Pod Insights The GaryVee Audio Experience Why IRL Experiences Matter More than Ever About this episode In this episode of The GaryVee Audio Experience, I sit down with Laura Desmond, CMO of Adobe, at Cannes 2026 for a Marketing for the Now conversation. We get into why experience maxing — IRL, in real life — is mattering more than ever, why VaynerX bet the farm on becoming an experiential agency, and why AI tools will get commoditized at scale exactly the way big data did. I share the Photoshop history lesson every fearful creative needs to hear, why the human matters more in an AI world, not less, and the jungle-gym career advice every young marketer should be writing down.
You'll learn about:
• Why Experience Maxing (IRL) Is Mattering More Than Ever
• Why the Human Variable Matters More, Not Less
• The Humility to Take a Step Backwards
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 This is the Gary Vee Audio Experience. Hey everybody, it's Gary Vaynerchuk, Marketing for the Now, Cannes 2026. And this wonderful lady to the right of me is one of the great marketers in the world, and she is about to drop the most wisdom ever dropped by a marketer ever. Please, my dear, tell the audience who you are and what you do.
0:24 Speaker 01 Thanks so much, Gary, for that introduction.
0:26 Speaker 00 Of course.
0:27 Speaker 01 I hope I live up to it.
0:28 Speaker 00 To the hype?
0:28 Speaker 01 Yeah, I'm Laura Balas, and I am the CMO of Adobe.
0:33 Speaker 00 Laura, there's so much I want to go to. Before, you know, this is the Cannes edition. Before we go into the AI of it all, or all the random cliche things that everyone's talking about, and obviously, being at the forefront of Adobe, you have a front row seat to both sides of the equation. But any early observations, we're now kind of in it, we're in the eye of the storm, it's mid-week in Cannes, has anything surprised you on the chatter at the event? Has there been a theme? What are your kind of hot takes, observations?
1:02 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think there's a couple of things that have surprised me is, in the beginning with AI, there was a lot of trepidation, so, and I'm really seeing we've gone from fear to competence. I'm also very optimistic about AI, so that's probably my bias there. But second, experience maxing. So much of IRL in real life is mattering more than ever, and it's, it's just, and again, it ends up on the phones and becomes a virus. But experience maxing has been a big takeaway, because that's what Cannes is too.
1:43 Speaker 00 First of all, the fact that you're using maxing just continues to show how cool you are, but it's funny, just to piggyback for everybody who's watching, because I know this will be on LinkedIn and Substack and all that, I couldn't agree more. We bet the farm on it. Art Vayner is now fully integrated as an experiential agency that does analog IRL work as a production day for social.
2:03 Speaker 01 Hundred percent.
2:04 Speaker 00 So you're getting social creative production as an added value, kind of like when Jason used to, and now Train following. me around the world, I'm living my life, but I'm vlogging because it's content for social. It's just all in one fall. I agree. That has been a huge theme.
2:19 Speaker 01 Oh, 100%. And it is visceral when you're here.
2:22 Speaker 00 Yeah.
2:23 Speaker 01 Because for me, I'm marketing from individuals to creators to aspiring creators. Everybody's a creator.
2:29 Speaker 00 Sure.
2:30 Speaker 01 All the way to the biggest enterprises in the world. And they're all here.
2:33 Speaker 00 Yep.
2:34 Speaker 01 Technologies are here, but it's actually just the in-life connection that is... People are craving it. And so it matters that it does go digital.
2:44 Speaker 00 You know, it's... All those flowers I gave you upfront were grounded in just my admiration for your career. What do you think is different today in this space or this week than, let's say, five or 10 years ago?
2:59 Speaker 01 Uh, yeah. And at this point in my career, it's all pattern recognition that I pull from. Because you always have an experience that may be totally orthogonal to what you're experiencing, but you... There's a nugget there. This is seismic shift. Full stop. It is profound, faster than the previous shifts from, you know, on-prem to cloud, you know, desktop to mobile. What I think is so profound and is so different, and we've talked about it, but now it becomes more real than ever, is brand.
3:34 Speaker 00 Yes.
3:35 Speaker 01 Brand informed by human, humans, and just insight. And the human matters more than ever because of the empathy and the connection. And you're gonna hear that a lot, but I really believe that. And this is coming from a company that is creating tools that are AI-driven, and we are still saying...
3:54 Speaker 00 Well, that's because at N scale, for all the marketers that are watching, you remember six, seven years ago, big data, big data, big data? And everyone thought that big data...
4:03 Speaker 01 Internet of Things.
4:04 Speaker 00 Internet of... I mean, there's a million of them, but big data really played out. Here was the thing that most people didn't anticipate. At scale, it became a commodity, not an advantage. Like, I don't know what everyone's thinking that's watching on the other side of the screen. Like, over the next half decade, the tools will get commoditized. The humans, how they use them, will be the variable. It's always been like that.
4:28 Speaker 01 A hundred percent. And, and, and look, the, the tools take all the repetitive tasks and all of the things out. Like, when we hire creatives, they don't say, "I really wanna resize all the assets." We have 151 static assets across the Palais. We have 170 films, videos. There's, you know, when you add up the amount of aspect ratios change, it was like over 200. That's all done by Firefly. It's all done by machines now. It's, we have our AI Firefly that all in one studio that, but the creators are now energized by that.
5:10 Speaker 00 Yes, of course, because Firefly is doing all the things that they don't wanna be doing so they can do all the art.
5:15 Speaker 01 And what was in their mind's eye is now out.
5:20 Speaker 00 Yeah, that's, that's huge.
5:21 Speaker 01 It's just, so, 100%.
5:23 Speaker 00 Agreed. Um, what, go in a different direction for me here. What about kind of the, the fears or, or the trepidation? Like, where do you see people on their back foot? You know, is it Mark Homs? Is it, is it creative directors who think AI is gonna take, like, and what do you sense to really allow people to be thinking about it more thoughtfully, knowing the vast amount of marketers that watch this?
5:48 Speaker 01 Yeah, I, I, without a doubt, I, we have found that our creative group, our internal creative studio group, was one of the first to kind of have trepidation about our own AI-driven tools.
6:00 Speaker 00 What does it mean for me?
6:01 Speaker 01 Yeah, because a lot of them came to us, they loved the craft, they'd been using Photoshop, as an example, all their lives, the layers, the filters, the gradation, the pixels, they loved that. And so, the idea that a machine would do that, like, there is this fear that it's gonna take my job away.
6:19 Speaker 00 Of course.
6:20 Speaker 01 And that's human, and we have to respect that. So, the, the message has been in. Lean in, try it, then they start to see the automated tasks go away and they love it. But, but we have to respect that and we also do encourage, you know, we have a digital academy that we offer for free for everybody.
6:37 Speaker 00 Yep.
6:37 Speaker 01 But we want them to use that and we want them just to try because it's human nature.
6:42 Speaker 00 Well, it's funny, I, I think a history lesson would help a lot of people. I had one person on my team at Vayner, very concerned early on and I, I said to her, I'm like, "You do know that Photoshop is a fairly new invention."
7:00 Speaker 00 I literally Googled for her in the room, "Old forum discussions."
7:05 Speaker 01 I love that.
7:06 Speaker 00 Where people were mad about Photoshop.
7:08 Speaker 01 I love that.
7:09 Speaker 00 And so I was like, "You do know this is like, it's like this, this hyperbole."
7:13 Speaker 01 Yes.
7:14 Speaker 00 That the machines are gonna take everyone's job is so misunderstood.
7:18 Speaker 01 Exactly.
7:19 Speaker 00 But what is very clear, just like people that were great at Photoshop, outflanked people that were doing it on old Microsoft products or on paper.
7:28 Speaker 01 Yeah.
7:29 Speaker 00 People that know how to use Firefly is your problem, not Firefly.
7:33 Speaker 01 Yeah, and, and look, now we do have an agentic layer, Firefly AI system that sits across all the tools, Illustrator, Photoshop. So for me, I never learned layers on Photoshop.
7:45 Speaker 00 Of course.
7:46 Speaker 01 It just, I, I, that's why I like hanging out with creatives, because I love the stuff, but it was too, I was too.
7:50 Speaker 00 It was above your pay grade.
7:51 Speaker 01 Yeah, it was too complicated for me.
7:53 Speaker 00 Yeah, same.
7:54 Speaker 01 Totally, and so now I actually can say I can use Photoshop.
7:58 Speaker 00 Of course.
7:58 Speaker 01 Because it has the, the prompt that allows me to then ideate. And so, but if I have one of those people who really just wants to have the Photoshop that they knew.
8:09 Speaker 00 Yep, yep.
8:10 Speaker 01 They can do the, they can use all the functionality and we keep adding fabulous features to it.
8:15 Speaker 00 I, I still, I still create with paper and markers.
8:18 Speaker 01 Yes.
8:18 Speaker 00 You're allowed.
8:19 Speaker 01 Yes, and for sure, and, and, and look, the, the, the whole, this is a democratization moment.
8:26 Speaker 00 No question.
8:27 Speaker 01 And, and again, we have to have optimism because optimism begets optimism.
8:31 Speaker 00 It's also historically correct. Like if you look at history, all the pessimism of profound technologies washes away because convenience is king, evolution is the flight of man, it is what it is. And that leads me to a good last question. A lot, and I mean a lot, of young marketers watch this show. There are so many individuals, I'm sure, especially young women, that are watching this, who deeply admire you, want to be you one day. As you sit at the highest levels of one of the biggest companies in the world, what have you learned in your career? And what nugget or two could you tell an associate brand manager that's watching this on LinkedIn right now,
9:14 Speaker 00 who dreams to be you one day? What should she be thinking about?
9:19 Speaker 01 Oh, be a learner, be curious. It's all about grit and resilience and tenacity. I had so many footfalls in my career. I went sideways, I went down to go up to gather more tools in my toolkit. And so jungle gym around, jungle gym in your career. And I honestly never give up. Like if you want it, get it. And never get, you're gonna have to...
9:50 Speaker 00 Because once you give up, it's actually over.
9:52 Speaker 01 Yeah, no, but honestly, I can tell you, like, my career was not up and to the right, literally.
9:58 Speaker 00 Well, you did something, and you mentioned it, I want everyone to hear this, I'm gonna double click on it. Most people in corporate America, marketing, do not have the humility to take a job at a lower title, to take one step backwards for three steps forward. And it is often something so many should do, because the org...
10:15 Speaker 01 Or a risky, or a risky job, that everyone in the hallways is like, oh my gosh, I don't believe she took that job. But it was high beta, high return. And even if it was, it's a two-way door. I walk through it, I walk back through it, you know? I'll go to the next thing. So yes, sorry to interrupt.
10:31 Speaker 00 No, no, I'm sorry, I'm just jamming, it's too fun. Any last, final thoughts?
10:35 Speaker 01 Um, just awesome to talk to you.
10:38 Speaker 00 Thank you.
10:38 Speaker 01 It's so good to see you.
10:39 Speaker 00 Great to see you too.
10:40 Speaker 01 And do the experience maxing that we were just talking about, you and I, right now. So, thanks for having me.
10:45 Speaker 00 Thank you, bye everyone, we'll see you next time. Hey everybody, if you enjoyed this podcast, please go back and look at the prior episodes, they're loaded. I appreciate your attention, and thanks for being part of this journey. See you later.
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