The Marketing Vanguard Cannes series continues as host Jenny Rooney sits down with Lara Balazs, chief marketing officer and EVP of global marketing at Adobe.
In this episode, Lara breaks down why enterprise AI adoption is shifting toward tangible workflow wins. She highlights how heavyweights like the NFL, Disney, and L’Oréal deploy Adobe Firefly to automate manual asset scaling while protecting proprietary IP.
Learn why human empathy, brand trust, and strategic judgment remain irreplaceable in the age of generative AI.
What you’ll learn:
- Why the AI conversation has moved from fear to confidence
- How AI can augment human insight, empathy and brand visibility
- Why real case studies matter more than speculation
- How Firefly helps creative teams reduce repetitive production work
- Why being a CMO now requires humility, curiosity and constant learning
- How the multi-hyphenate marketer applies fundamentals across different business models
- Why taste, trust and judgment still require customer empathy and human decision-making
This episode is part of a special vidcast series that was recorded live during Cannes Lions 2026 and presented in partnership with Edelman.
About our guest:
Lara Balazs is CMO and EVP of global marketing at Adobe, where she leads global marketing and communications, drives profitable growth and helps build Adobe’s brand in the AI era.
Before joining Adobe in 2024, Lara was CMO and general manager of the Strategic Partner Group at Intuit, where she led marketing and communications across the company’s brands and also served as general manager of Intuit’s ProTax group. She has also held marketing leadership roles at Amazon, Visa and Nike, with experience spanning B2C, B2B and B2B2C models.
Lara has been recognized on Forbes’ World’s Most Influential CMOs list, Forbes’ Entrepreneurial CMO 50, and received ADWEEK’s CMO Vanguard Award.
Episode Highlights:
[01:50] Why Cannes Is a Focus Group for Adobe — Lara describes Cannes as a major feedback moment for Adobe because the company serves everyone from individual creators and students to business professionals and large enterprises. This year, Adobe activated in a bigger way with Firefly, its all-in-one AI studio tool, and created a creator beach for hands-on experimentation. For Lara, Cannes is not just a visibility play. It is a place to listen, learn and understand how different creative communities are using the tools.
