“Adobe may be the most important AI company that few CIOs are paying attention to, especially for customer experiences.” I shared this revelation on social media last week while attending Adobe Summit.

CIOs track AI announcements from Nvidia, AWS, Microsoft, and Google. They review the innovations from AI leaders like OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity, and Meta and have innovation teams experiment with AIs from top startups.

However, I haven’t heard many CIOs mention Adobe, yet another indicator of how many CIOs must improve their relationship with CMOs.

Over ten years ago, I shared five tips on starting a killer CIO-CMO relationship and proclaimed a last call for enabling the data-driven marketing organization. During keynotes, I sometimes ask CIOs to raise their hands if they have strong relationships with their CMOs. Few do.

Adobe is the AI leader in CX

Remember when mobile went from cool technology to a customer experience differentiator? CIOs may be focusing too much on AI’s impact inside the organization and not enough on the impact on markets, customers, products, and CX.

Adobe made a very strong case for why they are the AI leader in CX. Their AI announcements around customer experiences included:

• Adobe Experience Platform Agent Orchestrator and ten AI agents for driving CX
• Adobe’s agentic ecosystem, including integrations with Microsoft Copilot, SAP Business Suite, ServiceNow Now Assist, and Workday
• Adobe Brand Concierge for powering personalized conversations and connecting customers to brands

Adobe also amplified its announcement of IP-safe video-generation technology with Firefly. CIOs should be concerned about AI governance and compliance risks using GenAI content, including images and videos. As a content creator and thought leader, I applaud Adobe as an AI leader in observing copyright and IP protections, as should all GenAI technology companies and enterprises.

Fun fact: I generated the background of this article’s featured image with Adobe Firefly.

Creativity is way more important than productivity

In previous articles, I warned CIOs against GenAI’s productivity trap and shared seven ways to drive digital transformation with GenAI. My top two future-of-work AI use cases are around customer intelligence and improving customer satisfaction.

At Adobe Summit, the clear message is that winning businesses must focus on creativity.

GenAI’s ability to answer questions and agentic AI’s capability to connect workflows simplify how enterprises get work done at scale. To succeed, enterprises need to scale creativity, including the demand marketers face to personalize content creation or the designer’s need to build stand-out media that align with brand principles.

“The relevance of brand must be global, but how they are brought to life is very local,” announced James Quincey, Chairman and CEO of The Coca Cola Company, during his opening day fireside chat with Adobe Chair and CEO Shantanu Narayan.

Quincey made a case for big-brand enterprises in B2C and B2B to disrupt themselves and connect with customers. “Innovation is really about serving unmet needs. We have more ideas than needed – I am the chief agitator and zombie killer. Look to shed brands when it isn’t working.”

Want AI business value and ROI from CX?

In a recent Adobe Express survey, 89% of large company marketers say content demand will at least double this year, while 77% are struggling to meet this demand. Like CIOs’ worries around shadow IT, when creative demands outpace supply, CMOs get concerned about rogue content creation that can damage brands and put revenue at risk.

Scaling personalized content is driving more enterprises to decentralize content creation, yet 55% of marketers say their companies have already suffered negative outcomes as a result of “rogue content.”

Adobe showcased results from companies using their platforms to drive personalization, scale creativity, and develop brand guardrails.  

• RedHat achieved 10x time savings in the asset creation process and reduced asset creation time from two days to minutes.
• Marriott announced 4200x growth in personalized content and a 6x incremental revenue goal by developing a unified view of the customer and set of guardrails.
• T-Mobile had a 275% increase in the number of marketing campaigns they execute each month.

Adobe’s ten purpose-built AI agents

Adobe announced these ten purpose-built agents at Adobe Summit 2025.

• Account Qualification Agent evaluates and advances new opportunities to build sales pipelines.
• Audience Agent analyzes cross-channel engagement data to create and optimize goal-based, high-value audience segments.
• Content Production Agent generates and assembles content based on a brief while adhering to brand guidelines.
• Data Insights Agent derives insights from signals, enabling experience makers to visualize, forecast, and remediate customer experience initiatives.
• Data Engineering Agent supports high-volume data integration, cleansing, and security.
• Experimentation Agent enables personalization, hypothesizes new ideas, conducts impact analysis, and supports experimentation.
• Journey Agent orchestrates cross-channel experiences by driving tasks across customer journey ideation, analysis, and optimization.
• Product Advisor Agent supports brand engagement and funnel advancement through product discovery.
• Site Optimization Agent drives performant brand websites by automatically detecting, raising, and fixing issues to boost customer engagement.
• Workflow Optimization Agent monitors the health of ongoing projects, streamlining approvals, and accelerating workflows.

Keys to successful transformation as an AI leader

Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, shared his four key points on leadership during the day-2 fireside chat with Adobe Chair and CEO Shantanu Narayan. “Assess everything around performance and competitors. Clean the hot mess where there’s dysfunction. Be authentic, honest, and treat people with respect. Develop grit to grow.”

Was he speaking to CIOs?