Heather Freeland, Chief Brand Officer of Adobe: Advertising is Overrated

Building Better CMOs and Marketing Leaders

Full transcript

“You need content to deliver a good customer experience.” Sounds obvious, right? Except in today's marketing environment, says Adobe's chief brand officer Heather Freeland, one campaign can require 5,000 unique assets: Consider every possible channel, multiply that by the number of audiences you're trying to reach, and that by the number of customer segments within those audiences, and that by the number of markets you're launching in.

"It is virtually impossible to keep pace," she says. "So we've had to fundamentally rethink how we're building content to keep pace with this. And if we didn't have a solid operational backbone, we'd be hosed."

One saving grace, though, comes from Adobe itself: New generative AI solutions like the image model Firefly, which can make in seconds multiple versions of an asset that might have once needed hours of tinkering. "We need to help the rank-and-file marketer scale and move faster and accelerate workflows," Heather says. "And we need to help people find new ways to accelerate their thinking and think even bigger."

Today on Building Better CMOs, Heather talks with MMA Global CEO Greg Stuart about the challenges of keeping pace with technology, what everyone can learn from how Disney World operates, and the difference between a career ladder and a career jungle gym. She also looks back on her time at Facebook, where her first product was launching mobile ads, and explains why the most over-hyped thing in marketing today is advertising itself.

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Links:

• Heather's LinkedIn
• Greg's LinkedIn

This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm.

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