How Adobe Built a $200B Brand (Every Brand Manager Must Watch)

Photoshop, right? The flagship has been around for so long. We wouldn't be able to exist without Photoshop. We do so much creative work today. What's the secret behind the longevity? You build products for yourselves. And you know, I think if you have a creative community and a DNA within the company, I think in many ways, you know, the most the sternest critics are yourselves. How does one get into the position of being CEO of Adobe? I was the last man standing. What is the career path to be where you're at? You know, what has that journey been like for you personally? If I go back really a long way around, I wanted to be a journalist growing up. I did not want to be CEO. I just wanted to build great products. I saw that you had recently said that in India, creativity might be the next IT boom. I want to know more about your thesis on the creativity versus IT piece. We have the saying at Adobe where everybody has a story to tell. How do you not piss off like an entire legion of artists by going overly generative, but also how do you continue to stay relevant? Because if you don't do that, somebody else will counter position and say, "Well, we're the generative only suite. " If you use the Firefly models, we said we're the company that has to respect and champion the intellectual property rights of the creative professionals. When did you know you were going to be CEO? Like what was that moment like? Well, you know, I ladies and gentlemen, I am with the

Adobe Global Chair and CEO, Shantanu Narayan. Shantu, it's an absolute honor to do this. It's uh kind of been, you know, I've been using Adobe tools since before I knew what I was doing in life, right? One of the

first exposures to an Adobe tool I had was maybe CS5 or CS6. And at that time, you know, if you wanted to make a website, you'd have to use the slicing tool. You'd have to have an image. You have to slice it up. And since then, you know, the standards have changed. Since then, the ways you make a website have changed. The ways you do design have changed. Tools have come. tools have gone. I would have bet a lot because I was very bullish on, you know, on the internet when I was very young. I would I was very bullish on the idea that at some point there will be somebody that comes and does what Adobe does in the cloud and does that better. But somehow Photoshop, right, the flagship has been around for so long. And before I get into anything, I just want to know the secret of this longevity, right? We wouldn't be able to exist without Photoshop. We do so much creative work today. What's the secret behind the longevity? Well, first Vun, it's a pleasure to be on your show and thank you for being a creative. Uh, it's always fun to hear stories about people whose lives have changed as a result of pursuing creative endeavors, something that, as you can imagine, we have a tremendous passion for. I think as it relates to, you know, building products, uh, you know, I think there are a couple of lessons I've learned. The first is you build products for yourselves. And you know I think if you have a creative community and a DNA within the company I think in many ways uh you know the most the sternest critics are yourselves and so we're I think always trying to say you know uh how do we build products that you know delight us and uh become more affordable accessible uh but you're being kind also I mean you know I think as all good companies we're probably more self-critical of the things that we haven't done right. Uh we've certainly done some things right and um you know it's just it's a constant endeavor. And do you feel like

working on desktop apps because I've heard from a lot of people right working on desktops apps especially in this era it's pretty difficult because you're working with something that's legacy that's been built a long time ago. You're probably rebuilding parts of it as you go. Is it harder to do than let's say building something in the cloud if you're doing it from scratch? Well, we don't think of it as desktop apps and cloud or mobile. I mean I think we think of it a lot more as surfaces and you know when uh all of these tectonic technology shifts happen you know I when the move uh to a mobile device happened you know one of the assertions we made was mobile devices shouldn't just be consumption devices they should be creation devices when we saw the cloud we looked at it and said why should you be tethered to a computer inspiration strikes at many uh times and so you should do it So I you know I think we uh are constantly thinking about what surface provides what value and are you taking advantage of the surface. Uh many times I think you unfortunately try to uh retrofit what works well in one surface and another surface and you fail and so you know I I think we tend to think of it as the web affords frictionfree usage of technology. mobile allows you, you know, a different kind of a screen factor and ease of use and speed at doing things. Uh, but the desktop, I think, has continued and the PC, frankly, has continued to be the place where most people would say they're the most productive and they're the most efficient. And so, take advantage of all the surfaces because at the end of the day, that allows us to target and deal with more customers. No, that makes sense. Um, Chanta, I want to

know how does one get into the position of being CEO of Adobe? Like what is it? What I was the last man standing? What is the career path to be where you're at? And you know, what has that journey been like for you personally? You know, I if I go back really a long way, Vun, I wanted to be a journalist growing up. Um you know I was always fascinated by writing and um the first ever job which as you know uh at least in the 80s when I grew up in India um you didn't really have summer jobs and you didn't have internships but um I apprenticed at you know a newspaper doing copywriting. So you know journalism was always important to me. Um and now vicariously I'm still part of the publishing industry but um my professional journey I I've worked for all companies that I think have a creative DNA in them. I was at Apple for many years when Jurassic Park came out. I worked for Silicon Graphics. I started my own company. So like you I'm an entrepreneur. Uh unlike you, I was a failed entrepreneur at what I did. Uh a company I think everyone goes through enough like a bunch of failures before it works. uh a company called Pictra. I say the best thing that happened to me because that brought me to Adobe and Pictures on the web. U you know in the early '9s I felt like that social connection would be important. And then I came to Adobe because I looked at it and I said, "Oh my god, look at the franchise that Adobe had. " And Adobe was actually uh in conversations to potentially acquire picture. The deal didn't happen. And I said, you know, when I think about the brand of Photoshop and the brand of Illustrator and Acrobat, it was something that really resonated with me and um I was lucky enough uh to be recruited there. You know, my journey at Adobe changed dramatically over the years. Uh but the core genesis I think was that I'm you know maybe at my core I care about design. I care about creativity. I care about expression and you know Adobe is the ultimate privilege to be able to work for it. I did not want to be CEO when I came. It wasn't you know there are some people who are early enough in their life they know I want to be this particular role. I just wanted to build great products. You know what was your role like entering the company? I was called a VPG GM uh you know of uh one of the groups. I mean you mentioned that you're spending more time doing P& Ls. You know, everybody tends to think that being a GM, you know, you've sort of arrived. Uh, but funnily, I joined as a GM. The company hit a wall uh 6 months later and we laid off uh something like 25% of the company. This was in 1998 and u they then asked me to actually take over inesign. Inesign was this naent project. They said, "Hey, you're a technologist. " They completely reorganized to be functional. So I was no longer a general manager. I was an engineering uh lead for the layout products. Um and then 6 months later I think you know we shipped in design luckily one and then they asked me to run all engineering. So you know the path uh and career paths and I think even for your listeners they take different routes but I think uh if you can always think about where you add value and the value that needed to be added at that point was getting in design out of the door and you know we're at our core a product company and so and being able to run all products was a privilege. When did you know you were going to be CEO? Like what was that moment like? Well, you know, I as I said, I joined in 98. By 99, I was running all engineering. By 2001, I was promoted to run all products. And you know, at some point there along the way, you're like, "Oh, oh my god, maybe, you know, I will have the opportunity to run the company. " And in 2005, I got promoted to be president and chief operating officer. And that felt more real at that point. But then we acquired macro media and you know the integration took a little while. Um but you know when the two founders uh who unfortunately have both passed you know both brilliant brilliant people John Waro and Chuck Gashki when they told me that the board had decided that I would be the next CEO. I mean professionally without a doubt um it was the most you know honor that I've received in my career and something that I cherish to this day. That's a crazy story. You know, in

our own company now, we do thousands of videos a month. We never thought we'd get to this scale, right? And generative has really been the backbone. Everything from avatars to just the micro advantages you get from using generative, right? It could be as simple as generative fill. Extend the frame, right? It's just so many small things that have really made our life easier. We do content for 10 of our own channels, 40 client channels. Um and you know it's almost like in India for content we've kind of become the port of first call but we never imagined such a large opportunity to be there here right and we can see now that there's no end to where the opportunity is right and I saw that you had recently said that in India creativity might be the next IT boom right I've started to believe it but it's very hard to get the average person to believe this right because they're like well it has been around for a very long time and creativity well it still feels like India would be you know India's not there on the global stage yet but I think generative really fills that gap. Uh I want to know more about your thesis on on the creativity versus IT piece. Well, you know it's I think it's true across so many dimensions, right? I mean the first thing is you know we have this saying at Adobe where everybody has a story to tell and so if you think about the fact that everybody has a story to tell and they want to tell their story at the end of the day that's in a way your addressable market for the world, right? Um if you think about education and why is it in this day and age that education is still about writing rather than you know animating or having videos or uh you know being able to express yourself graphically. Um when you think about any commerce business right now a commerce business is basically about an experience and the person who creates the best experience is going to be the one that wins. So you know if you decompose what creativity really means uh as a part of every industry right uh as well as this fundamental social need I mean why have the social networks really exploded it's because people fundamentally have a need to interact in a way that's unique and personal to them. So that's why I'm a big believer that at the end of the day, creativity is uh you know one of those fundamental uh social desires that are going to create massive markets. Now how you decide what component of each of these other businesses is as a result of creativity versus is commerce really creativity? I tend to think it is right and it plays a role. uh but that so I think it's the lens by which we approach it allows us as a company to then think about oh my god if we have this big opportunity are we capitalizing on the opportunity I think in many ways when companies scale it's not that they suddenly wake up one morning and you know the market has grown it's you're changing the aperture by which you look at the opportunity I mean when you were talking about it you know whether it's the channel that you run versus a channel for a company versus a channel. So I think that's how we're trying to expand you know how we think about creativity. And you know when I went to Waves and you gave a keynote at Waves as well, right? Like if you the minute you landed in Mumbai to the point where you were at the event, it was plastered with like billboards on Waves and audio video communication. It if I was Adobe I would be like dancing, right? great like everyone's woken up. I was so

surprised to see a the spends b the kind of you know time energy and attention that the government is now giving you know things like creativity I think they're very bullish that this could be the next you know sort of it-esque industry u do you have a sense of how many more jobs could be created here maybe not tangible numbers but just you know what how you see this volume expand is it a training thing is it a you know if you were to architect this how would you do it well I think first it starts with education and it starts with accessibility I you know the story that's often told about how somebody left a computer you know unattended in a small village in India and how you know people just embrace it. So I think the first thing is accessible and I think with mobile devices and PCs it's just going to become more accessible which I think is great uh because when you have accessibility you know I think you foster opportunity u I think the second thing is uh you know inspiration. So if you have accessibility, you want to be inspired, right? And I think if there are two things that inspire people in this country, at least maybe there's a little bit of a, you know, cliche, but it's sports and cricket and it's films, right? And both of them are, you know, are inherently also experiences that you do. And so I don't know that I have a number. I know it's big. I mean, we have aspirations to even in the education market, you know, find two crores of people. And how do you it used to be reading, writing, and arithmetic when I grew up were the three skills that people said were the way to improve your lot. Why isn't it reading, writing, arithmetic, and digital literacy with creativity a fundamental part of that? So if you think about it that way, then every single student with this skill now has an opportunity if you're a small and be small business, if you're a person working in the creative. So I think it's unlimited. Now how much of that then translates into economic you know GDP and the growth associated with that? I think that's work ahead of us. But I what I was really impressed with what the government was doing was to say hey this is just one of those fundamental things that if we do right you know we're going to foster a new generation. I know they've always been enamored with the animation industry and the graphics industry. The publishing industry still in India is probably the most lucrative publishing industry in the world. Right. And so I but I think it solves these fundamental issues of education, of opportunity. And so I think it's immense. Yeah. Um I have a question

around generative AI and this is a I often say that somebody's asking me this the other day and I said that it's kind of a tough spot to be in Adobe's like shoes right now mainly because there's two clear audiences here, right? Or maybe that's the general subset of two audiences. one who will adopt everything that everything new in generative AI they want it they want to speed up their workflows they probably have a lot of work on their plate and they want to move forward there's also a group of creatives that is a little bit anti-generative right and there is a line that they draw which is well generative fill is fine but if you're using you know um you know something which is completely AI generated that's a problem right so it is it's hard because you can't end up building two product suites right one with generative one without generative Um, so how do you see this? Like how do you not piss off like an entire legion of artists by going overly generative, but also how do you continue to stay relevant? Because if you don't do that, somebody else will counterposition and say, well, we're the generative only suite. I actually think Adobe has done a phenomenal job of addressing that upfront. And part of what we talk about as a company is it's not just the technology, but it's the responsibility that we have as one of the larger companies in the space to speak on behalf of the community. So I I'll geek out for a little while. First, as it relates to our models and the models that we've created, as you know, we were the company that said we're only going to create these models based on licensed content. Very unique, very differentiated. And so if you use the Firefly models, we said we're the company that has to respect and champion the rights, the intellectual property rights of the creative professionals, which is why we do it. You know, we have Behance, as you know, it's one of the largest, if not the largest creative professional network in the world, but we did not train on that because we didn't have rights to do that. So, first we made a very strong uh, you know, statement of what we thought about intellectual property. Now, I think that appealed to the community because the community said if there's one company that's speaking up for the rights of and I think the courts will eventually have to appine on some of this stuff, but we make that stance and we actually have stuck by it. Um, I think there's so how do we think about it in terms of product strategy? To your point, we have such a wide variety of customers. consumers who want to use a product like Adobe Express, they probably don't need the flexibility of multiple models. So, they're just like, I fear the blank page. The real beauty or the benefit of generative AI is that most people when they have something that they want to create, they fear the blank page. Whereas being able to have a conversation and have that process kicked off either with a template or with a conversation enables them to, you know, uh, be more productive. So I think for that community, we've built in Firefly, we will have Express, but the fact that it's commercially safe. The consumer probably cares a little bit less about what's underlying the technology, they just want to get stuff done. The creative professional on the other hand, as you know, we started off with for generative fill or generative extend, we only had Firefly support because we were convinced that was the right way to serve the creative community. With enterprises, you know, the largest enterprises in the world are partnering with us because they don't want their content ingested by people who don't respect intellectual property. So, we've created custom models for them. So now we also have this flexibility where if you're within Coke, you're creating a marketing campaign, you have a custom model of Firefly that has all your assets as well as Adobe's Firefly because that's also, you know, designed to be commercially safe. It's the Firefly model fine-tuned on their internal app. Exactly. Um and you do that as a service or is that Yeah, we you know uh and the interest in that as you can imagine is immense because you know your intellectual property is your data. They don't want their data you know scraped on the internet and so that's why they do that. However, you also if you think about where creatives are using it right now, creatives have also embraced this idea of when I'm ideulating, maybe I'm okay using, you know, a model that's not designed to be commercially safe. But then later when I use it in production, I want to make sure that I use it because that's like going to an art gallery and getting inspired by a painting on the wall, you know, to do some creative. And so at the recent Max conference we showed how you know we will support thirdparty models and that's actually come as a result of uh you know customers saying we love Adobe products support the third party model and we will differentiate between when we're using it for ideiation versus to be uh used in production. As you know also and again I'm geeking out but in the Photoshop when you upload a picture and you say hallucinate with not just the text but in the spirit of this picture we actually ask you to testify that you have rights to that picture. So you know it's this balance that we're trying to do. We want to give flexibility. We want to serve the customers in the diverse ways in which they want to but we also want to make it clear what our northstar is of what we stand for which is you know how we stand for the intellectual property content authenticity. We're thrilled. We have 4,000 people who've signed up to, you know, uh, be part of this content authenticity initiative where you, uh, will specify the provenence, but it's work in progress. And I think, you know, we're also a company that's smart enough to say this thing will evolve and if we don't evolve with the times, we won't be serving our customers and our prospective customers. Well, I have a CEO question to you

right? Um so when I started a company when I started this company actually we started with creativity then we said you know we'll infuse technology in here to get scale which I think has worked out well but now I find I spend most of my time like I said you know pre this chat I spend most of my time on P& L managing people figuring out how to hire people I want to know from a time management perspective right how do you actually manage your time like what do you spend most of your time on what is top priority for you what are the messages on your phone that you need to like how would you say your time management and day management framework is? How much time do you spend on hiring? Like I want to know everything like and you can go you can geek out as much as you want. Well, the reality is you know what you focus on changes. You know I I'll share with you what one of the co-founders John Waro told me when I took my job. when I first took my job, he said, "If I don't like my job, I have one person to blame. " And in many ways, that was the most profound piece of advice that he gave me. And so, bro, what I'll tell you is you have more power to spend the time on whatever you want on. And you know one of the things we try and do as a senior executive team every year at the beginning of the year is we say what are the two or three things that you want to do that you think will really move the needle or have impact in the company and then disproportionately spend time on that uh your demands whether they be IR investors or you know PR or whether it's product or whether it's customers it could be infinite and you know time is your most valuable commodity. So I'm actually quite thoughtful about where I am going to spend my time and where I'm not time. And the power of a team is that you can get somebody else to do the stuff that you're either not very good at or you don't have an inclination to do. So but it changes. One year I might say I want to spend time on industry partnerships and I'm going to invest my time and energy on that. But I have that conversation with my team so that somebody else is picking up the stuff that perhaps I'm not going to be spending time on and then you trust your team to you know do the other stuff. So I that that's the advice that I would give but it changes. The one constant I would say in my job is product. At the end of the day we're a product company. If you don't build innovative great products and in many ways my role is chief product officer as well right when you're running a tech company you should be that. And so that's the constant. But otherwise I flip it around. I flip it around because I want to have fun doing the things that I want to do and I you know dirty secret for both of us. We have the luxury of doing that. Can I ask you a question on how you communicate with your team? Do you are you very verbal about it? Do you do meetings or are you like I'm going to write a note and do you spend a lot of time writing those notes? Like what's your feed like how do you communicate with them? You know, my philosophy on the team, we have pretty regular check-ins every Monday. So, a Monday is sort of And how big is that exactly? Six, seven people. I mean, that's the thing when people also say, "Oh my god, you run this large company. " The liberating fact is you still have the same number of people whether the company is, you know, 5 million or the company is 5,000 50. And, you know, it's the power of that team that helps you manage and scale and grow the company. I like email because I think it forces me to be more precise and I also find that you know when you have a conversation with people interpret different things and so I I've always liked the discipline of writing it but only for important things right I mean if you have a product strategy issue or if you have something that you think the company is not doing well then I think taking the trouble to actually write it pays off in spades but otherwise you know we have meetings it's a very open flow we call it roundt and the roundt idea is whatever's top of mind I mean in many ways I also m view my role as removing obstacles and so I have my agenda of the things I'm probably interested in but I have to spend as much time on the things that people are interested in either getting my opinion either make helping them make a decision or you know just having that cross in many ways it's the cross team conversations that you have to spend time on in your role because you're they don't communicate as well. No or they do it in silos. No, it's not the silos. It's more like that's your role. I mean, what's your role? You are consolidating across the different functions. So, I it's not about them. It's about you, right? And if you're playing that role of assimilating between product and marketing or legal and finance, uh I just view that as that's my role. And so I think one of the best parts about me creating content and I tell this to people is that I just get access to people like you and it just helps me become a better entrepreneur because I'm just like I have this I have these questions and now I have the best in the world to kind of ask them and you know figure it out. What does the Adobe India

team do? Like the team here that I see right there about 3,000 people in this campus. what is Adobe India's focus you know um when we first started the campus and this was you know probably six months before I joined the company um Nares Gupta who started the company had this vision of he wanted to just create the best hire the best and build innovative products and not do stuff that would be perceived as you know maintenance or grant work and that stayed true to I mean part of what strategy is if you can't articulate the strategy in a few words it's probably too complicated so we've always believed in Adobe India I mean apart from the sales because you know India is a big market but if your question was around what does the product team do it's all about product innovation and therefore they're involved in every major product in fact we run an entire business Abigan Modi who runs the India office right now he runs the global business for acrobat and PDF F and so you know I time is not really and time and location is not how you run stuff and so uh but we do fundamental stuff from you know I think we file the number of patents that are filed from this place has always been off the charts but it started with this germ of an idea of you know hire absolutely the best and create a differentiated product group that believes that their job is building innovative products and ownership and you know when people feel ownership then you're not holding them accountable. They're holding themselves accountable. And I it's thrived because of that core sort of way in which the company was formed. I have one last question for

you. I think you've been generous with your time. I have one last question. My wife actually runs a video editing school and she said one of the biggest requests they had was, you know, a youngster who is for the first time getting into some of the Adobe tools, especially in India. There's been this request of there needs to be a lowcost easy way for them to get in and you know they will be the biggest champions and influencers of Adobe inside the augs once they get placed because the school also has a lot of placements. Do you have a plan for to do to ever do a lower cost easier way to get in sort of product for you know premier pro at least? Well there are two ways I would you know interpret the question. The first is we want to make sure these products are easily the on-ramp to the products. We want them to be as simple as possible. And so I think again the fact that we have the spectrum from mobile apps to web-based apps to uh desktop apps, we have actually made them way more uh you know accessible. The second thing is uh educational pricing and you know finding ways to have educational pricing. Not enough people know about that actually and we should market that better and uh but you know clearly I think this is an area that we need to do more. I think we've done a lot of great stuff but making it affordable and accessible because you're absolutely right. I mean the folks that your wife is you know training are going to be the next generation creatives and the more they are love Adobe software when they enter the professional world. I mean the irony is that also happened in many ways when you know piracy was rampant in many countries but when we moved to the cloud we were incredibly surprised by how people were fundamentally wanting to do the right thing you know for the value that we're getting and it got cheaper and so that's a constant refrain I think the mobile apps will be you know we have premium mo mobile apps so you know you can do a lot of that functionality but we will also follow up with your wife's uh video editing uh school to understand how we can serve them better. Awesome. Thank you so much, Shantu. This was amazing. I learned so much. I hopefully become a better, you know, founder after this. And this is so enlightening. Thank you so much. It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me. Likewise.