In this episode of Full Throttle Leaders, host Michael Falato interviews Gwen Lafage, Vice President of Marketing at Sinch (referred to as Cinch in the conversation). Gwen explains her role overseeing brand strategy and global integrated campaigns, describing the teams she leads across creative, design, social, and leadership programs. She recounts her career path from creative agency work at Skåne in Stockholm and Silicon Valley to an in‑house marketing position at Sinch five years ago, driven by a desire to own the end‑to‑end customer journey. Gwen outlines Sinch’s transformation from a Swedish SMS aggregator into a global Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) with 4,000 employees in 60 countries, now offering messaging, voice, email, and AI‑driven conversational solutions. When comparing Sinch to Twilio, she highlights Sinch’s enterprise‑focused, carrier‑centric infrastructure built over 25 years versus Twilio’s developer‑first toolbox, positioning Sinch as an experienced, network‑owned provider that also serves developers. The discussion turns to AI tools: Gwen is a daily user of Claude and Whisper, leveraging them for tasks like branded‑search dashboards and content creation. She shares her perspective on AI visibility (AEO), emphasizing that brand strength and holistic marketing activities drive AI search performance more than any single tactic. Gwen also describes Sinch’s global footprint—originating in Stockholm, strong presence in the US, and a notable French team specializing in RCS and WhatsApp. Finally, she notes that LinkedIn is her preferred channel for outreach, welcoming connections from marketers but not sales pitches. The conversation provides insights into Sinch’s market positioning, AI‑enhanced marketing practices, and Gwen’s professional background.
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All right, everybody, another episode of Full Throttle Leaders. I'm Michael Falato from GTM Full Throttle, and we have Gwen Lafage from Cinch, who's the VP of Marketing. Welcome to the show, Gwen.
Thank you.
So tell me a little bit about your role at Cinch and then how you got to that role.
Yeah, so, um, at Cinch I oversee brands, um, and global integrated campaigns. So, um, that means the creative team, so all of the designers, um, global campaigns, uh, social media, some, um, of our sole leadership Programs as well.
And tell me what— yeah, go ahead. Yeah, go ahead.
No, I was gonna say how I got to that role. Uh, I've been at Cinch for over 5 years now, um, and before that I had a career mostly on the agency side, so on the creative agency side, from consumer agencies, consumer brands, to like, uh, B2B tech brands.
And what, what kind of had you switch to Cinch 5 years ago? Like, what was that lightning bulb in a head and light bulb in the head and saying, oh, I need to leave. I think you were at Skåne or something like that.
Skåne. Yes. So Skåne was a B2B or is a B2B tech agency located in Silicon Valley and in Stockholm. I was leading the Stockholm office and I had the urge to really Get wanted to join really a marketing team instead of being on the consultant side, the agency side, be really in-house and live it from, yeah, beginning to end internally.
Instead of trying to help the sales team, you're getting pitched all the time now.
Yeah. Yeah.
We're in a sense, do that most companies don't realize? And what did they do better than most companies?
Yes. So Cinch is a customer communication infrastructure. So we power communications between brands and their customers across messaging, voice, and email. What we do better than anybody, I think, is that we have a really— we are a really powerful, intelligent infrastructure. We hold, we kind of like own our own network. We've been doing this for like 25 years. We have like strong global expertise when it comes to communication and especially messaging. And we really enable customers, right, like to communicate and engage the audiences across all of those channels.
Yeah, I think when I was in mobile market, I worked, I worked in a company called TextStation Mobivity. We were an SMS company. And we think you guys were an aggregator as well back then, right?
So we started in Sweden as an SMS messaging aggregator. Yes, exactly. Then we grew into this global company. We are now what you would call like a CPaaS company. And we now are more than 4,000 people, have offices across 60 countries. And we've added, I think, a lot of like breadth and depth to our portfolio by not only covering messaging, but also voice and email. And obviously right now with AI, also adjusting our portfolio even more. We have conversational messaging. So it's chatbots and, you know, how we enable those conversations through agents, whether it's on messaging or voice AI.
And how would you describe yourself against maybe a Twilio?
So yeah, Twilio is one of our biggest competitors. Okay.
So yeah, they're on the same page. Okay. Are you guys— is there a particular thing that you are known for compared to them?
I think Twilio started their journey with a focus on developers. So they really enable developers to build, where we started our journey with a big focus on enterprise buyers and building like that strong network, building those relationships with the operator or the carriers, and having like that deep expertise ingrained in the telco, if that makes sense. So I think we've been in infrastructure for like 25 years.
Okay.
Obviously, developers are also an important part of our audience as we build APIs, right? Like, but I'll say they provide a toolbox, right? And we provide more of an experience and an expertise to help our clients build it.
Okay. And is the team big in France or is it mostly in other— Stockholm or where was that?
Yeah, it started in Stockholm. So we headquartered in Stockholm. We have a team in France and with really great expert, especially on conversational messaging. And so with good expertise on RCS and WhatsApp, and I've been working with some really great retail and fintech like in France, but mostly we are very strong in the US. And well, we're really global. So we have offices a little bit everywhere, but I think like we've grown a lot in the US in the past I will say 5 years.
Okay. And what's a piece of tech, AI, whether it's Cinch's or someone else's, like, I'm using Whisper just to like take notes for me instead of typing. I thought that was a pretty great solution for me. Or I'm into, um, Claude Coworking as well. And, and some— so what's a piece of tech or qual— or solution or strategy that either you built for yourself using some other platform or Singe and something that worked really well, or say, hey, I did this strategy and it didn't work too good. So I want to let your viewers know that maybe you shouldn't go that route.
I'm a big Claude user. So use it every day. I do use Whisper as well. Like, I do like voice, but I also now do it directly in Claude, right? Like, so it's kind of like Depends.
Yeah, you could just press the voice or it knows your voice. Yeah, that's kind of— actually, you're right. I do Claude that way more.
I do too because I'm a talker.
So I could go on for a couple of minutes and it gets what I'm saying versus try to transcribe what I'm saying. Yeah, you're right.
Yeah. And what have I guess recently built, like a lot of things, but I'll say like branded search as I oversee brand, right? Like I look a lot at branded search and volume and and share of branded search and build a pretty good dashboard using Claude. But I use it for a lot of different type of projects. I think it became like part of the, yeah, day-to-day, right? Like for probably every single marketer.
A coworker.
Like exactly.
How about AI like, Engine optimization. Are you guys involved in AEO, I think it's called?
So yeah, of course. Like, I think that's every company, I think, have to think about AI visibility, right? And how we show up, right? When people search for Cinch, I think the complexity there and like trying to reduce it to like AEO in the same way as it is SEO, I think is very reductive. Um, because a huge part of what influences search in, or AI search, is actually the power of your brand. Um, so I don't think there is a magic button or like a magic playbook to do, uh, AI visibility correctly. And that's everything we do from like, uh, brand building to, uh, campaign. But of course, what we do on our website and all of the content that we put out there All of that plays a role, but it's a combination of all of the activities. I'll say it's good marketing.
What's the best way to reach you and who should reach out to you?
Best way is on LinkedIn. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn and pretty visible, so that's the best way, definitely. Sometimes a bit slow to answer DMs, but that's still still the way. And who should reach me? Anyone except people who just wanted to sell me something. I'm open to conversations. I would say that on LinkedIn, my network, I think, is very focused on marketers. So engaging a lot with my peers there and learning a lot from my peers and making great connections. I've met Met wonderful people there and made some good friends. So yeah, I'll say that. Yeah.
Well, thanks for being on today, and I look forward to keeping in touch. Sounds good.
