How Rachel Thornton is Making Marketers 10x More Powerful at Adobe - World Economic Forum Event

Summary

Marketing Vanguard – “How Rachel Thornton is Making Marketers 10x More Powerful at Adobe”

Host: Jenny Rooney (Adweek)
Guest: Rachel Thornton (CMO, Adobe Enterprise)
Event: World Economic Forum, Davos
Date: February 6, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode of Marketing Vanguard, recorded at the World Economic Forum in Davos, features a dynamic conversation with Rachel Thornton, CMO of Adobe Enterprise. Host Jenny Rooney and Rachel discuss the evolving role of CMOs, the real-time transformation of marketing through AI, the essential human element of creativity, and the ways marketers are being empowered at scale. The episode also captures takeaways from a unique gathering of CMOs across industries and highlights the importance of cross-functional collaboration and co-creation in contemporary marketing.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Evolving Future of Marketing is Now

• Rachel Thornton: “The future of marketing is not really the future. It's sort of right now.” (00:30, 10:44)
  • Major shifts driven by AI are happening in real-time, fundamentally changing marketing workflows and efficiency.
  • AI is less about replacing creativity and more about removing scale and operational barriers to unleash marketers’ creative focus.

Amplifying Impact Through Cross-Industry Collaboration

• The Davos event convened CMOs from a diverse set of companies—Adobe, Microsoft, Ferragamo, Major League Baseball, Marriott, Marmot, Workday—bolstering cross-sector dialogue.
• Rachel Thornton: “It was fascinating to hear each of them… talk about not only how they're meeting this moment with marketing and AI and creativity, but also… how you're leading your teams, how you're experimenting, how you're leaning in on training for things like AI, but also how you're thinking about vulnerability and authenticity.” (02:05)
• Themes of leadership, experimentation, and especially vulnerability and authenticity were emphasized as keys to marketing success in disruptive times.

AI as an Augmenter, Not a Replacement

• Both Rachel and Jenny discussed how, while AI streamlines the production and deployment of assets and campaigns at a large scale, it’s human creativity that drives value and differentiation.
• Jenny Rooney: “Some people say it shouldn’t be called artificial intelligence, it should be called augmented intelligence… as an enabler.” (04:31)

Practical Application

• AI enables marketers to:
  • Translate and traffic creative ideas with global reach.
  • Generate and personalize assets efficiently (a critical need for global campaigns).
  • Use intelligent audience segmentation and optimization tools, freeing marketers to focus on higher-level strategy and deep customer insights.
• Rachel Thornton: “If you can say, great, there's an audience agent that can make recommendations… that's powerful because now the marketer is like, I now have the extra time to really think, how do I land this campaign? How do I land this experience?” (05:20)

Human Creativity and “Co-Creation”: Gen Z & Fan Engagement

• Emphasis on the “human at the center” philosophy—AI enhances but doesn’t replace human ingenuity.
• Younger generations (Gen Alpha/Gen Z) are increasingly participatory, seeking to co-create and personalize their interactions with brands.
  • Example: NFL and English Premier League using league content creators and fan-generated content to deepen engagement.
  • Rachel Thornton: “They feel like they're also contributing to your brand because they're engaging, they're consuming it, they're making it their own.” (12:47)
• This signals a shift for brands: customers are not just audiences, but collaborators.

The CMO’s Evolving Role: From Brand Guardian to Business Driver

• Communication with CEOs and CFOs is increasingly vital; CMOs must articulate marketing’s role in driving growth in the language of business metrics and revenue.
• Rachel Thornton: “Being able to sit with your C suite peers… and saying this is how marketing is contributing to revenue growth… has become even more important.” (08:54)
• Authenticity remains at the center, especially as AI-generated content raises questions about what’s “real.” Marketers are uniquely positioned to define, uphold, and communicate brand authenticity.

Davos as an Ecosystem for Learning and Growth

• Rachel highlights the value for CMOs of being in mixed executive environments to learn what matters to CEOs, CFOs, and CIOs.
  • Rachel Thornton: “It is nice to be surrounded by a bunch of different, you know, C suites… It's nice to be here and hear the conversations.” (14:41)
• She encourages access to collaborative, cross-disciplinary discussions as essential for marketing leaders’ growth and perspective.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Rachel Thornton:
  • “At the heart of it, like you say, is human creativity, human innovation, human ingenuity. We think of it as human in the center.” (03:29)
  • “You get to do more of that 100%.” (06:22) — On enabling marketers to focus on what brought them to the field.
  • “Every brand has to think, you know, what do I want my brand to be? You know, where do we want to lean in? What is the thing that we want customers to really feel about us, to know about us?” (09:37)
  • “Integrating…with AI tools like what Adobe builds, you're able to build customer experiences and… the content that you need to bring those experiences to life.” (11:13)
  • On co-creation: “We know that our fans want to be involved. They don’t just want to watch, they want to consume and they want to create. And that is what's really the difference now.” (13:23)
• Jenny Rooney:
  • “The human element in everything that we talked about… it means taking risks. It means doing things that are sort of uncomfortable.” (02:54)
  • “It frees their minds and their creativity to lean into the things that got them into this job in the first place.” (06:16)
  • “It’s the best of both worlds, right? Human creativity, the visual elements… while taking a lot of the, and freeing up spaces we talked about.” (12:05)

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Timestamps of Key Segments

• 00:30-02:05 – Event context; reflections on the unique CMO group at Davos.
• 03:29-04:31 – Adobe’s philosophy on AI, creativity, and human-centered innovation.
• 05:13-06:22 – How AI liberates marketers’ creativity and strategic focus.
• 06:45-07:34 – Rachel Thornton’s personal career background; increased prominence of marketers at Davos.
• 08:07-09:37 – The CMO at the business core; communicating impact to C-suite; authenticity in the AI age.
• 10:44-11:13 – AI’s role in scaling personalization and customer experience.
• 12:47-13:23 – Young generations as creators; examples from sports engagement.
• 14:32-15:09 – Takeaways from Davos; value of diverse executive perspectives.

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Takeaways and Advice for CMOs

• The future of marketing is happening now: AI is fundamentally changing workflows, but human creativity remains essential.
• CMOs should embrace AI to amplify their strategic value—using data intelligently, freeing up creative energy, and driving measurable business results.
• Brands should foster authentic, co-creative relationships with customers, especially as generational expectations evolve.
• Continuous professional growth comes from cross-disciplinary exposure and conversations with executive peers outside of marketing.
• Maintain brand authenticity and clarity of purpose, particularly as content creation accelerates and diversifies through AI.

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End of Summary

Transcript

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[Rachel Thornton]

We've been talking a lot about the future of marketing, and it's funny because I think the future of marketing is not really the future. It's sort of right now. And I think what's fascinating is to see, you know, this real shift because of AI in a lot of key marketing work streams.

[Jenny Rooney]

Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Marketing Vanguard Podcast. I'm Jenny Rooney with adweek and we are coming to you from Davos. This is a special series of the regular Marketing Vanguard podcast and I'm thrilled now to be joined by Rachel Thornton. She's the CMO of Adobe Enterprise. Rachel, welcome.

[Rachel Thornton]

Thank you. I'm excited to be here.

[Jenny Rooney]

Notably, you have been our partner in this inaugural Marketing Vanguard Inspiration excursion in Davos. So thank you so much for that.

[Rachel Thornton]

Well, we were really happy to do it and I would say, based on the last two days, we've had great panels, we've had great discussions, we've had great speakers. So I'm excited that we did the partnership. I'm looking forward to seeing what it looks like next year.

[Jenny Rooney]

Yeah, I mean, I think it's been awesome that we've been able to have such great conversations and participation here on the ground in Davos, and then the amplification of what we're sharing, certainly through our channels on Adweek, LinkedIn as well, has been sharing out so much of the content via SQ Lounge's platform as well, who have also been an incredible partner in enabling us to host this in their beautiful space in Davos. Yeah, I mean, our hope is Adweek is that this reaches far more CMOs than were physically here. But the group we had here was so unique. Unique and dynamic. Yeah. Talk a little bit about what you took away from the unique sort of collection of CMOs that we had participate.

[Rachel Thornton]

I think it was really great to hear from whether it was tech companies, so, like Adobe and Microsoft, we hosted with you, but we had Ferragamos Chief Brand Officer here, We had the Ex CMO of Major League Baseball, of Marriott, we had the cmo, of Marmot, we had retail. It was really a great cross section of CMOs. And it was fascinating to hear each of them sort of talk about not only how they're meeting this moment with marketing and AI and creativity, but also especially, you know, like workday, CMO was here. How you think about leadership at this time, how you're leading your teams, how you're experimenting, how you're leaning in on training for things like AI, but also how you're thinking about vulnerability and authenticity. I heard those words come up a lot over the last two days. It was really fascinating.

[Jenny Rooney]

That's so true. And the human element and everything that we talked about some of that vulnerability, I mean, it means taking risks. It means doing things that are sort of uncomfortable. That, to me was very sticky as well. Like, I loved the focus on that. When you think about creativity and Adobe sits at the heart of that, that's such a human concept, certainly to me, right? I mean, creativity is humans create. How are you and Adobe thinking about the heart of that and the truth of that, even as AI enables so much more in terms of creative execution and creative success.

[Rachel Thornton]

Yes. At the heart of it, like you say, is human creativity, human innovation, human ingenuity. We think of it as human in the center. I think that AI can definitely help you scale things. If you think about creative, if you think about, you know, marketing, what do marketers do if they're building ad campaigns, brand campaigns, where you want that creative spark, creative energy is what is the campaign ethos? What's the design? What's the core creative concept? But then, as you realize, okay, now I have to translate it into, say, couple of different languages, maybe 30, 40, 50, depending on your, you know, your footprint globally. I need to traffic the ads, produce the ads. Now it's like, how does AI help you do that better? How does AI help you take those core concepts and scale into an ad campaign that you can run globally, that you can run in markets that you can personalize down to the individual. I think that's where AI really helps it. It's not, hey, we don't want to have amazing creativity. We do. And I think this is where we have such amazing creators. And how do you help get their work out there and scale their work?

[Jenny Rooney]

I mean, Adobe has such a legacy in that respect. Right? And so to me, it's so clear. Like, frankly, I don't want to call it bifurcation, but the complimentary aspect of what you're talking about Is so vivid and so clear, to borrow a creativity term, because it truly, and we've talked a lot about this, you know, some people say it shouldn't be called artificial intelligence, it should be called augmented intelligence. It should be, you know, thinking about it obviously, as an enabler.

[Rachel Thornton]

Right.

[Jenny Rooney]

Something that facilitates. And so especially given where you sit and what Adobe does for marketers, that is an easy thing to get their heads around. And the deployment aspect, I mean, the efficiency gains.

[Rachel Thornton]

Right, right.

[Jenny Rooney]

Perhaps the cost cutting, the. In the best way possible so that you yield an abundance of output that's going to be right on. Right.

[Rachel Thornton]

And sort of the way I think about it is as my team creates campaigns as we go and roll, as we think about them across channels and we think about building that customer experience where we can have marketers focusing on the things they love, which is, how do I really understand the customer? What are the customer pain points? What would be the best messaging? Right. What would be the best integrated campaign plan and strategy? Rather than, okay, now I have to build 500 assets or now I have to ask somebody at another team to build an audience cohort. If you can say, great, there's an audience agent that can make recommendations that can push you audiences, new audiences, based on how customers or new customers or current customers have responded, you know, to different assets. That's powerful because now the marketer is like, I now have the extra time to really think, how do I land this campaign? How do I land this experience?

[Jenny Rooney]

It frees their minds and their creativity to lean into the things that got them into this job in the first place.

[Rachel Thornton]

The reason you love marketing, you get to do more of that 100%.

[Jenny Rooney]

You are no stranger to Davos personally. You've been here before. Talk to me a little bit about your own personal background in how you got to this role. You know, kind of your career path that led you here and also the previous times you've been to Davos and in what context and why you came back again this year.

[Rachel Thornton]

Well, I love this job. I've always been in marketing. You know, that's what I've done. I've always done marketing for tech companies. So folks like Cisco or Microsoft, Salesforce or aws. But this is an amazing job because I get to market to marketers. Right. Previously it was marketing to tech people, which I love. But this is really fun because you are, you know, you're talking to folks every day about what you do, what they do, and there's magic to that. And I've been here before when I was with aws, so set that whole thing up. So it's fun to be back. It's interesting though, we were talking about this a little earlier to see what's changed. I think there's a lot more marketers here, obviously the first time in like I want to say 2018, 2019, and not as many. And so it's interesting to see and fun to see that community grow. And I think it just adds, adds to the, the great conversations and the depth of conversations that businesses are having here.

[Jenny Rooney]

And by the way, a core component of growth.

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[Jenny Rooney]

Not just of the brand, but of the business. Right. That conversation feels a little more pointed and a little more refined now, especially in this era of AI. And a lot of what we talked about over the last two days is this concept of the CMO at the center. How do they win favor with their CEOs? How do they make sure that they're talking in a language that the CFOs can understand? And by the way, appreciate, I'm really curious your personal opinion about this because I know you're probably very familiar with that narrative as well. What does feel different about what what's happening right now? And maybe it is indeed all about AI, but there's so many other things happening culturally there always have been, but culturally the ability for purpose to still be at the center of everything CMOs do. What's different about the now that you think more than ever makes it imperative that CMOs assert themselves as true business growth drivers within their organizations.

[Rachel Thornton]

I think marketing is always front and center when you're talking about customer growth, new revenue growth. Right. So we had this great panel earlier with like myself with Infosys, with Microsoft and really talking about, you know, what marketers drive and I think being able to sit with your C suite peers and whether it's the CFO or talking to the CEO and saying this is how marketing is contributing to revenue growth is a revenue driver. I think that's always been there and it's become even more important. But what is interesting to me about now is as people think about their brand, as authenticity becomes the thing that is everyone is talking about, especially as they begin to think, well, you know, with AI, should I worry about what's authentic or what's real? And I think every brand, and this is where marketers are in a unique position. Every brand has to think, you know, what do I want my brand to be? You know, where do we want to lean in? What is the thing that we want customers to really feel about us, to know about us? So how are you defining your brand? How are you ensuring your brand is visible in new areas like this shift from SEO to agentic engine optimization? But I think marketers and CMOs specifically are at that intersection of understanding the customer, being able to build the right engagement, being able to build the right brand to make sure that the business is then successful because you see that revenue, right? You see that growth.

[Jenny Rooney]

And obviously, I mean, your tools are able to. There's a lot of ability, we talked a lot about metrics. You know, there's always the concept of connecting the dots between like great brand work, great creativity, and obviously having that feed in directly into the bottom line. Tools like what you're providing enable the CMOs, give them that tool to actually be able to have that conversation in a really pointed, meaningful way.

[Rachel Thornton]

As I talk to a lot of CMOs, we've been talking a lot about the future of marketing. And it's funny because I think the future of marketing is not really the future, it's sort of right now. And I think what's fascinating is to see, having been doing this for years and years, you know, this real shift because of AI in a lot of key marketing work streams. Like again, we talked about a minute ago, SEO, it's a gentic engine, but we also talk about if you want to build amazing customer experiences, things that really resonate with your customers, you have to be able to personalize it. You have to be able to take your customer data. And now I think integrating that with AI tools like what we build, like what Adobe builds, you're able to build customer experiences and critically the content that you need to bring those experiences to life. And I think AI is able to help you build and scale that content so that you can personalize it down to the individual. And I think being able to use your customer data to understand what is the right customer journey to build. All of these have been amplified and supercharged with AI in only the best way, which is What I'm super optimistic about when I think about the future of marketing, which is again like right now, but I just think there's a lot of really fascinating innovations happening now in marketing is just, it's been really exciting to see it and you know, at Adobe be a part of it.

[Jenny Rooney]

It's the best of both worlds, right? Human creativity, the visual elements, the ability for you to surround people and experience through those incredible creative assets while taking a lot of the, and freeing up spaces we talked about. It's interesting. You know, we're also living in a time when I do think there's two things happening. And I'm sure you've kind of felt this too, this concept that like you mentioned human experience, you know, I think there's the in person human experience that I feel like people are sort of like hungry for that is only rising like people wanting to be in live events together, learning together all the things. So that's kind of happening. The other thing that's happening is the younger generations are I think, feeling like they want to engage with things in a more tactile way.

[Rachel Thornton]

It's almost like they are creators, right? Yeah. So again, when you think about your brand, when you think about how customers are engaging with your brand, especially for Gen Alpha, Gen Z, they feel like they're also contributing to your brand because they're engaging, they're consuming it, they're making it your own. Their own, I should say. I think what has been a really great example of that is if you look at professional sports leagues, right? So in the US a couple weeks, we have the super bowl coming up. But if you look at what, how the NFL has thought about fan engagement and co creation with their fans, especially in social media.

[Jenny Rooney]

Yeah.

[Rachel Thornton]

How they use what they call league content creators, LCCs, you know, creating content on the field, sharing it in social media and then the fans pick it up and share it. You see this happening also with things like English Premier League, they're another partner of ours, as is NFL. But really these leagues are now thinking, these teams are thinking. We know that our fans want to be involved. They don't just want to watch, they want to consume and they want to create. And that is what's really the difference now. Totally. And I think not just sports, all brands are going to be able to think that. Like how do we think of customers as co creating with us experience?

[Jenny Rooney]

Yeah, I love that. What will you take from this Davos? What do you want to take back with you and what advice would you give to See, mos who perhaps weren't able to be here this year are curious about it. Some other folks I've talked to this week are like, it's just good for CMOs to be in environments where you're not surrounded by only CMOs.

[Rachel Thornton]

Right.

[Jenny Rooney]

Where you do have, whether it's through direct conversations or just being part of the kind of the zeitgeist happening, you start to build awareness of what CEOs want. You start to build awareness of some of those bigger, broader issues that are happening in the world. What's your takeaway from.

[Rachel Thornton]

Yeah, and that was something in one of our panels. And. And I would say I think you guys captured those. And they're available on your. I think on your.

[Jenny Rooney]

They're all available.

[Rachel Thornton]

Yeah. All the sessions.

[Jenny Rooney]

Yeah.

[Rachel Thornton]

People should watch because I think they were. I think they were sharing them on that. But I do think that it's been good to be surrounded by a whole bunch of different. Like, this is a great customer event. Right? Like, hearing from customers, hearing from businesses. But it is nice to be surrounded by a bunch of different, you know, C suites. Like, is it other CIOs, is it CEOs? It's nice to be here and hear the conversations. I think Davos is always a great place for conversations. Lots of different conversations, lots of different perspectives.

[Jenny Rooney]

Yeah.

[Rachel Thornton]

It's no different this year. And I'm actually, as you know, we've talked about, I'm encouraged to see more marketers here. Right. And participate in the conversations and thinking about their businesses as they show up here.

[Jenny Rooney]

Well, we're excited to do it in the future. Thank you so much, Rachel, for.

[Rachel Thornton]

Thank you.

[Jenny Rooney]

This is amazing for our maiden voyage and all that came out of it. It's been a pleasure to spend time with you these last couple days and look forward to our next conversation.

[Rachel Thornton]

I do as well. Thank you.

[Marketing Vanguard Outro Host]

Thank you for listening to Marketing Vanguard, part of the Adweek Podcast Network and Acast Creator Network. You can listen and subscribe to all of Adweek's podcasts by visiting adweek.com podcasts. Stay updated on all things Adweek Podcast Network by following us on Twitter Dweek Podcasts. And if you have a question or suggestion for the show, send us an [e-mail] thanks for listening.

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