Marketing Vanguard at Cannes: AI Is Moving From Fear to Confidence ft. Lara Balazs of Adobe

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.Lara Balazs is Chief Marketing Officer and Executive Vice President, 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 Chief Marketing Officer and General Manager, 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.What You'll Learn:Why the AI conversation has moved from fear to confidenceHow AI can augment human insight, empathy and brand visibilityWhy real case studies matter more than speculationHow Firefly helps creative teams reduce repetitive production workWhy being a CMO now requires humility, curiosity and constant learningHow the multi-hyphenate marketer applies fundamentals across different business modelsWhy taste, trust and judgment still require customer empathy and human decision-makingThis episode is part of a special vidcast series that was recorded live during Cannes 2026 and presented in partnership with Edelman Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.