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- [00:00]
Jim Stengel
Before we dive into today's episode, we would very much appreciate a moment from you to make sure you're subscribed to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen, along with optioning to auto download the episodes. It really is the best way to never miss an episode. Along with supporting the show and the amazing team that helps me bring it to you. And while you're there, leave us a rating or review. It only takes a minute and helps more people find the show and helps us learn. And of course share this episode with a friend or colleague who might enjoy it. We wouldn't be here six years later and still going so strong without you all our community. So thank you for being part of it. Now onto the show. Laura, what's the first brand you remember making an impact on you as a young girl?
- [00:45]
Lara Belage
I will say one brand that I thought of which is not a brand, but to me it's a brand. And having grown up in the Pacific Northwest in the 90s, Nirvana and Pearl Jam, those are brands for me, right? So I do think of those almost as brands because they represent something timeless. They represent a unique carve out, a value prop, you know, the way that a marketer thinks about it, maybe not necessarily what the classic sort of brand would be.
- [01:16]
Jim Stengel
Hi, I'm Jim Stengel. I've helped hundreds of major brands discover and activate their purpose. Because when a brand's purpose is clear, compelling and authentic, profit naturally follows. Each week I welcome the CMOs, the chief marketing officers of your favorite brands, to speak to how their job is so much more than marketing. These leaders share their inspiration and challenges along with how they try to build a full, healthy and happy life in and out of the office. And it's that energy that reaches everyone they touch. And we're glad you're here to feel that energy and to learn from these remarkable leaders. And so here we go. It's the first week of Women's History Month and we have quite the guest to kick off the month on the CMO podcast. Joining me today is Lara Belage, the Chief Marketing Officer and EVP Global Marketing at Adobe. Lara joined Adobe just a little more than a year ago. Adobe is, of course, a company that is famous for its creativity, innovation and strong employee and customer centric culture. The global technology leader's mission is beautiful to empower everyone to create a commitment to to unleashing creativity, productivity and customer experiences through innovative tools and platforms. Adobe was founded way back in 1982 and today does about $25 billion in revenue and is growing. Last year, Adobe grew their ARR, or recurring revenue, more than 10%. Innovations that Adobe has pioneered include Photoshop, Acrobat, the PDF and Firefly. My guest, Lara, is an experienced CMO. Before Adobe, Lara was the CMO at Intuit for six years. We'll talk about that. She oversaw a strong run. Revenue tripled during her tenure. Over the course of her career, Laura has worked at Visa, Nike, Amazon and Gap. A graduate of the University of Washington, and the Kellogg School of Management, where I bump into her at the annual Kellogg Marketing Leadership Conference. Here's Laura for a conversation about Girl Scouts, the NFL, creativity and yes, AI. Let's get started. Lara, welcome to the CMO podcast. Hey, we are deep into the Girl Scout cookies selling season and my local grocery store in Coronado is a center. There's always Girl Scouts with their tables and their displays and their friendly faces and I always buy way too many. But I've noticed that you're a national sponsor of the 2026 Girl Scout cookie program.
- [03:36]
Lara Belage
We are.
- [03:37]
Jim Stengel
Which by the way, as I was researching this, does over a billion dollars a year. So it's a big brand.
- [03:41]
Lara Belage
That's pretty incredible. Yeah, the commerce they're running is incredible and we're just thrilled to support them as they learn how to market using our products.
- [03:50]
Jim Stengel
Now I noticed that also you do a lot of partnerships, of course, as a company of a wide range of clients, but one that I know you're really proud of is the work you're doing with the NFL. So let's stick with partnerships. So could you talk a bit about that work? What is special about it, why you're really jazzed by it and what it's like to work with the NFL. It must be incredible.
- [04:11]
Lara Belage
Yeah. So we do have many partnerships. It is a great way for us to tap into the culture passion points that people have our customers have. And we do have such a broad range of customers. We serve individuals to students, to creative professionals, to next generation creative professionals, all the way to enterprises. And with NFL, we're not only going to fans who are enthusiastic about the NFL, but we're also going and supporting the NFL and enterprise. And there are very few Fortune 500 companies that, you know, don't have our software or use our applications. With the NFL, they have the desire of going and being uber connected to their fan base. So we're able to help power connecting in a personalized fashion, connecting through their personalized fan experiences through our software and then we can within through that, connect with our customers and you know, engage them. We have Express, which is our product that allows you to do very unique designs however you want them post to social. And in the case of working with the NFL, they've given us proprietary NFL designs that you can use to create a specialized fan experience. And with Firefly, which is our proprietary model that allows you to customize, you know, what you want in your mind's eye and bring it to life, it's commercially viable in terms of. It's absolutely not trained on other, other people's data. It's only credentialed in that respect. You know, that's another thing that you can use Firefly to create and work with NFL, to, you know, create great designs. And we had a fun helmet design effort that we did just recently with the NFL being in our backyard in San Francisco here. You know, we had the super bowl here just recently, and so that was pretty, pretty terrific.
- [06:10]
Jim Stengel
So are you a fan of the 49ers?
- [06:13]
Lara Belage
I always say I love all my NFL football teams being a NFL, you know, partner writ large. But I do have a special liking for the 49ers. I've lived in San Francisco long enough to like them. I am from Seattle, so I do have some love for the. The Seahawks. I do have a little 12th man in me.
- [06:34]
Jim Stengel
So you're happy this year?
- [06:35]
Lara Belage
It was really fun. It was great to see them win and see that happen, you know, and what I of as my home stadium now, Levi's.
- [06:43]
Jim Stengel
Yeah. You've been in Adobe now a little bit over a year. I remember when you made that transition. I think I ran into you at the summit around the time you were coming on board.
- [06:53]
Lara Belage
Yes.
- [06:54]
Jim Stengel
And I was interviewing Emily Silver at Dick's at the time. So you'd been there about a year. Do you feel like, Lara, you're a more creative person now after this year?
- [07:04]
Lara Belage
Look, that is such a great question. Creativity is so, I think, important to the human race, and we all are creative. Do I think I'm more creative? Hopefully. I feel like I've had some amount of creativity my entire life. But I will say that when you hang out in an environment with everybody who's so customer obsessed, making sure that we deliver for that broad range of customers that, you know is from individuals all the way to enterprises, you do, you do get excited. And, you know, I'm very lucky. I have a studio team that's best in class. They're using our software. We call it Adobe on Adobe. It allows us to give feedback to the engineers that are creating the software And I don't know if I'm more creative, but I certainly love being around incredible creative folks all day long and the creativity that they output.
- [07:58]
Jim Stengel
Yeah. I've been in and out of your company many times, actually, since I left pg, and you can feel it. You can feel it in the culture, you can feel it in your people. You can feel it when you're with them. And. Well, I'm going to talk about in a minute why you came here, but every time I've been there, I feel happy.
- [08:14]
Lara Belage
Yeah, it is. You know, I've described it. You know, there's still. The brand is a vessel that we can put more meaning into, but the foundation of it is so optimistic and, you know, it's saturated, bold colors. It's. It's everything that makes you want to go outside and smile. And that's what I love about it.
- [08:37]
Jim Stengel
Well, let's look back for a minute before we talk more about Adobe and what you're up to there. When I ran into you about a year ago, you were just coming out of Intuit after six years as cmo, where your revenue tripled, by the way, in your tenure there. Your stock price also tripled. Now, I know there was an acquisition or two in there, but I'd like you to talk a bit about that run. This is not a new brand. I mean, you grew that brand at sort of startup rates, and it's a very established brand with its sub brands, of course, which it's gathered over the years. But talk a bit about that experience and what you learned about growing a venerable tech brand at these remarkable rates.
- [09:18]
Lara Belage
Yeah, and what a wonderful experience. What a great company. I was there for six years, and when I started, there was essentially QuickBooks and TurboTax and Mint, which was a personal finance application. And we did buy Credit Karma and we did buy mailchimp during that time. And for me, it was, you know, the beautiful task ambition of really codifying and punching above our weight and bringing to life this brand that had existed for almost, you know, over 40 years. During the time I was there, we went over 40 years, but Intuit had not been meaning, had not been put into Intuit per se. And that connection of a branded house and the power of Uber brand, the parent brand with sub brands, had not been brought to life. And so that was, you know, such a great experience for me because you're working horizontally across an organization to bring people along and understand the power that building equity into a master brand can have and the sub brands and, you know, that I feel really good about having accomplish that during my time, you know, updating the entire brand equity meeting and then going to market with a true branded house and even doing an Intuit Dome deal in order to really codify the stature of a brand that could be in the tapestry of culture and additionally tap into what that is very tech forward stadium. So giving a nod to the tech innovation that is the backbone of the company. You know one thing I'll say during my time there what I think I got the savviest I've ever been on and you know, have had this in my history, my long history doing marketing and general management. But is the idea that it really is all about the customer. It's all about the customer and if we're serving the customer needs and deeply understand them and working backward from the customer, we'll be fine. It doesn't mean you can't stand up anything that they don't know that they want and desire and need. You know, that's still our jobs. But you can do that in a way taps into what they deeply are wired to care about or that they should care about. And they don't. Today,
- [11:39]
Jim Stengel
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- [13:10]
Lara Belage
I think with Adobe, if you've been in marketing, if you've been at a Fortune 500 company, you've been exposed to Adobe and you are often surprised, depending on how you first interacted with the brand. In my case, it was on the enterprise side. You realize, gosh, that's the Photoshop brand. Wow. Acrobat PDFs that I've known forever. This is all Adobe and the brand that I came into contact with by to driving my business efficiently again. On the enterprise side, there's this massive opportunity to shape this brand even more going forward. And I've loved it as a customer. Now I get the chance to actually go in the four walls and shape it for the next tranche of growth. And there's something I love personally about going in and taking a brand that's existed and really valuing its history, its DNA, its past, but then taking it forward. And in the case of Adobe, when I walked in as just an example, we had a mission that was changing the world through personalized digital experiences, which made sense, but I knew that in this next tranche of growth, we'd have to truly say, what is going to get our people out of bed and energized as they go into the next day, as they go into the next year, the next decade, and what do we stand for? What gives us the legs to grow? And that was really, for me, going in and saying to my boss, the CEO of the company, Shantanu, saying, can we really look at this mission? It's like we haven't changed it for 15 years. We've thought about it, but it's a hard task. And so in that case, what I did was worked on a whole plan to get people internally to work on it with me and with my team and the corporate strategy team. And we did move to a new mission of empowering everyone to create. And you know, that for me, that's a long way of saying that's what brought me to Adobe, is I knew I could set it up for the next chapter while, you know, understanding our past, but moving forward. And you know, what I would say too is the mission of empowering everyone to create. It has such legs because it's extensible, but it's simple. It can be creating a company, creating a campaign, or creating an image, or creating a PDF or doing analysis, so the breadth of what it can stand for, but still energizing to people, knowing that I could do that, come in and help the company, just as the first step is part of what energized me to come here.
- [16:00]
Jim Stengel
It's super simple, and it is at the Core, who Adobe is and why they're here and what makes them different. Could you talk a bit about that, Laura? Because it's, you know, refreshing. A mission on any organization of any size is never a cavalier project, right?
- [16:15]
Lara Belage
It is not.
- [16:16]
Jim Stengel
And you were year one in your role, coming in from the outside and it sounds like something you're very proud of. It sounds like it's catching. Sounds like you involved a lot of people. Could you talk a bit more about how you approached that? Because I think there's rich learning in it.
- [16:31]
Lara Belage
So first of all, it is not for the faint of heart. You know, if you've, you know, coming in from the outside, you have to be really thoughtful if you're going to go in and change a mission. You know, when I started at Intuit, the mission was powering prosperity and that was great. Same idea, very significant in terms of what it could stand for heritage going back to the founder, in this case since the years before, going into a whole new space in the marketplace of going for students and everyday people who can just want to create and we have our product express and you know, understanding that these brands, Acrobat are attached to Adobe, you know, the idea that our mission statement didn't necessarily give us the breadth and room to run within that breadth, that this was really going to be required for me to energize a studio team, energize the best marketers on the planet. It became a bit of a mission for me in order to have then all of the work that goes underneath that, the taxonomy of the corporate strategy, what that anchors up to the idea that, you know, you could actually then be really clear about the value prop of each of those sub brands that then ladders to ultimately a mission statement. For me it was so important so, you know, got some traction with my boss to do that and then started to pull in the rest of the executive team and then employees across key parts of the company as well as very senior leaders and went on that journey knowing, you know, I had a kind of a semblance of the zip code of what it could be. But then getting that support as I went around, hard to do that in the first year, but really important because it allows for the foundation when you're building those brands and go to market strategies going forward. And so that's, you know, a down payment for the future. Of course, parallel pathing all of the things we need to do. You have to go to market, you have to be driving the business both in the short, mid and long term. But Doing that with now having sort of something out ahead to launch toward
- [18:46]
Jim Stengel
one year into the job. You're proud of the work you've done on the mission. It sounds like it's caught anything else you're particularly proud of in this year as you look back on it. And the second part of that is, has anything been more challenging or difficult than you perhaps expected?
- [19:02]
Lara Belage
Great questions. So very proud of that mission. Unveiled it at our company kickoff in December and you know, great response. People are loving it. You know, it's getting traction when people who you don't know are slacking you emailing you saying how proud they are to be part of the company, that this is why they joined originally, whether that was 17 years ago or two years ago. So that's one piece of it. It also gives you credibility as you're moving through the organization and having a point of view, but also respecting what the company's about. I'm also proud of this is a really interesting time for the world and for software. We have been able to maintain a steadfastness, a care about the customers and a, a conviction to do what's right while understanding, you know, with Gen and LLMs, the world is changing and we have to innovate. So we have been innovating at a rapid pace and as I mentioned my team, the whole marketing organization is Adobe. On Adobe we call it, we call it Customer zero, which I guess is patient zero for those of you who are watching PIT these days. But it's very, you know, we are trying our software, we're co creating the software, we are giving feedback to product to the engineers in real time. I have engineers on my team, we have creative technologists and we're out inventing the future, innovating with LLM. So you know, we've got a myriad of products from our brand concierge, which is agentic AI where you can conversationally talk to a website effectively to find out which product is best for you. That's on Adobe.com today. You know we have our LLM optimizer which is in a world of alarms. You know, search is not just search, it's SEO and geo and you can wake up tomorrow and your search volume has dropped off and where did it go? And now we have LLM optimizer to help you understand where your customers are finding out about you. And increasingly that isn't on necessarily your typical search. So our teams are co creating that and giving feedback in real time. And that's just a gift. I've called it eating your own dog food in the past. Shantanu likes to call it drinking your own champagne. I like that as well. So there's a lot to love about keeping a team energized while you're innovating in such a disruptive seismic shift time.
- [21:41]
Jim Stengel
This idea of trying things out first internally before you go to external clients. Customer zero, it's such a good one.
- [21:50]
Lara Belage
Yeah.
- [21:51]
Jim Stengel
And it kind of makes me wonder why I don't hear that more from other companies I talk to and other CMOs. So could you go a little bit deeper into what is it about your culture that makes that work and you've already told a few stories about what you're doing there, but is there one that really stands out as especially powerful one that you've discovered?
- [22:11]
Lara Belage
Yeah, there's definitely something in the Adobe culture of try the product, use it. Every surface we have, whether it's, you know, our digital screens throughout the offices or our intranet, it's always give me product feedback. There's, it's everywhere. So it's in the DNA and I think it speaks a lot for the company. The fact of the matter is, you know, our founders and our executive team, Shantanu Narayan, the CEO included, they're product enthusiastic folks at their heart and they deeply care about the technology that powers it and the products that are offered. And you know, when we started it was all about power and precision and that still is in the DNA that just flows to the customer base and it only makes us better. When I go and talk to customers in our customer experience center as an example, I can tell them firsthand what it's like to use our products. And you know, one great example and one that I'm greatly proud about is we have our Gen Studio which is effectively how we think about in a more automated fashion and using AI. And now gen AI, from ideation to creating assets to the management of assets, to pushing them out in real time, optimizing in real time and then feeding that back end to optimize especially at the bottom of the funnel and the performance measure we have Gen Studio for performance marketing with Meta, Snap and so many others, you know, we can we using that against my customer audiences. I can give feedback right away on what part of that what we call the content supply chain is working and not so that is in the DNA. It is deeply embedded in everything we do. What I would say is that is a point of difference for us when we're talking to customers. So I can't stand up and talk about selling a product if I have it, you know, it's better if I've tried it. So that when you're very customer back, when you care about your customer problems, you fall in love with those problems. Offer up solutions for me to say I'm using this and here's what works incredibly well and here's what's, hey, we're kind of tweaking. In fact we'd love your feedback. You can co create it with us. That is extremely, extremely powerful. The one also thing I would say is as we go through this LLM journey and conversational interfaces really take over, agentic AI takes over. There's nothing that tech is going to do without the change management and that takes humans. So the number one question I get, we get in these customer experience sessions is how do I get my teams to pick this up, that getting the teams to pick it up and the change management that is involved, like I can talk to that. I have creatives that have been here so long because I love the company and it's, I have the same opportunities and it's all about, you know, that's a whole nother discussion. But it's like getting the people who are psyched about the change willing to try and using them as the catalysts and having them go on the journey and take others with them.
- [25:29]
Jim Stengel
Let's stay with that for a minute, Lara, because I think it's very powerful. Everybody I have on the show is talking about how to improve their organizations through smart use of AI and we hear the range of people on the spectrum. Obviously you're at the heart of that with your company and you're talking to other CMOs as your customers and clients. So you have a really interesting perspective on that. So could you talk a bit about from your personal experience and from your work with customers and clients, it is a change management process. But what have you learned from your experience? What have you learned from the best cmos you talk to? I had Don on from Qualcomm a few months ago. He talked beautifully about that change process at Qualcomm and it was very easy to follow, very intuitive, very effective. So I'd just like to let you have the microphone for a minute to talk about what you learned about this change experience, to really be agile, curious and make this work to your advantage.
- [26:29]
Lara Belage
I feel a personal commitment to, to be the consummate, most effective world class modern marketing agile organization in the world that is paramount to us as Adobe to win and to showcase to our customers, especially on the enterprise side that we can do this. So I take it very personally. Do I think we're perfect at it? No. Is it a journey? Yes. Are you always reinventing because things are changing so rapidly? Yes. It's interesting though, I would argue we've been on this change for a long time because when we started talking about 360Marketing and not thinking about one channel on its own, we actually started to go this route and we thought about teams of teams. We thought about not being verticalized. You know, I could argue the CPG model from yesteryear that you remember Jim and lived is you had the. The brand manager was the hub of the wheel and they worked with all the spokes of the wheel to say hey, I gotta think about collectively how I show up in a customer's life, in a consumer's life. All we're doing now is saying we still have to work in those teams of teams and you have to have someone who's absolutely obsessed with the customer at the center. And if you're doing it well, like I have done, redesign the group to have actually customer groups mapped back to customer sets so that somebody is. That's all they think about. And then we apply the product and the features that best meet their needs and they work with experts, centers of excellence including whether that's growth, whether that's media, that's more above the line, upper funnel, whether that's comms, PR partnerships, you know, working in that fashion. I'm organized that way now while taking advantage sort of horizontally across of the technology that can speed everything up and have you be agile and moving in real time. And then again using our tools as almost the. If you look at the schematic of the tech stack it's almost as if our org maps up to. To it where you've got this gen studio engine that's creating assets all the time and pushing them out and optimizing so that you know it's a simple way. But that reorganization and then using almost the tech stack to kind of model our org. The other thing I'll say in all of this is we have an in house studio team, best in class. They're exceptional as you might imagine. Most of them came to us after using our tools and, and trying other tools and still knowing what our points of difference are. But we have now creative technologists in those teams that then are. Their whole job is to say let me take the latest plug it in and then also ensure that through all of it we always had the way to put brand standards in. So if you zoom out from all of this. If you've been in marketing for a while, the big thing usually you have some, you have a heart for brand and value props and points of difference in all the things you learn when you're writing that perfect positioning statement. It's usually how we got into the craft. We love that carve out of that brand that stands for something that still matters even in an agentic world. We have built tools that you put the brand standards and guidelines in so that you do not lose that. Okay. And that is the thing that gives, you know, no matter where you sit in the organization, the especially the marketing organization, our teams can rest easier because they know no matter what technology is involved, we've got those standards plugged in. Right. And that is, that's ultimately what is your long term growth driver is who you stand for as a brand. And we've talked a lot about the pieces of the funnel and, and how you can't just live at the bottom of the funnel even in this agentic world, that ultimately all of it is important and brand is important and so that piece really matters.
- [30:59]
Andrea Sullivan
Hi everybody. I'm Andrea Sullivan, the CEO of Vive and we have produced the CMO podcast with Jim Stengel for many years and I'm sitting in his seat right now. It's so exciting. I wanted to tell you a little bit about one of our programs. It's called Vive by Vayner. It's a 12 month program that's designed for C suiters and founders. And we want to help people grow their businesses, but also to grow themselves. And so we bring in people from Shark Tank to talk to our founders, but we also focus on wellness. We want to make sure that people are leaning into becoming their best selves, their best and happiest selves. So if you are someone that wants to learn how to grow your business and grow yourself, check us out at Vive Co. That's V y ve Co. We'd love to talk to you.
- [31:57]
Jim Stengel
I've heard you say that you believe we're entering the golden age of creativity.
- [32:01]
Lara Belage
I do.
- [32:02]
Jim Stengel
And that's a very optimistic view of this world that we're in right now. And I like that. Tell us more about why you feel that way.
- [32:09]
Lara Belage
There's going to be more and more AI that develops things. Right. We're seeing what we call AI slop out there. I actually think in that environment, what has craft and intention and taking what's in your mind's eye and bringing it to life, even if you've Used Genai to help that accelerate that process or play with it. So Firefly, we have this ideation feature called Boards and you can play with still is what I want. It still is what was in my mind's eye. And I just seeing it come to life. That human ingenuity and that human creativity paired with. If you want to use AI, great. If you don't, that's fine too. You're going to know what is authentic and unique and not AI slop. I believe that. And I believe authenticity is going to be your brand and trust is going to be your brand. You know, that is going to fuel a whole democratization too of creativity. People who felt like they couldn't be creative now can be, you know, using our products or believing that we can do anything. So I do believe we're entering a golden age of creativity. And you look at countries like India who have always have rich cultural histories and they have this entire creative class coming. And you know, we see our products doing extremely well there because they're just excited to be part of this economy and the economy just to keep pulling on the thread. It's like creators are running the economy. We know what we're seeing on YouTube and these channels. So that I do believe we're entering the golden age of, of creativity.
- [33:56]
Jim Stengel
Now, let's go back to your year one. You've talked about a lot of things that you're proud of that are going well, that you're learning about what's been tougher than you had imagined.
- [34:04]
Lara Belage
Oh, well, having LLMs, you know, sort of come in and this belief that, you know, software is going to be eaten by AI, you know, which I don't believe. And I believe that AI is an absolute tailwind for software. And you know, these times exist in our, in our marketplace. You know, I do think that question of everything surrounding LLMs, the energy capacity being taken, the what is of the future of websites, you know, what is, how do we show up in that? That is hard. Right? Because what you are doing as a leader during that is, you know, you have a great strategy and we have a wonderful. Now we have a new mission. We have a corporate strategy with, with must wins that we're banking against. You know, that. But your teams, you know, they look out to their friends who are also running around with, you know, this frenzy and we call it on the, on the enterprise side, we say going from AI frenzy to impact to driving outcomes that I would, I wouldn't have realized what a fever pitch that would hit this year. And Keeping the teams and less about that, but keeping the teams focused and energized as we get through it, as which we will. You know, for those of us who've lived the pink slip.com era, that was hard. We got through it. We were better for it. You do have to disrupt yourself. I truly believe in that. Not just the company you're in, but yourself to get to the next side. And there are people who will love to do that and people who may not. And it's okay if you don't want to. We're here to help our customers and so we are going to disrupt ourselves and disrupt everything that is good to support our customers.
- [35:55]
Jim Stengel
As a cmo, as a person, how has AI helped you be a more effective or more creative or a smarter leader? What counsel do you have from your personal habits?
- [36:07]
Lara Belage
This is a really hard question for me to answer because I'm using our tools and I would say one of the things that I love is with Firefly. It's a one stop application. It has all of the models with the best value you can ideate, create. And then I can do an Instagram post with my friends that is really unique and creative because I've applied some of the features and effects that Firefly allows me to do. But the idea that I can do that in rapid time and time is money today for people. The amount of information that people are getting is mind blowing. You know, it's every day your feed is filled and you can be overwhelmed. And so for me, it's all about productivity. And you know, I mentioned the creativity, that goes without saying, but the productivity is how I've used it. And again, this is. I would be using this if I was here or not, but just PDFs. There's 3 trillion PDFs in circulation today. Okay. Acrobat, Adobe Acrobat, great product. Now we have AI Assistant and I use that all the time. Summarize. I'll get a PDF from anybody in the company and I'll summarize it. And it saves me so much time and it's really good and I can have it do it in a professor voice or understanding it in a fifth grader voice. That's how I'm using it. And in doing so I'm also dogfooding our material, which is great, but it's all about productivity for me based on the time starvation that we have today as people.
- [37:43]
Jim Stengel
You talked about your career path earlier in the show and the companies, brands you work with are incredible, right? Nike, Visa, Amazon, Intuit now Adobe, all of those companies have their leaders, they're market leading companies and they've stayed relevant over time. That's hard. It's really, really hard to stay relevant over decades and decades and decades. So having experienced all of those companies, some have bumps, but they're here. Yeah. So what's the key to that?
- [38:17]
Lara Belage
Just reinvention. Every single one of those brands hit periods where they needed to reinvent, stay true to the DNA of the company. Because if you do a knee jerk, you know, pivot, then it's not true and you'll lose. People like that reinvention, you have to disrupt yourself. And every single one of those brands has done it. You know, whether it's Amazon saying we gotta do prime because we have to penetrate more households and actually offer more value to, you know, Nike saying, look, we're going to go into more categories. Like I was there when we went into women like we hadn't done before. And it was originally called Nike Goddess, then we changed it to Nike Women. So there's you reinvent based on the signals you're getting from customers but also while staying true to your DNA that is across all of these brands.
- [39:12]
Jim Stengel
You said earlier in your career and you referenced this in our discussion today, be disrupted or be the one who disrupts.
- [39:19]
Lara Belage
Correct.
- [39:20]
Jim Stengel
So you said you had learned that lesson early in your career. Can you talk about that lesson? What was that early in your career? That was the wake up call for you.
- [39:28]
Lara Belage
I think it's a theme for my life. I graduated from undergrad in Seattle. There were no jobs and I was magna cum laude Phi Beta Kappa, couldn't find a job so I volunteered to get marketing experience which I thought I wanted to do because I was a pre law major and there weren't, you know, I had no background in marketing but everything I knew about my pre law classes was that human psyche and what makes people do, you know, end up in jail versus not was so interesting. And what affected them to think, do and feel differently, which is what marketing's about. And so I wanted to do marketing. I had no experience so I volunteered time, my time for free at a, at Pike Place Market, which is a tourist attraction, just to get experience and bring during the recession local families in. And so I came up with an idea to draw in a local audience. I did that while working a night shift at a hospital to pay my rent. But I say this because that's disrupting yourself. Like here I am, pre law major, don't want to go to law school, but hey, I'm going to get this experience. What are you going to do? You're going to disrupt yourself? Start to get career experience? Starts feeling like I'm not getting anywhere. What do you do? Disrupt yourself? Go to business school. So you just. You gotta. Disrupting yourself is part of my DNA. It's, you know, wrapped up in tenacity and grit, which I always say, anybody who comes into a meeting with me, you may be the smartest person in the room, but if you're not tenacious and have grit and have resilience, it doesn't matter. You're not going to necessarily go to the heights you want to achieve because it's not easy all the time. It's just not. It's not a linear career path by any stretch of the means. Life isn't linear.
- [41:26]
Jim Stengel
Tell us about that moment where you said, I don't want to be a lawyer, by the way, I kind of thought I was going to be a lawyer, and then I didn't. So what was it that you said, yeah, I'm going to go into marketing instead. What happened in your life? I mean, did you meet someone? Did you read something? Did you all of a sudden say, I don't want to be? When I really thought about what a lawyer does, I said, I want more action. I want to be moving with culture. And that, to me, I think, would be kind of boring for me. Not that it's not important. I'm from a family of lawyers. But I made that decision, you know, I'm going a different way. So tell me about yours.
- [42:06]
Lara Belage
I'd love to tell you. It was a really conscious, thoughtful process. I'll zoom out and say the reason I thought I wanted to be a lawyer was because growing up, there was a show on television called LA Law.
- [42:20]
Jim Stengel
Yeah, sure.
- [42:21]
Lara Belage
And there was a woman in it, Susan Day. And it was very rare at that time to see females in a television show. Mind you, there were, you know, three major networks. This was not in a streaming area today where you could, you know, see a myriad of law shows, which I love them all, but, you know. But this was one where you had a woman in a courtroom. She was in the room where it was happening. Harken Hamilton, you know, want to be in the room where it happens. And so I just thought, okay, well, then that's got to be it. You know, I want to do that. I want to be in the room, I want to be in the conversations. And so from there I thought, okay, then I have to go to law school. And while I Loved the law classes. The pre law classes that I took, they were the ones that fired me up, were the ones about why people commit crimes, which is, you know, might sound a little twisted, but it's, you know, there's a psychology of that. What environment, what learnings, what affected them. And then you start to get into human behavior and that's when you start to think about marketing. So it wasn't that I, it was more. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I wanted to be in the room where it happened. I saw a show, therefore pre law. But from there it was okay. I think it's marketing. Let me go get experience and let me push through a recession, which is something I'm good at, is graduating in recessions. I did the same thing in business school and just go for it. Right.
- [44:11]
Jim Stengel
Let's flip into the creative brief. I want to talk about sports a bit. I know it's, we talked about the NFL to open the show, but I know this is a real passion point for yours. What's the story there? We talked about just a second ago your transition from law into marketing. Why are you passionate about sports? What is it? What was the catalyst? What was the experience?
- [44:29]
Lara Belage
Well, for me personally, I'm a fan of sports. I've always been a runner and I've always been a skier and a hiker. So my entire sort of growth throughout life has been outdoors and getting outdoors. Skiing, running, hiking has been part of it, mountain biking. And so I have a respect for the commitment that it takes to be really good at a sport, no matter what that sport is. So you put that personally and you realize also just the passion, verticals, as we would say, you know, that exist within that. And then, you know, you, then for me, you work at companies like a Nike and you see the community that sports builds and the, the fan base and, and that you can coalesce around something that is exciting is community building. That, that, that's the spirit of sports. And what I love about sports too, is now it's, you know, women's sports. Every kind of sport, the Olympics are happening right now. You just, the, the vast array of sports that exist. There's something for everybody. For us then, you know, at Adobe, and I've seen this in my career, is you tap into that and find your space in it. You know, with Adobe, it's an incredible brand. We can play in any space. Biggest movie producers in the world calling us to create films. I mean, we were just at Sundance, we had an incredible activation where we have filmmakers who, you know, lines around the corner to get to see our products and offerings to, you know, whether it's Fashion Week, you've got fashion designers who are using our software to create ideas, create their next line, then all the way to, for example, you were saying NFL. And with us, we've got. Knowing that passion of sports and knowing we can not only help the companies who are, you know, whether it's Real Madrid or Premier League or NFL, who have to connect with their fans and need the software to do that, or it's a fan who just wants to connect with their friends who are fans or even fans of the other team by showing their own colors and using the team colors. There's something magical in that. And we've always said marketing and creativity equals Adobe Magic. Now we're saying, hey, it's marketing, creativity and AI is Adobe Magic. And it is true. Like there's. We are only bringing these fan experiences and how to customize through Express or use Firefly or even, you know, listen to a Kelsey podcast and then get excited to see their, their what we call a PDF space on all the things that they're looking at as part of Acrobat. You know, that's the power of sports and the connection personally that people have to it. So I think that's really what it is in a nutshell. The other thing I would just say is when we think about ingesting media, live sports has got to be, you know, that and live, you know, it's harder to get those live moments where people still come. And that's the beauty of sports as well.
- [47:44]
Jim Stengel
What are you still active in in sports? Are you still mountain biking, skiing?
- [47:48]
Lara Belage
I am. I'm going a little slower than I used to, but I'm still doing it and enjoying it. I don't do it as much as I'd like. You know, as I age, I'm doing more, you know, weights because bone density and, you know, we. We have to think about those things.
- [48:04]
Jim Stengel
Yeah, I did Pilates this morning, so I'm with you. Good.
- [48:07]
Lara Belage
Little core strength. That's great.
- [48:09]
Jim Stengel
Yeah, yeah, it's great. And I enjoy it. It's very relaxing, too. Who has been the most influential business mentor in your life since you started this great career?
- [48:18]
Lara Belage
Not a business mentor, but my aunt was in Congress for 24 years and she was a very. She was a first mover. She helped pass the Family Medical Leave act, and she did things that were really rare for a female to do in Congress during the time she was there. So she's always been an archetype for me of a, you know, she's a relative. And she also showed fearless leadership while keeping a sense of humor. So she's, without a doubt, someone I've always thought of as a mentor.
- [48:51]
Jim Stengel
She was in what state?
- [48:53]
Lara Belage
Colorado. And she's since passed. But she did phenomenal things. So she's always been someone I've wanted to consider. As I think about those times where you really have to have a voice and speak on behalf of. In her case, it was her constituents. In my case, it's my consumers and my customers.
- [49:16]
Jim Stengel
What was it about your aunt that made her so special?
- [49:18]
Lara Belage
You know, she was fearless, but she also kept a sense of humor. She never didn't laugh. At the end of the day, you gotta have fun. These jobs are not, you know, easy. At the same time, we're not doing brain surgery. Back to patient zero. So we should have fun. Our teams want to have fun. We need to remember that she did that in spades. She had a quick wit.
- [49:42]
Jim Stengel
Yeah. If we're not having fun creating something for our customers, how are they expected to have fun with it or make use of it when it reaches them? So I think we undervalue that.
- [49:51]
Lara Belage
I really think we undervalue it often in technology, too. I think we can get really serious about our own seriousness, and we can't do that. We need to remember that our customers want to have fun. They're looking for light, they're looking for joy. How do we bring that to them? And optimism. That's again, talking about the Adobe brand and coming here. And an element I never want to lose is the optimism. And there's a human side of that that is so critical to the DNA.
- [50:24]
Jim Stengel
Laura, what's the first brand you remember making an impact on you as a young girl?
- [50:27]
Lara Belage
You know, we did a podcast a long time ago, and I. I said Tab. Okay. Which I still love Tab.
- [50:35]
Jim Stengel
You're staying with that answer?
- [50:37]
Lara Belage
No. You know what? Because I said that, I thought, you know, he may ask me that. And actually, I was thinking about this because it's also winter and it's ski season, is K2 is a ski brand. And growing up skiing and being A big skier, K2 is a brand. You know, it's Bainbridge, Washington. I'm from Washington State. It was sort of part of that whole getting into that sport for me. There was also a ski called Pre Skis. So those two. I will say one brand that I thought of, which is not a brand, but to me, it's a brand. And having grown up in the Pacific Northwest in the 90s, Nirvana and Pearl Jam, those are brands for me. Right. So I, I do think of those almost as brands because they represent something timeless. They represent a unique carve out, a value prop, you know, the way that, that a marketer thinks about it, maybe not necessarily what the classic sort of brand like the Tab would, would be, but that's another, another thing to think about.
- [51:44]
Jim Stengel
They've stood the test of time.
- [51:46]
Lara Belage
They have both of them clear what they stood for. 100% great definition of a brand.
- [51:51]
Jim Stengel
So Laura, what are you looking forward to? The balance of the year, either personally or professionally. And we'll end on that note.
- [51:56]
Lara Belage
Yeah, I think personally I'm looking forward to continuing to make this brand stand for what it's always stood for, but be more relevant than ever and not lose the human connection. So I think professionally having my teams continue to embrace where Gen AI is taking us to take some of the things that we don't love and removing them, automating what is right to automate while staying on brand using our tools like Firefly, like that is exciting stuff. I can get energized getting out of bed every day doing that. I think, you know, personally travel for me is the spark that keeps me alive and gives me energy and fuels my work. Because when you're experienced different cultures, you think about how to solve complex problems in different ways. So for me, I think this next year I have a lot of travel planned that will help me be better at my job while still getting fuel personally. So whether it's work travel, I'll be visiting some offices that we have in Japan and Tokyo, in Sydney, India. Those are the trips that really energize me and bring me back with new energy fueled to keep growing when you're
- [53:16]
Jim Stengel
not doing business trips. And I always love that too. Do you like vacations that are active or more quiet?
- [53:22]
Lara Belage
I like a mix, Jim. I like a mix. I like a little of beach time and a little of a little get out there. Lately I'm really into going somewhere and learning about the history if I can. Reading a historically relevant fiction. So yeah, always have a bucket list that I'm trying to knock off for a vacation. Whether it's we did Namibia a couple years ago where we've done Canadian Rockies, Banff, you know, we always have something that we're looking to do. It's also as a family, you know, I have two boys in college now. So it's how you get everybody back in the same zone and get out. It works when they know they're getting a trip on mom and dad.
- [54:09]
Jim Stengel
Well, enjoy it now because we did that with our kids a lot. They now have kids and it gets a little more complicated. So enjoy it now.
- [54:17]
Lara Belage
Yeah, I appreciate that and I will definitely keep that in mind.
- [54:21]
Jim Stengel
Well, Laura, thank you for this conversation. I so appreciate it. I think you and your company are just remarkable. I've loved following both of you over the years. Thank you for coming back on the show. But what a great call. I think you went from Intuit to Adobe disrupting yourself sort of again. But having you're in your zone is what I'm feeling from this conversation. And when I met you personally, when you're after you made the decision, I think you're in the place that you want to be and need to be. Yeah.
- [54:50]
Lara Belage
Thank you for that. I appreciate it. It means a lot coming from you, Jim. And thanks for taking the time.
- [54:55]
Jim Stengel
That was my conversation with Laura. Three takeaways from this one for your business, brand and life. First, this concept of customer zero. I love the principle, the long standing principle in Adobe where employees need to use the products, enjoy using the products, test the products before they take them to customers. It's a concept we all ought to think about applying more in our own organizations. Second takeaway. I love this thought about disrupting yourself. And Laura has done that in her career several times. She did it coming out of college. She keeps it top of mind. If you don't disrupt yourself as a company, you will be obsolete. If you don't disrupt yourself as an individual, your skills will also be obsolete. And third takeaway, Laura talked about her ambition at Adobe Marketing and I love this. She just it rolled off her tongue. They want to be the best marketing organization in the world, the most creative, and the one that leverages a AI to its full potential. Simple, ambitious, aspirational, and something that who wouldn't want to be a part of that? That's it for this week's episode of the CMO Podcast. As always, I would be grateful if you shared our show with your friends along with subscribing and leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen. The CMO Podcast is a Vive original production.