You’re 3 years into your role leading Adobe’s ANZ operations. What do you see as the biggest change Adobe has made as a business and in how you go to market over this time?

Katrina Troughton: The biggest shift has been the pace and scale of AI-driven change, including the emerging and outsized impact of agentic AI. The launch of Firefly was a real inflection point, not just for our technology but for how we think about the entire content supply chain. We’ve moved quickly to help our customers reimagine how content is created, managed, delivered and optimised for performance using AI in ways that are both powerful and responsible.  Customer experiences are still critical to our customers, but they are becoming increasingly dynamic, and the work required to plan, compile, and deliver these experiences will need to be increasingly orchestrated and eventually automated. We believe we are uniquely positioned to help companies combine the Creativity, Marketing, and AI required to effectively personalise at scale and drive business growth in this new AI-powered experience era.

AI has is becoming an increasingly dominant, disruptive force impacting every job function; Adobe has declared the era of AI as upon us. Where do you see AI helping marketers in the short term, then in the longer-term?

AI has already transformed how marketers work; streamlining content production, enabling on-brand personalisation at scale and accelerating campaign agility. What comes next depends on an organisation’s AI maturity level, but we can expect greater efficiency gains: faster testing and optimisation, more precise audience targeting, and tools to automate campaign planning and performance reporting. As maturity deepens, marketers will increasingly use AI – specifically generative and agentic AI –in predictive and strategic ways, which will complete their shift from reactive to proactive. Applying a data-driven approach to the creative process – powered by self-learning tools – will support a cycle of continuous improvement, providing insights that inform strategy and enhance campaign effectiveness. This shift won’t just change how marketers work. It will elevate their impact across the organisation.

We know 1.6x more revenue growth is on the table for brands that can deliver personalised experiences well. Where do you still see the low-hanging fruit / to-do items for brands looking to improve the way they deliver personalised experiences?

Agentic AI unlocks powerful opportunities for personalisation – but only if customers trust both the technology and the brand behind it. You can’t tailor experiences without understanding your customer, and they won’t share their data unless they trust you to use it responsibly. It starts with getting your data house in order and putting strong governance in place. Building unified first party data into a single, secure and comprehensive profile is the foundation of your personalisation strategy. Then create an efficient content supply chain, using generative AI tools and agents to accelerate creation speed and scale, and to instantly generate variations. Focus on optimising customer journeys and generating real-time insights that support continuous improvement, creating engagement and stronger customer connections.

Do you have a favourite client example of impactful customer experience you can share?

One of my favourite success stories is our work with the Coca-Cola Company. They set out to deepen consumer engagement and drive more frequent transactions across their portfolio of 200+ brands in over 200 markets. By leveraging our suite of solutions, they were able to personalise every touchpoint and optimise campaign activations across more than 200 million consumer profiles. Within a year, they saw a meaningful increase in the number of global consumers enjoying at least one Coca-Cola product per week—largely driven by expanded reach across both paid and owned media in key markets. A standout result came from the company’s Latin American ecommerce platform, where hyper-personalised product recommendations boosted checkouts by 25 per cent, without increasing content spend. Their transformation is still underway, with Adobe AI’s potential being explored to further elevate personalisation and gain efficiencies. The beauty of this story and of this solution is that the same trusted technology can be applied to businesses of any scale. Many ANZ brands are enjoying that same success – what works for Coca-Cola works just as well for them, regardless of size.  

What cross-functional alliances do you believe CMOs need to work harder to build if they’re to deliver stronger, trusted and more commercially impactful customer experiences?

To lead truly impactful customer experiences, CMOs need to look beyond their own teams. Today’s marketing function sits at the intersection of data, technology, brand and growth –making cross-functional collaboration not just helpful, but essential. That starts with deeper, more strategic alliances with other members of the C-suite. Partnership with the CIO is key to unlocking the infrastructure and intelligence needed to deliver seamless, personalised experiences at scale, while working with the CFO ensures marketing investments are commercially aligned and outcomes-focused. But these – and other – connections must go beyond surface-level alignment. They need shared goals, integrated planning and operating models that enable accountability and agility. When these alliances are in place, marketing earns its place as a true driver of enterprise value, with the CMO seen as critical to the C-suite, a driving force of the growth agenda and essential to business success.