Podcast Summary: Marketing Beyond with Alan B. Hart

Episode 33: Rethink Customer Experience Orchestration with AI: Insights from Adobe Enterprise CMO Rachel Thornton
Date: February 4, 2026
Guest: Rachel Thornton, Chief Marketing Officer, Adobe Enterprise
Host: Alan B. Hart

Episode Overview

In this episode, Alan B. Hart sits down with Rachel Thornton, CMO of Adobe’s enterprise business, to explore how AI is revolutionizing customer experience orchestration, the evolving content supply chain, and best practices for leading marketing teams through rapid technological change. Rachel shares actionable insights, real-world examples (including partnerships with the NFL and Coca-Cola), and her personal journey as a marketing leader in enterprise tech.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Rachel Thornton’s Background & Values

• Career Path: Started at Microsoft in field marketing, built a career in enterprise tech (Salesforce, Cisco, AWS, now Adobe).
  • “What I really love is working with customers, understanding what they need, and then helping them achieve their goals.” (02:00, B)
• Empathy & Reading: Rachel credits voracious reading for her ability to empathize and gain wider perspectives—crucial for effective marketing.
  • “It’s a great way not only to learn, but kind of put yourself in the shoes of others.” (01:15, B)

The Role of CMO at Adobe & the Power of Technology

• Adobe’s Enterprise Focus: Delivering tools like Creative Cloud, Marketo, and Experience Manager to Fortune 100 and 500 companies.
• Scale of Marketing Challenges: Global enterprises require sophisticated orchestration of campaigns across diverse audiences.
  • “How do they think about their different customer sets… and then how do they scale them? How do they take them globally?” (03:17, B)

How AI is Transforming Customer Experience Orchestration

• AI Enables Personalization at Scale:
  • “Being able to embed AI into our products has just allowed marketers to be more agile, to move faster, but also meet the demands of customers.” (03:58, B)
  • Content creation needs are skyrocketing—up to 5x more assets required for hyper-personalized journeys.
• Adobe Gen Studio Case Study:
  • Enabled Adobe to create 55,000 assets for Black Friday/Cyber Monday campaigns in days—work that would have previously taken months.
  • “With AI, you can absolutely do that. You can do that quickly… build out 55,000 assets instead of months, in days.” (05:36, B)

The Content Supply Chain and Intelligent Orchestration

• Customer Example: NFL Partnership
  • “We’re their official creativity partner, our official customer experience and fan experience partner. For a sports fan…how does the NFL think about engaging all of their customers?” (06:26, B)
  • AI-driven orchestration customizes experiences across multiple platforms (app, social, CTV, in-stadium).
• Process & Cultural Change:
  • Integrating AI is not a bolt-on; it requires revisiting data architectures, processes, teams, and tech stacks.
  • “CMOs, they have to think about it not as like a bolt on. It’s how they take a step back and look at do they have the right data foundation…” (07:41, B)

Skills, Experimentation & Team Enablement

• Organizational Readiness:
  • Experimenting, training, and skilling up are essential. Adobe supports this with Digital Academy, Experience League.
  • “How do you encourage people to try things, but…give them the right content, the right training content, the right skilling content?” (08:39, B)
  • Culture and process need to shift to capitalize on AI potential.

Discoverability in an Age of AI and LLMs

• Shift from SEO to Agent Readiness
  • “As more and more customers shift to…ChatGPT or Gemini…you have to navigate that shift from SEO to…how do you navigate that?” (09:42, B)
  • Marketers must optimize content not only for humans but also for AI agents (“agent-to-agent content”).
  • “Now…you have to think, how am I showing up here…for my human customers? But then also…for agents…” (11:18, B, on agent readiness)

Rachel’s Leadership Lessons

• Customer-First, Team Empowerment:
  • “Start with your customer, work backwards…help your team experiment more, lean in on new technologies.” (12:05, B)
  • Adobe’s “customer zero” approach (“Adobe on Adobe”) enables credibility with clients.
• Fostering Curiosity & Experimentation:
  • “Just being curious, fostering a culture of experimentation…is really critical, especially now with AI.” (12:54, B)

Real-World Brand Examples

• Coca-Cola & Project Vision:
  • Global consistency through AI-enabled brand guidelines.
  • “We built AI enabled brand guidelines so that their designers anywhere in the world could create content…and they were going to be always on brand…” (13:38, B)
• NFL Recap: (see above)

Personal Reflections & Advice

• Importance of Customer Connection:
  • Building meaningful experiences by engaging with customers directly at events like Dreamforce, Adobe Summits.
  • “When you understand what your customers need, you can do so much more for them.” (14:32, B)
• Advice to Her Younger Self:
  • Careers are not linear. Embrace unexpected opportunities.
  • “Each one was a really good stepping stone—to a learning stone…” (16:34, B)
• What She’s Learning:
  • “How folks are using AI, what are they really using it for?…Leaning in with customers on the pilots they’re building.” (16:53, B)
  • Shift from uncertainty to optimism about enterprise AI rollouts. (17:19, B)

Industry Trends & The Future

• Physical AI:
  • Intrigued by developments in robotics and physical AI, especially for caregiving applications. (18:04, B)
• Biggest Opportunity:
  • “We believe that everybody is a creator at heart…Harnessing human creativity, that ingenuity, that is a huge opportunity for us. And I think AI empowers that, amplifies it.” (18:40, B)
• CES Trends for 2026:
  • Growing ubiquity of embedded AI, especially in physical AI devices. (19:19, B)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Being able to embed AI into our products has just allowed marketers to be more agile, to move faster, but also meet the demands of customers.” (03:58, B)
• “With AI, you can absolutely do that… build out 55,000 assets instead of months, in days.” (05:36, B)
• “I think fostering a culture of experimentation… is really critical, especially now with AI.” (12:54, B)
• “Each one was a really good stepping stone—to a learning stone—for what I’m doing now.” (16:34, B)
• “We believe that everybody is a creator at heart… AI empowers that, amplifies it.” (18:40, B)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• [00:56] — Rachel’s reading habits and empathy in marketing
• [01:44] — Career journey from Microsoft to Adobe
• [03:40] — AI’s impact on customer experience orchestration
• [05:53] — The content supply chain & customer examples (NFL)
• [07:41] — Organizational changes needed for AI adoption
• [09:37] — LLMs, discoverability, and agent-to-agent content
• [12:05] — Leadership advice for CMOs
• [13:28] — Coca Cola’s AI brand guidelines (Project Vision)
• [14:20] — Defining experiences and customer connections
• [16:14] — Advice to young professionals in marketing
• [17:45] — Curiosity about physical/robotic AI
• [18:36] — Creativity as the biggest opportunity
• [19:19] — CES 2026 trends

Tone & Language

Rachel brings an optimistic, pragmatic view—grounded in real enterprise challenges, but excited by the pace and opportunity of technological change. The conversation is forward-looking, practical, and candid about both the complexity and potential of modern marketing with AI.

In Summary

Rachel Thornton, as Adobe’s enterprise CMO, provides actionable lessons for marketers wrestling with the demands of scale, personalization, and technology disruption. Her approach combines deep customer empathy, relentless curiosity, and a bias for action—qualities she urges other marketing leaders to foster as AI transforms both the content supply chain and the definition of discoverability. For anyone looking to orchestrate next-generation customer experiences, her insights on integrating AI, supporting teams, and remaining rooted in the customer’s needs are invaluable.