Keith Tomlinson on Creative Confidence, AI Clarity, and Embracing the Unknown – ML Stories

Keith Tomlinson is the Lead Digital Experience Product Owner (Professional) B2B at Kimberly-Clark, where he bridges technical strategy and marketing impact across a global portfolio. With a career that spans B2C and B2B roles—including digital leadership positions at Unilever—Keith brings a sharp eye for scalable innovation and a deep respect for both human creativity and technological progress.

In our conversation, Keith shared his thoughts on building resilient teams, navigating hype cycles like AI, and why sometimes the best marketing just needs to make people smile.

What’s one lesson that’s stuck with you throughout your career?

Don’t fear the unknown.
At the start, I thought you learned once and that was it—but the reality is you’re always learning. The world keeps moving, and you have to adapt. Whatever feels daunting today, you’ll figure it out. That mindset has helped me stay grounded and open to new challenges.

In my current role, I’ve stepped into a reorganized part of the business with a new set of questions almost daily. It can be frustrating not having all the answers right away, but that’s part of it—you’ve got to trust that you’ll grow into it.

What makes a great marketing team today?

There has to be a clear objective—why you’re doing the job, what your KPIs are. But it also has to feel exciting and enticing. Sometimes businesses create for the sake of creating. AI might help by giving people better understanding of the business and enabling them to work more succinctly, removing some of those barriers.

It’s also about energy. The teams that believe in what they’re doing—and enjoy it—always perform better.

How do you view AI’s role in marketing right now?

AI has huge potential—but the label is often more intimidating than the tool itself. Many things we used to call clever software are now relabeled as AI. That can make people hesitate, even when it’s something genuinely helpful.

If you’re using AI, make sure you understand what it’s doing and what value it brings—not just that it sounds impressive. The real opportunity is in using it to spot patterns across data, break down silos, and uncover what you didn’t even know you were missing. But it needs a human in the room to sense-check everything. AI is a tool, not a replacement for thinking.

Can you share a time where AI uncovered something unexpected?

We did a piece of work years ago using AI to mine old customer feedback—verbal and handwritten stuff that had been sitting in a database. The AI uncovered a recurring pattern we’d never noticed. That one insight led to a new product variant, which ended up reshaping the entire category. Competitors followed, and now it’s a standard product line across the board.

That’s the value—finding what was already there, but too buried for anyone to see.

Has marketing become too serious?

Absolutely.
There’s a Mountain Dew ad that made no sense, but everyone talked about it. That’s what we’ve lost—the ability to just be creative and entertaining without over-engineering everything. We’ve become too focused on logic and data. Sometimes marketing should just make people smile.

What’s one thing brands often get wrong when trying to be “relevant”?

They try to show up at the wrong moments. Like sending me a birthday discount when I haven’t heard from them all year—that just makes me hit unsubscribe. Or brands responding to events like GDPR or the Queen’s passing with generic statements. It’s not always wrong, but it needs to feel genuine and earned.

If you’re going to engage, have a clear purpose. Don’t just react to triggers because everyone else is doing it.