Marketing to "a segment of one" is possible with AI, says Adobe's enterprise CMO

• In a video interview with CMO Insider, Rachel Thornton, CMO of Adobe's enterprise business, spoke about how AI is driving experimentation.
• Ulta, an Adobe customer, is using AI to create a more personal connection with customers.
• Adobe's customer events help Thornton think of ways to innovate its products.

Artificial intelligence creates "a culture of experimentation," and gives marketers the power to quickly scale the innovative and creative work they do, said Rachel Thornton, chief marketing officer of Adobe's enterprise business, in a video interview for CMO Insider.

A major benefit is optimized personalization. Thornton said one of its customers, the beauty retailer Ulta, is using AI to analyze customer data. AI can help pinpoint the specific customer preferences and market to a "segment of one," creating a more personal relationship with the brand, she said.

"It's a one-on-one relationship and is building that experience and that journey right around that customer," she said.

Thornton was interviewed at Business Insider's studio in New York.

The following transcript has been edited for clarity.

It's been exciting to see how the marketing team uses AI to foster a culture of experimentation.

AI can really help you with understanding customer insights: What is the data telling us? How do we use things like the Adobe Audience Agent to help us find new audiences? How are we using our GenStudio performance-marketing product to scale our paid media efforts?

But it really is about how you embrace it and how you experiment with AI. It's making sure that you're keeping the marketer, the creative, at the center of the conversation, but then taking all the great innovative work they're doing and scaling it. AI gives you that power.

AI is enabling Ulta to personalize the customer journey

Ulta Beauty is using AI to think about personalization and also about building a great customer journey. Previously, customers would have thought about the demographics and what demographic group their customer would fit into. Now, with AI, you can really understand, based on your customer data, preferences, what they're buying, how they're engaging, what they're returning across stores, applications, and online.

Ulta can now see the entire customer journey. They can say, hey, I don't have to market based on a demographic, I can market based on a segment of one. I can build a profile for an individual, understand what they want, and then really bring it to them so that they feel like that customer, and that relationship they have with that brand, is a personal relationship.

It's a one-on-one relationship, and it's really bringing them exactly what they need and building that experience and journey around that customer.

So, whether it's creative products, marketing products, or segmentations, with our Adobe GenStudio product, you can think about creating assets for an amazing brand campaign, but then scaling it across multiple channels, even across multiple languages.

Then, thinking about your data platform — how you understand all of your customer data, what customers are doing, what you are seeing in terms of customer insights — it's about bringing those insights to life to really feed that customer journey.

Celebrating creativity through customer events

At Adobe, we have a motto: We want to empower everyone to create. And I think that is so powerful because we believe and we see this in our customers. Everyone is creative at heart. How do we help you bring that creativity to life?

Whether you're a creative pro, whether you're a marketer, whether you're an influencer, or whether you're just looking to create great videos or great content, there are so many tools across our history, across our platform that customers are using every day and experiencing every day, and they love them.

In October 2025, we held our Adobe Max event in Los Angeles, where thousands of people came together to really learn and share with one another.

We have our marketing-centric event, Adobe Summit, happening in Las Vegas in April. It's so exciting to have all these customers come together not only share with each other, but also to share with Adobe what they love about their products.

Listening to customers, taking their input, and really understanding what they love is how we build great products and innovate. And having such passionate customers and fans, it's completely innovating. You get up every day and think, 'How do I make these tools even better for all of the customers that use them?'

AI fuels exploration at home, and beyond

I love AI from an exploratory point of view. So, I travel a lot and bake a lot, and it's actually great. I do recipe research and also iterate, like, what if I tweaked this about a recipe? So that's a lot of fun. It's like I have sort of a mini chef with me in the kitchen.

And then of course, when I'm traveling, it's useful to be able to come up with highly customized itineraries and ideas, and even menu planning. That's what I've loved it for.