The Changing Customer Journey in an AI-First World - Insights from Adobe Enterprise's CMO

Speaker: Welcome back to the Digital Marketing Podcast, brought to you by Target internet.com. In this episode, we're speaking to Rachel Thornton, CMO of Adobe Enterprise, about the changing user journey.

Speaker 2: So in this episode, we have got an exclusive interview with the CMO of Adobe Enterprise, about some of the announcements they're making in the next couple of days at Adobe Summit. So. Uh, Adobe Summit starts tomorrow. Might obviously have passed by the time you listen to this. If not, you can go to the show notes, target internet.com/podcast, uh, and click on the link to attend virtually. But Adobe are gonna making lots of announcements about their new product lineup, how their product lineup is changing, but very much focused on how the user journey is changing and really looking at the AI driven environment we're operating in. What that really means for marketers. So Rachel was giving us some exclusive insights into what they're gonna be announcing, what they really think marketers should be looking at, and actually what's changed and what's important. So over to the interview. riverside_daniel_rowles_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0230: So I am here with Rachel. So Rachel we'll talk about Summit in a moment 'cause I know you've got that coming up next week and you are probably frantically busy. So thank you for taking the time. And as AI is becoming the primary interface, what do you think's changing from how CMOs are looking at their customers, how they're discovering, evaluating, engaging with brands? What do you think the major changes are? riverside_rachel_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0231: I think a really big change that we've seen that I talk to a lot of CMOs about is this rise of LLM or agent search. So if you think about this shift from. SEO, which still continues to be important, but increasingly customers are looking at chat GPT for information, looking at Gemini, looking at perplexity. And that's actually really fascinating because now CMOs need to understand how they optimize for this new search paradigm. And they have to think about the concept of what's the owned content that's showing up and what's the earned content that's showing up. And what I mean by that is. If you consider where LLMs get their information, you also have to consider as a marketer, how are you showing up in those areas. So for example, Reddit, YouTube, Wikipedia, those actually become important sources. Previously with SEO, you had a high degree of control over what showed up. You know, you had a well understood work stream around SEO, you knew what to do. Now, if you think about, okay, Reddit becomes a source here. Well, what does that really mean? How are we showing up there? But because that is really very much your customers, your community sharing information about your product, giving feedback. I think A CMO now has to take a step back and say, all right, what is my community strategy? How are we doing care and feeding and nurturing of our community so that. When somebody is searching, you know, on chat GPT, it's not just the content that the CMOs put out there, but it's also broadly the content of the community. How are they talking about your brand? How are they really advocating for your brand? So you wanna think now about. All of these, think about all of these sources as you will. How do you as a CMO really understand where you're showing up? Well, and if you're not, how do you make changes to it? Like I said, how do you think about that community? How do you think about that earned content? I think that just becomes so much more important. And I think every CMOI talk to is now kind of rethinking. All right. I have my SEO strategy, but now as I shift into more ENT search, how does that strategy change and what are the resources? What's the content? You know, what's the strategy around, like I said, community that I have to start thinking about and have to start employing? I riverside_daniel_rowles_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0230: Yeah, and it's interesting 'cause we've been talking about community for so long, but suddenly it's like, oh, okay, I need to take a kinda structured approach to this. So I mean, you mentioned agen AI there. I mean, you know, if traditionally marketing is based around campaigns, fixed touch points, we used to, how does that agen AI piece force teams to really start thinking differently about this? riverside_rachel_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0231: So I've been in marketing for a long time and for a long time there's been this promise of personalization. You know, we're not personalization, but I think. For a lot of years, what that really meant was we have a segment. I think with ai there's two, there's a couple of things actually that happen now. One, you can deeply understand your audience, so you can move from a large segment to a micro cohort. You can actually move to like, all right, Daniel. What do you like? What is the content and the information you are interested in? And now I can figure out, all right, how do I build that content? How do I build that experience so that it really speaks to you? I think with tools like. You know, for instance, we have an audience agent that can help understand audience insights, recommend audiences, but then when you marry that with the ability to not only create content, but scale it quickly, scale it effectively across a lot of channels. Now suddenly I can say it's not just what is the segment that Daniel's in or that anyone's in, but really. What is the way in which I can speak to you that resonates and makes you think that brand gets me? They understand what I'm looking for. They understand what I'm interested in, and now I'm really engaging with them in a much more personal way that you just couldn't do before because you didn't really have the ability to scale the content, scale the experiences across multiple channels and multiple intersection points. riverside_daniel_rowles_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0230: Yeah, I think it's fascinating because the reality is as things get noisier and noisier as well, this whole piece around personalization just gets more and more important. I think there's a general feeling with brands of losing control with AI a little bit at the moment because of the pace of change, but also 'cause of other things that are going on. 'Cause we're trying to adopt these things quickly and effectively. How are you seeing the kind of stuff that you are launching with CXO maintaining that control in a kind of an AI mediated kind of world? riverside_rachel_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0231: I think the concept of not just marketing or, you know, marketing content campaigns, but the idea of orchestration across a lot of different surfaces, right? So we talked about LLMs and how you show up there. If you think about campaigns traditionally multi-channel, where would you be? Where would you be showing up? But now I think AI gives the marketer a chance to step back and think about how do I. Orchestrate customer experiences across all these channels across this content to make sure that the customer says, Hey, I, as I'm moving through, you know, where I'm getting information, where I'm engaging with brands, how is your brand showing up? And I think that's what, you know, we think about it Adobe every day. Like, how do we work with marketers? How do we work with teams to say between the audience segment and the content. And the sort of customer profiles you understand, how do you now wanna orchestrate the channels and the content to show up well along that customer journey? And more and more, I think orchestration is that right word for what marketers are thinking about? Like it's no longer. I have a creative idea. I build a campaign. I put that campaign out through channels because you're able to get quickly back insights, understand those insights, synthesize them, and then adjust and in a much faster way, in a much more almost real time way, you really are orchestrating where this content shows up, what channel, and then across, like I said, that customer journey. How do you wanna orchestrate that to make sure you maximize the impact of your brand or your offering with your customer? riverside_daniel_rowles_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0230: Yeah, I think it's fascinating 'cause a long time we've thought very much the a funnel viewpoint and I'm I think, you know, the funnel has never really existed, but it's a good mental model to go, well, you do this. And actually, as the user journey has become more complicated and as there are more AI kind of interfaces to this as well, that orchestration becomes really important. Can you give just an example of you were using CXO to do this, how would you orchestrate that and how might you think about using it? riverside_rachel_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0231: One of the sort of corrects of the situation is the concept of conversational interface, right? So you're no longer seeing a campaign here clicking on something, you know, maybe downloading something or engaging with something. There's a conversation that you're now having with the brand. That's what conversational interfaces are. We see them now all the time. It's funny 'cause I feel like there's always, there's a lot of viewpoints of the concept of funnel, right? You know, where it used to be over the years, where it's come to now. I think if it lesses a funnel as in you start here and you move all the way down and it's actually more horizontal. Like, I had a conversation with a brand through a conversational interface. I asked questions. I found out information. How am I now using that information? But more importantly, how's that brand understanding that conversation and then surfacing you with that information either in that moment or at a later point in time as you're moving to a different surface. But I think with a lot of the AI mediated surfaces. Especially with conversational interfaces, it now gives marketers a chance to have these conversations with customers and think about what is the, in that moment, the information that's critical. When the customer comes back, if they want more information or they've had, especially in B2B, maybe a. A different conversation internally with their buying group and they come back for information. How do you make sure there is this consistency that runs through that experience and the education you're bringing that customer, and I definitely think whether it is consumer or whether it is B2B, you have to think not just of that person, but again, what are the experiences, what's the aesthetic you wanna sort of bring to them from your brand? But what are the other people involved in that decision? Not just that person. Are they asking, you know, are they asking for word of mouth? Are they asking their friends? Are they asking their coworkers? So again, where is your community showing up? Where are they helping you with word of mouth, and how is that surfacing in certain, you know, again, in certain mediums, whether it is LLMs, whether it is a, you know, a conversation on Reddit. So I think. AI has given you a better ability, not only to have those conversations in real time, but then orchestrate the entire sort of surround sound, if you will, of that marketing experience or that brand experience. riverside_daniel_rowles_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0230: I think it's fascinating when I literally just came off an interview that we're recording for the podcast with the head of Dove in the US is in the beauty brand and they'd run a campaign on Reddit and they'd very, they'd been very brave and they'd basically gone out and said, okay, what do you think of our product? And it's a new product they were launching. The thing that came out for that interview was saying, well, it was really successful and it was a great campaign, but actually it was the insights that were really interesting that people were talking about. And we were suddenly getting those insights. And what was sticking in my head, and I think this is where Adobe CXO would come in really nicely to this, is that actually having a platform where I have. All of this in one place. I have those insights, I have those conversations. I can understand those. And actually being able to feed those in and do something with that to improve my future campaigns is a massive opportunity. So this whole lot of insights piece is really interesting, riverside_rachel_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0231: Yeah, that's absolutely right. And one of the things we're gonna talk about next week is how do you have the ability to gather those insights and constantly be monitoring them, right? So in do's case, right, social media becomes critical. So how do they have social media alerts set up so that no matter what time of day, what time of moment they can get these insights? Hey. This customer is talking about this, or this influencer is talking about our product. Great. Now you can say we've picked that up, that insights come through. We understand that there's an opportunity now to run a quick campaign on, Hey, I love dub skincare. I love the haircare. Now quickly, let's run a campaign that responds to that. You know, influencer talks about it. Do suddenly can say, all right, I see the insight. I can build a quick audience of people who've shown an interest in this haircare. I can build the campaign assets and I can scale them and I can put the bat on channels and I'm able to do this much faster than just, you know, traditionally marketing campaigns where. We have a brief, we have assets, but then the production of those assets and getting them out and getting them in front of the customer can take months. And now with ai, because you can scale it quickly, 'cause you can get the insights much quicker, you can do that in minutes, days, not weeks and months. riverside_daniel_rowles_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0230: Yeah. And I love that idea of just iterative, being able to kind of launch, relaunch, kind of get, get it out there and adjust to the customer. I mean, something that's coming out a lot for me. So as some of the lectures for universities, there are lots of concerns about marketing roles and careers, and there's lots of discussion about at the moment. What skills do you think that matter most when work's being co-created with ai? How does that change? riverside_rachel_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0231: I think judgment, understanding, culture of a brand, understanding brand, aesthetics, taste, all of these things become critical. I think. AI is this amazing amplifier of the creativity, the ingenuity, the innovation of marketers that become, that is always important. That will always be important. The thing that I think about when I talk to CMOs and they ask like, where should we be thinking about AI in our workflows? I think it's absolutely the, what is the aesthetic of your brand? What's your brand purpose? How do you bring that to life, and where can AI help with amplifying that, scaling that, not necessarily replacing it, but more now marketers are bringing forward. What is the high judgment required in the situation where we wanna build this amazing creative campaign? And now a AI can help me scale it, help me understand insights, help me figure out new channels. To your point about Reddit, help me hear from my community quickly and respond quickly, but still do it within the confines of my brand, you know, and my brand aesthetic and my my brand promise. riverside_daniel_rowles_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0230: Yeah, I love that. I mean, we talk so much about authenticity and I think the risk is that we need to be authentic, but also we need to do without the bounds of our brand as well. And I think getting those balances right, that judgment of marketers becomes riverside_rachel_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0231: Right, because every brand is going to be different. How you think about what your brand means to a customer is obviously different brand to brand. And that's what a marketer knows. That's what a creative knows and deeply understands as they work with the brand and that's what they bring to the equation. You know, AI may be used here but not here, right? It may be used in like maybe that scaling production, but not necessarily in creation, right? And some brands may be different. But that's what you what, why marketers are critical, because they're gonna understand that and then be able to use AI in the right workflows in the right places. riverside_daniel_rowles_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0230: So, I mean, based on that if Journeyers aren't linear or campaign based anymore, what should CMOs actually be measuring? To understand if these AI driven experiences are even working? riverside_rachel_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0231: Measurement is still critical. I don't think it changes per se. I think you still have to understand first. What's your goal? What's your outcome? Right? And metrics is in service to that. So when you think about what is the goal I'm trying to achieve? What is my outcome? Then you can sit down and think, am I seeing an uplift? Am I seeing an increase? Am I seeing incrementality in the outcomes I'm desiring? So it's not just. Hey, did this drive, you know, a better number? But is that number accretive? Is that number incremental? You know, if I have a baseline, and then is AI delivering above that? So those things don't change and they're still, it's critically important to have measurability and measurability frameworks that are understood across the team, across the company. And once you have that, you can still say, you quickly say, Hey, this is where AI delivered this. You know, when we, especially when you're looking now at, like I said the use of LLMs, you can see how much referral are we getting, you know, how are we showing up? And then I think it's just that's where the metrics still matter. That foundation and metrics still matter, but being able to make that connection between what's the goal I want, how am I measuring that goal? And then where is AI showing impact, incrementality efficiency. riverside_daniel_rowles_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0230: Just to set the scene for people. We are sitting here which for me is the end of day Friday. It's the beginning of your Friday. And we've squeezed half an hour in your diary because it is Adobe Summit next week in Las Vegas. And do you wanna just talk to us a bit about as much as you can? 'cause I'm sure lots is embargoed up until next week. But in terms of the kind of, kind of key themes, things you might be talking about next week. riverside_rachel_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0231: So the things we're gonna talk about is the really this intersection of creativity, marketing, ai, and how that continues to play out and how we can help marketers. Be much more effective in understanding their customers. And again, getting to that personalization, understanding specific customers actually in a way that is much more, you know, efficient in terms of investment. So again, now you don't have to just think, I have the segment of 10,000 people and I have to, you know, that's the segment size because that's what is most efficient from a dollar or headcount perspective. Now you can say, I can actually reach. Micro segments, I can reach individuals, I can do it much more efficiently and much more effectively because AI is giving me a chance to surface insights quickly, build audiences, respond to audiences, respond to signals I'm getting from a customer, and then scale the content that makes that interaction very meaningful to customer in a way that is much more cost efficient, mostly because you're being able to move faster. When I work with my team on campaigns, what we really love about this now is because I can scale product, I can come up with a creative idea, I can quickly come up with assets, but because I'm able to do this quickly, I can experiment, I can learn faster. That loop of. Hey, does this headline work? Does this creative work, is it really resonating, you know, with Daniel? Oh, it turns out, no, we thought this was a great, you know, background or image, but messaging or headline. Yeah. It turns out that didn't resonate the way we thought. I don't need to then say, well, we spent 6, 8, 10 weeks coming up with it, so we gotta go with it. I can say, great, that's not working, but this is, let's go with that. And so I think AI gives you the ability to experiment faster, learn faster, and be more agile. And that agility means I can do more with my customers, right? I now have, you know, the ability because I can amplify my marketers. With ai, make them more agile. It just gives me the chance to do more with campaigns, to reach more customers and reach more, to reach more customers more deeply and more compelling in a more compelling fashion. And that's why, you know. I know sometimes marketers, you asked this question earlier, how do they think about their careers? I actually think this is a huge boon because you can be more creative and you can be more creative at scale in a way that you weren't before because everything was very serial, right? It's this step over a fairly, you know, in, in some cases, a fairly long timeline. Shortening that timeline just means you can be more creative, faster with customers and give them a greater experience. riverside_daniel_rowles_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0230: What, what's fascinating to me when we talk about digital transformation, we talk about, you know, what you're actually trying to do is create an organization that is more agile, has the ability to change more quickly. And actually what I think your platforms are allowing people to do is exactly that, is that whole piece of actually the world around us is changing more and more quickly. We need to be able to iterate, we need to be able to innovate. Actually, I can now do that. And I'm working in Agile way because I'm feeding in the creative, I'm learning. I'm kind of iterating through that as well. Anything else we should look out for next week? So I'm sure by the time some people listen to this summit would've been gone, so target internet.com/podcast and we'll have all the links through to the keynotes and things like that are online as well. But any other key themes that are gonna come out next week, you think that are gonna be really important? riverside_rachel_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0231: I think the other thing that's interesting is how brand guidelines we're able to now embed brand guidelines in the tools that creatives work with. Using ai, make it so that you can have brand fidelity across all of your assets. So, you know, sometimes marketers think, well, as I scale quickly. And as I scale, you know, I can see more to, you know, tens of thousands of assets across all of my channels. How do I make sure my brand consistency is there? And that's something we'll talk about next week, how we can guarantee that brand consistency and ensure that you don't have to worry about, you know, sort of drift in those guidelines. But that everything shows up in terms of brand guidelines, brand aesthetic, with a very high fidelity. riverside_daniel_rowles_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0230: It's fascinating because brand drift is something that I'm coming across a lot where people are just creating stuff of ai, not, and it's okay. It's almost there, but it's just not quite, 'cause I haven't got the guidelines in there. So I think it's incredibly important at this kind of stage. riverside_rachel_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0231: Yeah. And this is something that, again, what excites us most about everything that we're gonna talk about at Summit and beyond is just working with customers to bring this to life. So all of this is built on, you know, starting with a customer, working backwards, what are they asking for? What does CMOs need? What a creative need. And so I think next week is. Just really gonna answer a lot of se questions and requests we've had, again, to talk about brand fidelity, AI content, supply chains, brand visibility, and bringing that all to life so that marketers can respond and move faster, but again, effectively, authentically, and creatively. E. riverside_daniel_rowles_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0230: Well, I think that's a brilliant note to close down on. So thank you so much for your time. There's some really good insights in there. As I said, we'll post everything into the show notes. I know you now have to run off and continue your planning for next week. So thank you so much for your time today. Really appreciate it. And thank you for joining us. riverside_rachel_raw-audio_digital_marketing p_0231: Oh, thank you, Daniel. This was awesome.