B2B Innovation Award Visionary of the Year: How Heather Freeland Rebuilt Adobe’s Sports Marketing

Although October 2022 was just a year ago, it feels like an entirely different era for Adobe. Heather Freeland joined Adobe that month as the company’s chief brand officer, just as Google, Microsoft and smaller, more nimble tech firms began making their very public push into generative AI. During her second week on the job, Freeland attended the Adobe MAX Creativity Conference and received a glimpse of what the brand and its products would look like going forward. “I don't think any of us, I don't even think the world could have known what things would look like at this time a year later, given how quickly generative AI has changed everything,” Freeland said. Adobe planned its own AI debut for 2023, but it would have to do so without CMO Ann Lewnes, who retired in January after 16 years with the organization. It began slowly, introducing new features for Photoshop. In March, it rolled out the first features of its Firefly generative AI platform, including image creation and generative text design—putting ideas that had been in the works for up to three years against already-launched products like Midjourney and Stable Diffusion. At its Adobe Summit in Las Vegas later that month, Adobe assured creators worried about AI taking their place that Firefly’s business-focused features were part of a “content supply chain.” It also assured B2B marketers that AI could help them create more content more quickly with tools like a pared-down Adobe Express for business. Adobe users generated more than 2 billion images during Firefly's six-month beta testing. With Adobe launching a Firefly web app this week and integrating Firefly into its Creative Cloud and Adobe Express, brands including Mattel, Accenture, IHG Hotels & Resorts, Nascar, Nvidia, ServiceNow and Omnicom are working with the company to use it in content creation. I don't even think the world could have known what things would look like ... given how quickly generative AI has changed everything.Heather Freeland, chief brand officer, Adobe Adobe introduced both longtime customers and newcomers to new generative AI features that allow users to edit images in Photoshop by using layers and matching perspective, lighting and style automatically instead of altering an original image. Freeland leaned on her 10-plus years of experience as a marketing executive at Facebook and Lyft to navigate the flurry of changes in order to evolve Adobe's marketing, partnership and pitches to other businesses to match the pace of its progress. Through her use of social and experiential marketing—which gave Adobe's business partners a hands-on look at Adobe's ever-changing AI offerings while framing them in a modern context—Freeland displayed the foresight that serves as the foundation of Adweek's B2B Innovation Award Visionary of the Year. “Things just started moving with incredible speed—one day something's coming for Photoshop, and a month later we're bringing it to market—and we had to completely rethink how we brought our products to market,” she said, explaining that launches used to occur yearly at Adobe MAX. Now, Adobe is revealing—and marketing—new products nearly every month. @adobe Small space, big ideas 💡📸 check out how #AdobeFirefly ♬ original sound - Adobe Learning from experience Freeland was with Facebook during its “move fast and break things” era of quick launches and small marketing windows. At Lyft, she joined as the company was also operating at speed, but making social and political statements based on values and being rewarded by consumers for it. In each case, there were B2B customers who didn’t want their humanity lost to technological efficiency. “Sometimes you wonder if the Bs [in B2B] stand for 'boring' and 'bland,'” Freeland said. “Even if you're a business decision-maker and you're consuming content … you're not building this wall between yourself as a business leader and yourself as a consumer—you are one human being.” Adobe’s distinct advantage over many other B2B marketers—one that helps it reach business customers in a more compelling way—is its own creativity. It's a product it can sell just by showing its work. In its partnership with Major League Baseball, for example, Adobe set up psychedelic backdrops at the All-Star Game in Seattle that allowed fans to take photos and edit them on Express via a QR code. It set up an art garden at Lollapalooza in Chicago where fans could take photos, apply them to Express templates and share them throughout social media. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Adobe (@adobe) The Lollapalooza partnership announcement spot created more than 38 million impressions on TikTok, while fan content for the MLB All-Star Game made more than 30 million impressions on Giphy. During Adobe’s AI era, it isn’t enough to partner with a sports or entertainment event and “slap your logo on something,” Freeland said. She sees events as opportunities to meet audiences in the places they’re most passionate about, give them access to Adobe’s tools and show them how it can enhance the experience. “The most pure manifestation of your brand should be your product,” Freeland said. “In any of these partnerships, we need to bring our products in there to be a part of that experience with the partner and with the audiences that they already have.” Creating evangelists This year, Adobe partnered with IBM to use its Firefly AI to help produce content for The Masters. It signed a multiyear sponsorship with the National Women’s Soccer League earlier this year that included a Creator Class to help players build their online brand using Adobe tools and media deals with Just Women’s Sports and Team Whistle to feature players leading up to the Women’s World Cup. The most pure manifestation of your brand should be your product.Heather Freeland, chief brand officer, Adobe While Adobe didn't cite specific engagement numbers, it said the NWSL partnership was successful enough that it has extended Creator Class sessions to all of the league's more than 300 players. But Adobe found similar success in its short launch windows with the network of creatives and influencers that the company dubbed its “evangelists.” Again, Adobe’s tools are easier to sell when you can show what they do, so when any of these people screencast their interaction with a new product, it’s a bit more entertaining and engaging than signing up for a company demo. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Adobe (@adobe) A member of the Adobe social team sat down with her 5-year-old daughter and made a video where her daughter asked for a house, painted green, with hearts on the outside and a rainbow roof. Using AI-aided Photoshop, the mother added each element to create her daughter's picture. The video generated more than 3 million views, but it also showed that the Adobe team itself could create content at a moment’s notice and serve as a test case for its customers. “It's always fun when, as a marketer, you are an example of your own customer that you're marketing to,” Freeland said. “That's the fun part of my job: being able to help evolve our products … but then putting them to use and pushing the limits on them and then figuring out how to tell that story.” Read about all of Adweek's B2B Innovation Award winners here.