New audiences for marketers in the age of AIGenerative AI isn’t just speeding up marketing campaigns; it’s splitting audience into people and machines. As Adobe’s Rachel Thornton writes, modern brands need to master AI to stay authentic, trusted, and discoverable in an automated world.Rachel ThorntonThe rise of AI presents another opportunity for marketers to adapt in order to better connect with customers.Gift this article4 min read12:00AMAugust 17, 2026Marketing has always adapted to change. From the rise of digital commerce to social media, mobile and now generative AI, every major shift has challenged marketers to rethink how they connect with customers. What has remained constant is the objective. Great marketing builds trust, creates relevance and forges lasting relationships.Today, however, marketers are entering a fundamentally different era. We are no longer communicating only with people. Increasingly, we are also communicating with the AI agents acting on their behalf, and the systems those agents interact with. This is not a future scenario. It is already happening.Customers are beginning to rely on intelligent assistants to discover products, compare services, evaluate options and even make purchasing decisions. At the same time, organisations are deploying AI agents internally to automate workflows, create content, analyse data and optimise customer experiences. These developments are reshaping marketing far more profoundly than simply adding another channel or technology.The future belongs to organisations that understand there are now three distinct but interconnected ways to engage audiences: human to human; human to agent; and increasingly, agent to agent.Rachel Thornton is chief marketing officer of Adobe Enterprise.Rather than replacing marketers, these new modes of engagement elevate the role of marketing. Success will come from orchestrating technology while ensuring every interaction reflects the values, creativity and judgment that only people can provide.This became clear during our AI and digital experiences conference Adobe Summit, where we introduced the Agentic Marketing Garage, an interactive environment designed to explore how marketers and AI agents can work together. The concept was deliberately practical rather than theoretical. More than 140 marketers collaborated with 16 AI agents to solve real marketing challenges. Together they developed campaign strategies, identified audiences, created personalised assets, validated content architectures and refined customer journeys using Adobe technologies, including Adobe CX Enterprise and Adobe Firefly. Participants didn’t simply accept what the AI produced. They questioned recommendations, redirected ideas and challenged assumptions. In many cases, AI agents debated each other before marketers determined the strongest outcome.The experience demonstrated something important. AI performs best when marketers remain firmly in control. More than 60 collaborative sessions generated more than 1000 marketing assets, dozens of tailored business challenges and hundreds of practical lessons. The value wasn’t just the speed of execution. It was the quality of collaboration between human expertise and intelligent automation.While AI is accelerating marketing operations, another trend is emerging just as quickly. Consumers are becoming more selective about the experiences they value. The internet is increasingly crowded with synthetic content, automated messaging and what many now describe as AI slop. As digital noise increases, authenticity becomes even more valuable. Customers reward brands that feel genuine, distinctive and trustworthy. This reinforces something marketers have always known. Creativity remains the ultimate competitive advantage. Technology can automate repetitive work, surface insights and improve operational efficiency. It cannot replace empathy, emotional intelligence or cultural understanding. Those qualities continue to define memorable brands.This is why in-person experiences have become even more important. At Adobe Summit, experiential activations gave customers opportunities to engage directly with our products and our people. Rather than simply demonstrating technology, these experiences allowed customers to participate, create and build meaningful connections with the brands like Dick’s Sporting Goods and Sharpie. The lesson extends well beyond events. Whether through customer roundtables, executive forums or community engagement, organisations that invest in authentic human experiences will continue to differentiate themselves as AI becomes increasingly embedded across every industry. At the same time, marketers must recognise they are serving a second audience. AI agents are rapidly becoming intermediaries between brands and customers. When someone asks an AI assistant for the best software platform, financial product or travel recommendation, the AI evaluates information before presenting an answer. That changes how organisations think about discoverability.Content must now be designed not only to persuade people but also to be accurately interpreted by AI systems. Information needs to be well structured, authoritative, consistent and trustworthy. Reputation becomes something AI continuously evaluates by analysing signals across owned channels, earned media, customer sentiment and third-party validation.In many ways, brand building matters more than ever and moves further upstream. Success increasingly depends on establishing credibility long before an AI agent is asked for a recommendation. This makes collaboration across marketing, communications, customer experience and corporate affairs more important than ever. Brand trust can no longer be managed in isolation because intelligent systems evaluate organisations holistically rather than through individual campaigns.The final stage of this transformation is perhaps the most significant. As AI agents become more capable, many decisions will occur entirely between intelligent systems. Discovery, evaluation and recommendation are already beginning to happen continuously at machine speed. Soon, organisations will rely on AI to negotiate routine interactions, optimise customer journeys and deliver personalised experiences without requiring human intervention at every step.For marketers, this creates an entirely new responsibility. It is no longer enough to produce compelling campaigns. Organisations must establish clear governance around how AI agents represent their brand, apply decision frameworks and maintain consistent standards across every automated interaction. The quality of an organisation’s data, system interoperability and governance structures become strategic marketing assets rather than purely technology considerations.The brands that succeed will not necessarily be those with the loudest voices. They will be those that prove themselves the most reliable, transparent and helpful participants within increasingly intelligent ecosystems. This is where customer experience orchestration becomes essential. Rather than treating customer interactions as isolated touchpoints, leading organisations are connecting data, insights, decision making and execution into a continuous operating model that adapts in real time. Human judgment remains central, while AI extends the reach, speed and precision of every interaction.Marketing has always been about understanding audiences. Today, that audience is expanding. Some interactions will always be deeply human. Others will increasingly involve intelligent assistants acting on behalf of customers. Still, others will occur entirely between trusted AI systems operating within clearly defined guardrails. The opportunity for marketers is not choosing between people and AI. It is designing experiences that allow both to work together seamlessly. Those who embrace all three modes of engagement will be best positioned to build the next generation of customer relationships, where technology amplifies creativity, trust remains the defining currency, and marketing becomes more human, precisely because AI takes care of everything else.Rachel Thornton is chief marketing officer of Adobe Enterprise.This content is sponsored by Adobe.This content was produced in partnership with Adobe. Read our policy on commercial content here.Read related topics:Artificial Intelligence