prospect’s journey, particularly because we are dealing with long sales cycles. In such cases, customers and prospects engage with multiple touchpoints across various channels over an extended period. The notion of a “clear” or linear customer journey does not exist. Instead, we see customers entering, navigating and exiting the funnel at different stages, often influenced by diverse factors and triggers.
This fragmented journey can create difficulties in maintaining consistency, relevance, and personalization throughout the entire cycle. One customer may engage first via digital ads, another through an event, and yet another might interact with our website or sales team before consuming thought leadership content. Each of these touchpoints provides unique opportunities but also adds complexity to campaign management and to calculate ROI on a campaign-by-campaign basis.
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