Marketing in the Age of AI with Adobe Enterprise CMO, Rachel Thornton

In this Adobe‑hosted episode, Rachel Thornton emphasizes that B2B buyers spend most of their time outside the purchase funnel, making brand awareness a strategic imperative. With enterprise sales cycles stretching nine to twelve months, marketers must continuously surface relevant stories across content, analyst relations, and events to stay top‑of‑mind. Thornton highlights how Adobe’s massive summit—14,000 onsite and 40,000 virtual attendees—serves as a live laboratory for measuring pipeline impact, linking every dollar spent to new opportunities and ultimately justifying ROI to the CFO.

The conversation pivots to AI’s transformative role in the marketing stack. Thornton describes Adobe Gen Studio as an end‑to‑end content supply chain that automates ideation, asset creation, and multi‑channel distribution. By freeing teams from repetitive tasks, AI enables rapid experimentation and hyper‑personalized experiences at scale. Marketers can now combine rich customer data with generative tools to produce tailored campaigns in minutes rather than months, unlocking the ability to serve individual enterprise personas throughout the buying journey.

Finally, Thornton warns that traditional SEO is no longer sufficient in an LLM‑driven discovery landscape. Platforms like LinkedIn, community hubs such as Adobe Experience League, and even Reddit now feed the data models that power next‑gen search. Building authentic community advocacy and aligning cross‑functional stakeholders—from sales and product to CIOs and CROs—ensures consistent messaging and data integrity. This holistic approach not only boosts brand visibility in AI‑augmented search but also translates into measurable pipeline growth, reinforcing the need for integrated, AI‑enabled B2B marketing strategies.