The Whole Job
Dawn Miley, Senior Director of EMEA Growth Marketing and UK Regional Marketing at Adobe, on why performance marketing is table stakes, how brand funds the funnel, and why storytelling is the whole job.
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"A buying committee and a person look the same. You’re talking to people."
Seventeen years across media agencies and enterprise software, eleven of them at Adobe through six promotions. Dawn Miley on why the performance-marketing obsession has hit a ceiling, how growth marketing joins brand and performance as one system, how AI unlocks personalisation at scale across 40+ EMEA markets, and why storytelling is the one capability every marketer still needs.
Dawn Miley began her career in 2008 at All Response Media as a Digital Planner Buyer, spent four years at MediaCom across Shell Corporate, Dell and P&G accounts (finishing as global digital lead on Shell’s "Let’s Go" campaign), and joined Adobe in November 2014 as a Media Strategy Manager. Six promotions and eleven years later, she leads EMEA Growth Marketing and UK Regional Marketing, a remit that runs brand, performance, engagement and retention as one joined system across Creative Cloud, Document Cloud and Adobe Express.
In this conversation with host John Horsley, Dawn argues that a decade of performance-marketing investment has hit a ceiling: everyone can now do roughly the same optimisation, so the differentiator has moved above and beyond performance. She explains why brand funds the funnel, why the 95-5 rule matters more in an AI era not less, why creator-led content works in B2B as well as B2C, how Adobe approaches LLM discoverability, and why team design is about hiring deep experts who respect each other, not unicorns who do everything themselves.
Key Takeaways
Miley's 17-year career spans All Response Media (digital/TV), four years at MediaCom (Shell Corporate, Dell, P&G), and eleven years at Adobe through six promotions, from Media Strategy Manager to Senior Director, EMEA Growth Marketing and UK Regional Marketing.
Performance marketing has hit a ceiling. Ten years of investment made the CFO conversation easy and the discipline commoditised. Meta, LinkedIn, paid search, programmatic deliver roughly the same results everywhere. The differentiator now sits above and beyond the performance layer.
Brand funds the funnel. The 95-5 rule applies: under five per cent of any B2B market is in-market at any given moment. Meaningful top-of-funnel connections improve every downstream efficiency. Adobe's growth marketing function runs brand, performance, engagement and retention as one system.
AI is changing discoverability as much as content. Around 95% of business searches begin on an LLM. Adobe uses its own LLM Optimiser. No single tactic works: community, SEO, paid, link backs and transcribed video all together. Personalisation at scale through GenStudio has turned tier-two and tier-three EMEA markets from blunt-instrument territory into places where proper local work can land. 40+ markets, 30+ languages.
Leadership: vision, good judgement, curiosity, willingness to keep learning. Team design: no unicorns, just deep experts with respect for each other. Advice to younger marketers: start at an agency. The grounding in client management, storytelling and cross-channel exposure is irreplaceable, and it is fun.
01Seventeen years from agency grad scheme through MediaCom to Senior Director at Adobe EMEA
02Why performance marketing is table stakes and differentiation lives above and beyond it
03Brand funds the funnel: the 95-5 rule, creator-led B2B content and buying committees
04AI discoverability, LLM Optimiser, GenStudio and personalisation at scale across 40+ markets
05Vision, judgement and the no-unicorns team-design principle for growth marketing leaders
Key Exchanges
05
01
Is the performance-marketing obsession still the right frame?
"Everybody can do roughly the same. The difference is what you do above and beyond that performance piece."
Dawn’s read on the last decade: marketing got very good at proving impact to the CFO. Give me this, my attribution model will give you that back. The platforms and the optimisation are effectively AI-run across all of them. Everyone ends up in roughly the same place. The next differentiator is everything above and beyond the performance layer. Marketers who want that investment have to stand up in the budget meeting and make the case for brand, for filling the funnel, for the long conversation with buyers who are not in-market today but will be.
02
Brand funds the funnel. The 95-5 rule.
"When you have brand on top, the rest of your funnel improves in efficiency. Proved time and time again."
Under five per cent of any B2B market is in-market at any moment. The other 95% are reading thought leadership, having conversations, building opinions. Dawn’s growth marketing function at Adobe is designed to join brand, performance, engagement and retention into one system, so the top-of-funnel work that is harder to measure still gets protected. And creator-led content, typically a B2C motion, is now a part of the B2B playbook: who better to explain what Acrobat Studio or Firefly Services did for a business than someone who has used them?
03
AI discoverability and the LLMs.
"Around 95% of business searches now start on an LLM. No one tactic works. Community, SEO, paid, link backs, transcribed video, all of it together."
Adobe’s LLM Optimiser tool tells Dawn’s team where Adobe shows up across models and where the opportunity to show up more exists. Old content that still ranks has to be updated, or it starts to work against the brand. YouTube is a major LLM-adjacent platform, which means every video needs to be transcribed correctly. Everything has to work together. And AI is the scale enabler, not a shortcut for thinking.
04
Global consistency and local relevance across 40+ markets.
"Marketing is the voice of the customer. If you don’t understand the humans in a market, don’t advertise there."
Adobe runs strong global brand frameworks with a layer of local culturalization. Where Dawn’s team wants to go deep, local marketing teams and local creative studios do proper localised work. In tier-two and tier-three EMEA markets, AI-driven personalisation at scale (through GenStudio and the wider Adobe stack) has replaced the old blunt-instrument translate-and-lob-it-out approach. 40+ markets, 30+ languages. In every one, the rule is the same: you do not enter unless you understand the humans.
05
Leadership and team design for growth marketing.
"I don’t need everyone to do everything. I need everyone to respect everything."
Dawn’s argument on leadership: vision and good judgement, on a bedrock of curiosity and willingness to keep learning. You cannot be an expert in everything at her level; the job is to stay interested, ask the right questions, make good calls, plant the flag and run the team at the opportunity. On team design: do not hire unicorns. Hire deep experts with respect for others. Almost all her senior hires are ex-agency, because that world builds in storytelling, stakeholder management and cross-channel exposure from day one.
30
Minutes
S5 E88
Season & Episode
17
Years Across Agencies and Enterprise Software
40+
EMEA Markets and 30+ Languages Her Team Runs Across
"Storytelling is the whole job. That’s it."
Hear Dawn on
The Business of Marketing
Full Transcript
SEO & AI indexed
Lightly edited for readability.
Host Your journey into B2B marketing.
Miley I didn’t know marketing existed as a student. Business course, one marketing module, grad scheme at a media agency, rolled from there. I’m B2B and B2C, both strings in my bow. It’s a hidden industry until you’re in it, and there are so many people behind the advertising you see. I just fell into it.
Host Has agency grounding helped?
Miley Incredible grounding. Work ethic, how to become a professional, how to handle clients who can be really difficult, how to manage stakeholders, how to build relationships. Relationships are the bedrock. The training is in storytelling. Great marketers, great agency people and great creative people are good storytellers. Almost all the people I hire are ex-agency.
Host B2B brands developing more personality.
Miley Gymshark is a great example. They’re known for personality, not for selling gym wear. That’s great marketing, great storytelling. The risk as we go through AI and the proliferation of channels and content is forgetting that. Whether it’s a buying committee or a person, you’re talking to people. Good marketers know that looks the same.
Host Performance marketing obsession.
Miley I work in growth marketing, which includes brand, performance, engagement and retention. The full gambit. There is an obsession with performance. We got really good at that over ten years. The CFO conversation is easy. You give me this, the attribution model tells you I give you that back. But now everyone can do roughly the same. All optimisation will be run by AI, a lot of content too. The difference has to be what you do above and beyond.
Host Short-term pressure.
Miley Lots of brands want to retreat to what works. Marketers need to stand up in the room, spot the opportunity, and say we need to go after it. When brand is on top, every layer below improves in efficiency. Proved time and again. Build the trusting relationship with finance through good storytelling. That’s where we should run more.
Host The 95-5 rule.
Miley Yes. Probably less than five per cent are in market at any moment. Not everyone wants a salesperson calling right now. They might still want a thought leadership paper. Open the conversation, keep the connection, fund it as a business because it’s long term. That’s where it gets tricky in a tough economy, and it’s our job to sell it.
Host Buying committees are getting bigger.
Miley Don’t overthink it. Know the profiles. Know what they need to OK the sale. Give them compelling reasons. In B2B we’re leaning into creator content now. Who better to explain what Acrobat Studio or Firefly Services did for a business than someone who has used them?
Host AI discoverability.
Miley Around 95% of business searches start on an LLM. We use Adobe’s LLM Optimiser to see where we show up and where there’s opportunity. The difficulty is no single tactic works. Community, SEO, paid, link backs, transcribed video. YouTube is a major LLM-adjacent platform. Everything has to work together. AI is the scale enabler.
Host Outdated content.
Miley You have to go back and optimise historical content. If certain things get ranked or referenced that are old, you must update them. Start on your own site. Check all backlinks. Keep data current.
Host Global consistency across EMEA.
Miley Strong global brand frameworks. Local teams culturalize with flavour. If a campaign for a product feels too American for a UK audience, we adjust the framework. We can’t make culturalized campaigns for 40+ markets across 30+ languages, so we place bets based on business strategy and go to a scalable model elsewhere. AI unlocked that. We used to be a blunt instrument in tier-two and three markets. Now we use GenStudio and the Adobe stack for personalisation at scale.
Host Marketing as the voice of the customer.
Miley That is marketing’s role. If you’re advertising in the Middle East but don’t understand the humans there, you should not be advertising there.
Host Product experience and marketing as one system.
Miley Yes. We obsess over the customer experience after the sale. We use Adobe Journey Optimiser. When people are known to us, journeys are optimised. When they’re not, in a GDPR world you do your best and plan really carefully. Engagement and retention are foundational for a subscription business. Marketing can’t just drive the sale and disappear. That’s how you fail.
Host Great marketing leadership today.
Miley Vision and good judgement. At a certain level you can’t be an expert in everything. Stay curious, listen, understand, keep learning. Good judgement separates good leaders from great ones. Set the vision, plant the flag, run the team at the biggest opportunity at the right time.
Host Team design.
Miley I don’t need everyone to do everything. I need everyone to respect everything. No unicorns. Design the team so we know each other’s strengths, lean on them, work harmoniously.
Host One marketing trend that’s overhyped.
Miley Controversial one, but in EMEA, MMM modelling. We got so good at attribution that we’ve ruined the conversation around marketing down to what can you do for me today.
Host One capability every marketer needs.
Miley Storytelling. If you can’t explain why something matters, it doesn’t matter. That’s the whole job.
Host Brands doing great marketing right now.
Miley Adobe, obviously. LinkedIn, huge growth, from a job-hunt platform to a thought-leadership platform in five years. OpenAI’s ad campaigns, based in human storytelling. And the Claude and Anthropic Superbowl ads, inspired and hilarious.
Host Advice to younger marketers.
Miley Start at an agency. I started at a media agency. Even with the disruption agencies are going through, it’s irreplaceable grounding in media, comms, creative, brand and events. And it’s fun. Camaraderie with people your age. Hard work but rewarding.
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