Shantanu engaging customers at one of our Adobe events, National Gallery, London.
The news that Adobe has (finally) found a successor to its 19-year tenured CEO, Shantanu Narayan, prompted me to reflect on an extraordinary leadership tenure.
19 years as CEO is rare. Over that period, Shantanu led Adobe through fundamental shifts in how software is bought, used and marketed - from perpetual licences to SaaS, from creative tools to a broader creativity-and-data strategy, and into AI.
I was fortunate to work at Adobe during some of those transitions. Now, let me be the first to say by no means was I a close colleague of Shantanu’s, but I was in enough meetings to pick up a few simple ideas that have stayed with me as a B2B marketer:
1. The website should be at the centre oF EVERYTHING WE DO
“I think this web thing’s going to catch on, don’t you?”
Amongst other things, Shantanu had a knack for the cutting remark. I remember hearing this during a global marketing review in San Jose, when the website was not yet central to the B2B buyer journey.
The message was deceptively simple: the website is not a supporting asset. It is where marketing activity should lead. Paid, earned and owned channels should all help create attention and direct it somewhere meaningful. That remains a useful discipline. Make the website the hub, not an afterthought.
2. Interest matters more than survey scores
“I don’t care about brand surveys. All I care about is that people are coming to check us out.”
There is nothing wrong with measuring awareness. But awareness is only useful if it translates into action. Are people searching for your company? Are they coming to your site? Are they spending time with what you have to say?
Those behaviours signal genuine interest. They are why I continue to see engaged web visits as one of the most useful top-of-funnel measures.
3. BUSINESS Reviews should lead to different actions
“I just need to understand what happened and what you’re going to do differently.”
Marketing reviews can become overloaded with slides, analysis and detail. The risk is that reporting replaces learning. This question cuts through the noise:
What happened?
What did we learn?
What will we do differently?
It is a powerful standard for any periodic review. The goal is not to document everything that occurred. The goal is to improve the next period.
A lasting leadership lesson
Shantanu’s tenure at Adobe was defined by change, and by a willingness to make major bets before they were universally accepted.
For me, these lessons remain practical rather than abstract: build the hub, measure real interest, and turn every review into a commitment to do better next time. Cheers Shantanu!