The Era of Agentic AI Has Arrived: Marketers Become "Conductors of Strategy"

An Overview of Adobe Summit 2026: One of the World's Largest Digital Experience Conferences

—First, could you tell us what kind of event Adobe Summit is?

Naiki: Adobe Summit is one of the world’s largest conferences in the digital experience domain, hosted annually by Adobe. Going far beyond a typical corporate product announcement, it serves as a frontline where technology and creativity intersect—acting as a compass for forecasting global marketing trends. This year, marking its 24th iteration, over 14,000 participants gathered on-site. Beyond the latest product updates, leading global brands presented cutting-edge case studies alongside foundational philosophies destined to shape the direction of marketing for years to come.

Long lines formed outside the venue well before the keynotes began, filling the atmosphere with eager anticipation that this was a moment no one wanted to miss. Waitlists formed for individual breakout sessions, and at the Summit Bash on the second evening, passionate discussions were taking place everywhere you looked. The entire venue was charged with vitality and energy.

Photos of Adobe Summit 2026 Venue

—What was Dentsu Digital’s primary objective in attending on-site?

Donnison: For this year’s Summit, we dispatched a team of seven members representing multifaceted perspectives, including executive leadership, marketing and customer experience experts, and global solution specialists.

Among them, as planners and marketers dedicated to helping clients grow their businesses day-to-day, our main goal was not to stop at technical discussions about how much platforms and AI have evolved. Instead, we aimed to understand how companies are applying AI—specifically Agentic AI—at a concrete level in their daily marketing activities, and to assess how this rapidly evolving technology will impact marketing practice, organizational structures, and the future of customer experience.

Naiki: Our mission is to quickly translate and bring back the world’s most advanced global trends into the context of the Japanese market. To evaluate its practical effectiveness and essence from a planner’s perspective, we were adamant about obtaining first-hand information directly on-site.

Toshihiro Naiki, Global Solution Dept., Global Solution Room

The Future of CX Revealed by 2026's Core Theme: "Agentic AI"

—Could you share the overarching theme of this year's Adobe Summit?

Naiki: The theme unifying the entire Summit this year was the shift to Agentic AI (Autonomous AI). This concept moves beyond the preceding phase of Generative AI. While traditional Generative AI supported individual tasks by outputting content in response to prompts, Agentic AI can understand business objectives and operating environments, then autonomously execute complex workflows.

However, this does not imply that humans become obsolete or that every decision is automated by AI. Defining higher-level objectives and strategies, as well as setting brand identity and aesthetic standards as guardrails, remains undeniably the role of human marketers.

Donnison: In other words, it signaled a shift from an era where marketers manually design and configure every detailed customer journey to one where humans set clear goals based on insights, while AI agents autonomously function to connect data, content, and channels in real time.

Because AI optimizes execution at machine speed, marketers can focus on essential strategy and decision-making areas that only humans can handle—such as deciding which insights to pursue and what context to design. We view this as the true essence of the new division of labor between humans and AI presented at the event.

Saki Donnison, Global Solution Dept., Global Solution Room

—What specific announcements were made during the event?

Donnison: Among the announcements symbolizing this major transition, three in particular stood out. The first was Adobe CX Enterprise. This is a new customer experience platform driven by autonomous AI agents, where multiple AI agents collaborate to manage marketing initiatives seamlessly from design through execution.

A particularly symbolic example was a case study presented by a major U.S. cosmetics retailer. When an influencer’s post went viral on social media overnight, AI agents (Enterprise Co-workers) kicked into action autonomously while humans slept. They analyzed customer data in real time, built target segments, automatically generated optimal messages and offers, and launched campaigns across multiple channels autonomously before dawn—demonstrating an astounding sense of speed.

Naiki: The second was Adobe Brand Intelligence. In the era of Agentic AI, an explosion of content volume is anticipated. This system acts as an automated governance mechanism to ensure that high-volume AI-generated content does not deviate from brand guidelines. We see it as a key enabler for achieving ultimate hyper-personalization in marketing communications while strictly protecting brand identity.

This was also demonstrated through a case study from a major enterprise cloud software provider. As AI generated countless content variations, Adobe Brand Intelligence instantly verified whether they aligned with brand tone and voice, cleared legal compliance checks, and made automatic corrections on the fly. Because the AI continuously learns the creative intent and decision-making patterns (tacit knowledge) of humans, it proved to be an extremely practical capability for establishing a massive content production system without risking brand erosion.

Naiki: The third was Brand Visibility Solutions for AI Search. As consumer information-seeking behavior shifts from conventional search engines to LLMs (Large Language Models), how can brands maintain their presence in the era of AI search? This presented a brand-new playbook for the LLM era.

Based on a case study from a major sporting goods brand, a demonstration showed how a user searching ChatGPT for "golf items that suit me" received precise recommendations for the brand’s products. By using Adobe’s LLM Optimizer, the system optimizes readability for AI agents crawling websites, presenting a highly inspiring, practical approach to LLMO (Large Language Model Optimization) designed to make a brand the selected option within AI-generated search responses.

Shifting Roles for Marketers and What Companies Should Tackle Now

—How do you expect the role of marketers to evolve in the era of Agentic AI?

Donnison: While we occasionally hear anxieties in the general market that "AI might take away our jobs," we envision the exact opposite future. Just because AI operates autonomously does not mean the purpose of marketers is diminished. Rather, it becomes vastly more important than ever to possess sharp strategic thinking and aesthetic judgment—answering questions like: "What should we value as a brand, and which domains should we focus on?", "What consumer psychology should we target, and what goals should we entrust to AI?", and "Does the output truly resonate with our brand’s identity and values?"

Naiki: With AI taking over operational tasks that previously consumed much of our time, marketers will be empowered to dedicate their energy to higher-level, creative decision-making, such as defining business purpose and managing brand and AI governance. It is a step toward shifting marketers from "hands-on operational workers" to "conductors of strategy" who rapidly deploy large-scale hypothesis testing into society alongside AI. We are confident that a world is right around the corner where the inherent creativity and passion for moving business forward will be leveraged in their purest form.

—What should companies address even before introducing these tools?

Naiki: To power advanced AI agents, organizing and integrating the "data" that serves as their fuel is indispensable. If data remains siloed within an organization, AI cannot make correct judgments. Disconnected customer data and content assets will render even the most sophisticated AI useless.

Conversely, this also means that the data assets and customer bases that many companies have patiently built and invested in are finally ready to truly flourish with the arrival of Agentic AI. The preparation, effort, and costs accumulated over time are now entering a harvesting phase that can yield overwhelming business results. A powerful booster for that exact transition is now in place.

Donnison: On top of that, process design regarding what not to let AI do and how to teach AI the brand’s tacit knowledge will become critically important moving forward.

Articulating implicit brand nuances and aesthetic sensibilities that are difficult to quantify, then building them in as operational guardrails for AI, is the key to preventing commoditization in the AI era and letting a company's unique identity shine.

—Finally, do you have a closing message for our readers?

Donnison: The transformation brought by Agentic AI is not a fleeting tool implementation, but a company-wide project that redefines the very nature of marketing. As an Adobe Platinum Partner, Dentsu Digital deploys domain experts across all fields—from strategy formulation and data foundation engineering to scenario design for AI execution and creative governance infused with a brand’s soul—to maximize the potential of Adobe solutions and deliver end-to-end support for CX transformation.

Naiki: We are entering an era where marketing will directly drive corporate growth, leveraging the data assets accumulated over time as a primary weapon. Let us lead the market in this new era together.