Risk-taking and experimentation aren’t traits usually associated with global corporations, but Adobe’s Simon Morris believes they’re essential for creative growth.
“If you’re not taking risks, you’re not pushing yourselves,” said Morris, the company’s vice president of international marketing.
“We have a strong culture of testing and learning, and I like to talk about ‘failing forward’. It’s fine to test something, see it doesn’t work, learn from it, and move on.”
Speaking to Morris on the ground at AdobeMAX in Los Angeles, that spirit of experimentation ran through everything Morris discussed — from the way Adobe builds creative communities to how it redefines global marketing through data, technology and bold ideas.
The philosophy is a blend of creative courage and data-backed discipline and has guided Adobe’s marketing approach.
From creator collaborations to new media models, Morris believes experimentation isn’t a luxury; it’s a necessity. And nowhere has that been more visible than in the brand’s groundbreaking partnership with the Women’s FA Cup in England.
“It wasn’t the kind of sponsorship Adobe would have typically done,” he admitted. “But we realised we were under-indexing among younger, female audiences, and we wanted to show up in a relevant way.”
The first-of-its-kind innovative rights package, which saw the competition renamed The Adobe Women’s FA Cup, offered nearly 500 clubs participating in the competition free access to, and training on, Adobe Express, allowing teams to market and promote themselves more effectively, create compelling social and brand content, and engage their communities.
“When we asked the clubs what their biggest pain points were, they said they didn’t have the time, skills, or money to create content,” Morris explained. “So we helped fix that and the uptake was huge.”
For Morris, the partnership represents the new playbook for modern marketing. It’s one that blends purpose, participation and measurable performance.
“It’s been much less about badging and much more about enabling,” he said.
“We’ve already seen really positive metrics around brand perception. And yes,” he added with a grin, “I did have to sell it hard internally. It took a lot of convincing the CFO and CEO that this was worth it.”
Think Global, Act Local
As Adobe’s VP of international marketing, Morris leads the company’s marketing operations across more than 90 countries and 60 languages. His remit is as broad as it is complex, managing everything from brand and events to media, partnerships, and performance.
Leading marketing for everything outside of the US, Morris’ team is responsible for understanding the local markets and customers, ensuring Adobe shows up in a culturally relevant way.
While the business has a very global, audience-centric strategy that starts with a common creative architecture, shared narrative and vision, this is then adapted locally based on what’s going to work in that market.
That local nuance, he said, starts with one thing: deep customer insight. Morris believes understanding your audience goes far beyond demographics or shared interests and that it’s about grasping cultural context and behaviour.
“Even though there might be commonalities in customers — a photographer in Korea might not be that different from one in France — but understanding how you reach them and how you show up authentically is everything,” Morris said.
“Authenticity is so paramount today for brands, and that needs to come from the local market.”
From PDFs to Perception Shifts
He pointed to the Acrobat ‘Got It’ campaign as an example.
“People know Acrobat, but they think of it as just something you open a PDF with. They had no idea what else it could do. That was a common perception across all our markets,” he said.
That shared insight was used to build a global campaign, but the execution in Germany looked different to Japan, to Australia or Korea. The message was the same, but the way Adobe told it changed.
For Morris, it all comes back to coherence. “We’ve spent a lot of time really thinking about who we are, what we stand for, and how we want to show up,” he said.
“When we put something into market, it has to feel additive to the brand and not like a collection of different companies.”
For all its creative firepower, Adobe is still a performance-driven business. Morris’ team runs sophisticated attribution and media mix models to track every dollar.
“We know that if we put X in at the bottom of the funnel, we can see how much we get out at the end of it,” he said.
But he’s quick to point out that not all awareness can be bought programmatically.
“When we launched Adobe Express in the US, there was this perception that Adobe was complex, professional, expensive and ‘not for me’,” he said. “So we had to educate people that Express is easy to use, free to get started and can produce great content. That meant a mix of digital, targeted out-of-home, and events to help us reach those new audiences.”
The Creator Effect
Adobe’s partnerships extend far beyond sport and huge B2B events, with more than 10,000 people attending Adobe Max this year.
The company’s collaborations with creators have become some of its most powerful brand moments, and it’s now baked into Adobe’s strategy.
“Working with creators has exploded,” Morris added.
“Some of our most creative campaigns over the last few years have come from those partnerships and we’ve learned a lot, such as not to be too prescriptive.”
The lesson came the hard way with situations arising where Adobe realised the brief was too rigid.
“Creators told us, ‘That won’t work with our audience,’ but we said, ‘Just follow the brief.’ And it didn’t resonate. So we learned to give them freedom and to look for people who already use our products and let them show up authentically.”
It’s this content that Morris said performs incredibly well across the funnel and helped Adobe scale into more markets and reach new audiences with authenticity.
AI and the New Marketing Mindset
It’s impossible to talk to an Adobe executive without mentioning AI, particularly off the back of a slew of AI announcements on day one of AdobeMax.
But for Morris, it’s not a threat, but more of a creative enabler. “We’ve always encouraged a culture of curiosity,” he said, “You have to be willing to try things out and invest in yourself. AI is no different.”
He pointed to Adobe’s launch of GenStudio—a tool built to help marketers create content at scale while staying on-brand.
“Our performance marketing team couldn’t create content fast enough for all the algorithms and channels, but GenStudio solves that, freeing up our creative professionals to focus on craft and emotional storytelling,” he said.
Morris admitted there will always be sceptics when it comes to technology like AI, but he believes most creative professionals will see the benefits quickly.
“For most people, it’s about ‘quality of life, ’” he said. “Creative professionals are constantly under time pressure, briefs come in late, deadlines move, and there’s never enough time to ideate. If AI can take care of the repetitive work — the resizing, the production — it gives them more space to focus on craft. That’s what matters.”Despite the industry’s shifting landscape, he remains optimistic. “I don’t think I have concerns. I actually think it’s a golden age of marketing,” he said.
“Consumers expect personalised, authentic experiences, and that’s pushing us to be better. Trust, authenticity and ethics will sit at the centre of brand success. The real challenge for us is making sure we’re showing up locally, as a local brand would. Because that’s what people want to see.”
B&T travelled to AdobeMAX as a guest of Adobe.
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