Fiona Kennedy is a Product Marketer at Middesk, where she sits at the intersection of product, sales, and customer, translating what Middesk builds into stories that resonate with the people who need them most. Her background spans communications, brand strategy, and product marketing, and she has always been drawn to the same challenge: taking something technically complex and making the "so what" impossible to miss.

Since joining Middesk, Fiona has led some of the company's most significant go-to-market work, including the launch of Middesk Agents alongside a full brand refresh. It was one of the largest cross-functional efforts in the company's recent history, touching product, engineering, data science, sales, and design all at once.

In this conversation, she shares what drew her to product marketing, why great products still need someone to build the bridge to their audience, and what it actually takes to bring something new to market.

You've built your career across communications, brand marketing, and product marketing. What drew you to product marketing, and why Middesk?

Product marketing sits at the intersection of strategy and creativity. You have to understand your end user, the market, and the problem your product actually solves, then present that value in a way that resonates. My background in brand strategy and communications ties directly into that. Words tell the story, but the story only works when it is grounded in a real understanding of both the product and the customer's pain.

What I love about the work is the range. You get deep into the technical capabilities of a product, then translate all of that complexity into the thing that actually matters to the customer. You are also deeply cross-functional, involved end to end in how something gets brought to market. And at the same time, you get to help shape bigger strategic questions like positioning, pricing, and packaging.

As for Middesk, it is a high quality product that customers genuinely love. For a product marketer, that is a dream starting point. When people already feel that strongly about what you are selling, your job becomes helping it reach new markets, new customers, and new verticals. That is an exciting challenge to take on.

People often think great products sell themselves. Why does product marketing matter?

Products need to be great to sell successfully. What is not true is that they sell themselves. There has to be a bridge between the product and the people who actually need it, someone translating technical capabilities into human value. Why should they care? Would they even know it exists?

That is what product marketing does. Go-to-market strategy is a huge part of a product's success. It means making sure sellers are fluent in the product, the materials properly showcase the value, and the right audience knows it exists so they can actually access it. A great product sitting in front of the wrong people, or the right people who do not understand what it does, is a missed opportunity.

Thankfully, at Middesk, our products are great. It makes the selling part really fun.

What makes a great product story?

One that addresses the real pain of the customer. Every product is trying to solve something, and a strong product story ties directly into what actually matters to the audience. Each of our customers is focused on a specific problem, whether that is reducing manual review time, cutting costs, or trying to grow. A great product story properly understands that pain and then fully commits to showing how the product alleviates it.

Getting there means getting into the weeds first. I genuinely enjoy working with engineers and product managers to understand the mechanics, the nuances, and even the gaps that exist today alongside what is coming on the roadmap. The more I know about how a product actually works, the better I can pull out the pieces that matter. Not everything makes it into the positioning. My job is to sort through all of it, make the most important thing the headline, and build the story from there.

The other piece is the market. The product team knows deeply what they built and why. It is up to product marketing to connect it to what is happening right now, the trends, the competitive alternatives, the conversations customers are already having. Fitting the product into the market as it exists today is a huge part of the job.

You led the launch of Middesk Agents. What problem does it solve and what was it like to bring to market?

Middesk Agents was a massive cross-functional effort. Much of our product, engineering, and data science team was dedicated to building agents that investigate the cases verification cannot safely auto-resolve. The agents gather evidence, reason across sources, and return structured findings directly in the business report, so review teams can make faster, more defensible decisions without starting from scratch. It addresses one of our customers' core pains: getting businesses through the queue faster while still fully understanding who they are working with.

The product matters because it moves Middesk toward becoming the business identity intelligence platform that runs itself. Companies everywhere are investing in agentic capabilities right now, and we wanted to integrate AI in a way that delivers real value, not just a feature to check a box. That is also what makes it a challenging space to launch into. It is crowded, so you have to earn the right attention from the right people. We did that by focusing on the value delivered and building to fit the workflows our customers actually care about. We tested early, collected feedback, and kept iterating until we were confident. And because adding agents to your workflow requires trust, we built in a human in the loop element, with everything auditable, so there is always a clean record of what the agents investigated and how they reached a decision.

What made this launch especially exciting was coordinating it with our brand refresh, tying Middesk Agents to our repositioning as the business identity intelligence platform. That meant getting sales and customer-facing teams fluent in the updated positioning and overhauling our brand assets from both a messaging and design perspective. A truly huge team effort, and one of the most rewarding things I have worked on.

What makes the marketing team here different?

The collaborative energy and the spirit of problem solving. We never face a challenge and say "that is not my job." It is always "okay, let us figure out how to get it done." There are no rigid lines of responsibility. If there is a problem, we join forces, whether that is creative solutions, launch strategy, or something in between. No idea is a bad idea.

What that frees us to do is focus on the goals we are actually solving for rather than whose lane something falls in. We also have strong cross-functional partners in engineering and data science who jump in and elevate what is possible. It is a close-knit team that works hard and genuinely enjoys doing it together.

Which Middesk value resonates most with you?

Leading with curiosity. When people ask me what makes someone successful at Middesk, my answer is always the same: someone who is naturally curious. Curiosity means you come in ready to learn and ready to ask the important questions. That is how you build a real understanding of the product, the market, and the customer, and it is what gives you the mindset to take on whatever comes next.

It shows up in everything from a small product fix to a big creative campaign. Curiosity pushes us, as a company and as individuals, to think beyond the status quo and keep asking how something could be better. You are not going to build the next great thing without it.

What would you say to someone considering joining the Middesk marketing team?

Join. We are growing, the culture is genuinely positive, and there is a lot of exciting work ahead. If you love getting close to a product, care about the customer, and want to work on problems that actually matter, this is a great place to do it. And like I said earlier, you are intimately involved end to end in bringing something to market. For a product marketer who wants real ownership, that is hard to find.