2025: When creativity meets CX orchestration

We are once again living in the era of where creativity meets customer experience orchestration. This was the main message shared by Shantanu Narayen, CEO of Adobe, at this morning’s 23rd Adobe Summit held in Las Vegas.

While it is easy to think that we are living in the era of machines and technology, Adobe still believes that great creativity remains “a uniquely human trait”. Where AI comes in, is with its “power to assist and amplify human identity to enhance product with innovation”, explained the Adobe chief.

“It is an incredibly exciting time to stand at the intersection of creativity, productivity and marketing,” he added.

So where does Adobe come in, in all of this change?

Narayen believes the company is aptly positioned to drive transformation.

“Adobe is one of the largest providers of marketing technologies, but in the era of AI, will move forward on enabling you to truly unify creativity, marketing and generative AI so you can deliver those personalized conversational experience at a global scale,” he said.

“The transformation that we drive together start the creative ideation that will redefine customer experience for billions of people across every industry around the world.

What can we expect in 2025?

This year, Adobe unveiled its strategy and product offerings for agentic artificial intelligence (AI) at the Adobe Summit. This includes agent orchestrator, a new capability in Adobe experience platform that provides the data foundation for businesses to orchestrate purpose-built AI agents to engage directly with customers, and to support the daily work across Adobe applications and third-party ecosystems.

Adobe experience platform, used by companies to connect real-time data across their entire organisation, with insights that power impactful customer experiences, aims to be the anchor for the next wave of AI agents.

In a statement, Adobe noted that the agent orchestra helps companies mobilise AI agents using data, content, and workflows, supported by decision science and language models. These AI agents are designed to optimise websites, refine target audiences, and drive experimentation efforts.

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Adobe also introduced concepts of several AI agents, including:

• Account qualification agent: Aids in boosting B2B sales opportunities.
• Audience agent: Leverages engagement data for tailored campaigns.
• Content production agent: Enhances content production processes while adhering to brand guidelines.
• Product advisor agent: Provides personalised product suggestions.
• Site optimisation agent: Seeks to enhance website performance with automated issue detection.

Further elements focus on data insights, data engineering, experimentation, journey, and workflow optimisation.

Adobe also unveiled its brand concierge application, which according to Adobe, advances beyond traditional chatbots to offer enriched, brand-attribute-based agent experiences, personalised via customer data. It is designed to help consumers in their purchasing decisions through various interaction mediums, including text, voice, or image.

To strengthen interoperability, Adobe declared partnerships with numerous key companies such as Acxiom, Amazon Web Services, IBM, and Microsoft. These partnerships aim to facilitate seamless use-case executions in sectors such as customer service, enterprise resource planning, and data management.

Additional updates from Adobe's summit include developments in the Adobe journey optimiser experimentation accelerator and enhancements to Adobe GenStudio for performance marketing, featuring expanded collaboration opportunities with LinkedIn ads.

Adobe's initiatives underscore the company’s commitment to employing AI for increased personalisation and customer engagement, aligning with its broader goals for advancing digital marketing and creativity.

What does the new world of creativity and CX mean for B2B marketers?

While customer experience is not a new topic, it is an evergreen one as customers – both in B2B and B2C industries – face frustration when engaging with brands. In fact, according to an Adobe study, only 14% of practitioners report being able to deliver exceptional digital customer experiences that surprise and delight — a sharp decline from 25% last year.

Speaking to MARKETING-INTERACTIVE at the sidelines of the summit on B2B marketing and how the new world collision of creativity and CX would impact their roles, Duncan Egan, VP of DX Marketing, Adobe APJ, said that in a world of choice, the better the experience, the more the affinity for the brand. 

But despite knowing the benefits of customer experience and personalisation at scale, implementing it remains a huge challenge – which is why creativity and AI is crucial, he shared “By and large, B2B marketing teams are not getting more budget and head count. This has forced marketers in Asia to leverage technology and creativity to drive efficiency and deliver impact,” said Egan.

So what is creativity in the B2B space? Well creativity, according to Egan is at the heart of solution finding. 

“Creativity isn’t just about a pretty image. Its an entire experience. For us, how we think about creativity and marketing, is one and the same,” he said. For Adobe, being born as a creative-first company that is now focusing on the content supply chain, from ideation through to analytics, he explained, creativity plays into it across the entire spectrum.

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