Adobe Enterprise CMO: AI Gives Marketers ‘Power’

Rachel Thornton, Chief Marketing Officer of Adobe's enterprise business, has shared in an interview with Business Insider that she believes that AI creates a “culture of experimentation,” for marketers – allowing them to scale what they do and improve personalisation for customers. 

This, she says, can help marketing teams advertise to a “segment of one,” and create a more personal relationship with a brand through its advertising. 

“It's a one-on-one relationship and is building that experience and that journey right around that customer," she continued.

These comments follow the announcement that Adobe is evolving its agentic architecture to help improve customer experience at the Adobe 2026 Summit. 

AI to improve the customer experience

According to Rachel “it really is about how you embrace it and how you experiment,” when it comes to deploying AI. “It's making sure that you're keeping the marketer, the creative, at the centre of the conversation, but then taking all the great innovative work they're doing and scaling it. AI gives you that power.”

Adobe’s agentic architecture developments are designed to do just that, says the company. Its new agentic framework has been created to offer specialised platform enterprises that work in the context of CX enterprise applications and make it more straightforward for its customers to tailor agent behaviour to specific business needs. 

This allows users to define how they want audience creation, journey activation and other tasks to run in a more accessible way for marketers.

It comes as findings from Adobe show that 70% of CMOs report that AI-powered conversational platforms are important for their brands’ relevance, while HubSpots' 2026 State of Marketing report finds that 80% of marketers are using AI for content creation – demonstrating the growing adoption of the technology in the field. 

“At Adobe, we have a motto: We want to empower everyone to create,” says Rachel. “And I think that is so powerful because we believe and we see this in our customers. Everyone is creative at heart. How do we help you bring that creativity to life?”

Can AI damage brand perception?

Using AI in a way that doesn’t resonate with an existing audience can damage perceptions of a brand. 

Gucci, for instance, faced backlash for using AI-generated promotional imagery in campaigns. The company released AI-generated pictures of models, which many say goes against its brand values of craftsmanship and creativity – with critics arguing that a luxury brand should prioritise human artistry. 

"Bleak days when Gucci can't find a real human Milanese grandmother to wear an outfit from 1976," commented one social media user.

This backlash demonstrated a misalignment between technological efficiency and customers’ perception of the brand.

While Gucci has previously experimented with digital art before, including NFT auctions, the use of AI for mainstream runway promotion was a new area for the company. 

“I think particularly luxury fashion brands need to pay attention [to whether] the latest technology can create positive image for their brands,” said Dr Priscilla Chan, senior lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University's Fashion Institute.