In this blog post, Andrew Hughes, Head of SEM at Xero, shares highlights from his recent visit to Google’s iconic Mountain View campus in Silicon Valley, as part of the Google Honors program. From autonomous taxis to cutting-edge tech, he offers a glimpse into the future of performance marketing and innovation.

Recently I had the chance to visit Google’s Mountain View campus in Silicon Valley thanks to the Google Honors program. Having worked on Google ad platforms for years, I’d always wondered what the Mountain View experience was truly like. But before I share this with you, here’s a bit of context of how I arrived there.

The Google Honors program started in 2017 in Australia and has since expanded to include New Zealand. It’s a series of annual awards that recognize exceptional achievements by advertisers and agencies in areas like digital marketing, innovation, and customer success. The program honors teams and individuals who demonstrate creativity, effective use of Google Ads, and strategic insights that lead to measurable business growth.

Our entry focused on how we’ve shifted our approach to focus on campaign structure, liquidity, and optimization over the past year. Rather than relying on traditional bottom-up annual forecasting, we now consider demand as the key driver of growth. This approach has led to significant improvements across key performance metrics, which made our team a strong contender for the award.

The result: we won the Best In-House Team award, which meant a trip to San Francisco with 14 other award winners, and a two-day offsite at the Googleplex in Mountain View, located in the heart of Silicon Valley.

Upon arriving in San Francisco, it was immediately clear I had entered the epicenter of global technology startups. Billboards along the highway weren’t advertising products you’d find at your local store. Instead, they featured slogans like “The API to expand your TAM” and “Compliance that doesn’t SOC 2 much.” My personal favorite was a company called Artisan: “Stop Hiring Humans. Hire Ava, the AI BDR.”

San Francisco is also home to Waymo, which offers autonomous taxi rides. You book a ride through an app, and a Jaguar E-Pace, outfitted with cameras and sensors, arrives to pick you up…no driver needed. At first, it’s a little odd to start a ride via an app and interact with a computer instead of a person, but within seconds, it becomes just like any other ride, smoother in some ways than a ride with a human driver. It’s a glimpse into the future, as Waymo expands to more regions over the coming years.

But the highlight of the trip was spending time at Google’s Mountain View campus, home to one of the most successful and well-known companies in the world. We spent the two days in the ‘PartnerPlex,’ an educational hub designed for Google Partners. The campus itself is impressive, with its sleek, sustainable buildings and large solar panel installations.

There are 30 cafes on the campus, which might sound excessive but gives you a sense of the scale of the place. Googlers fresh out of university sometimes buy RVs and live on the campus, where they have access to all the amenities they need, including gyms, a bowling alley, swimming pools and even oil changes. Walking around, you see some incredible installations, like a life-sized T-Rex skeleton named “Stan,” serving as a reminder to…not become a dinosaur.

The real value of the trip came from the sessions led by Google’s industry experts. I jotted down a few key takeaways:

● Take More Risks, as Gopi Kalliyal, Chief Business Strategy AI, shared. If Google can take risks and fail at scale, then there’s no reason we can’t push the envelope as well.

● Stories Drive Engagement, said Paul Limbrey, VP of Global Agencies & Partnerships. In a world full of information, creating a compelling narrative can help break through the noise.

● Performance Marketing Drives Customer Value, according to Neil Hoyne, Chief Strategist. Performance marketing isn’t just about immediate results, it plays a significant role in long-term customer relationships, which ultimately drive company value.

By Friday, I was exhausted in the best way possible. Building relationships with fellow award recipients, touring a campus that serves as a symbol of innovation, and hearing from thought leaders in the industry made for an unforgettable experience. As I boarded the flight home, I couldn’t help but feel that I had just caught a glimpse of what’s possible when companies take risks, learn from failure, and continue to innovate. It’s a reminder that, at the end of the day, performance marketing isn’t just about numbers, it’s about shaping what’s next.

Source: Andrew Hughes, 21 March 2025