Meet the 2026 leaders driving experience‑led growth.
Each year, Adobe celebrates the brands, leaders, and teams redefining customer experiences.
These are the 2026 Adobe Experience Maker Awards winners — visionaries transforming customer expectations into exceptional experiences that deliver measurable business impact. Inside their stories, you'll see how data, creativity and AI power personalized journeys at scale.
The Advocate
This award recognizes companies demonstrating a customer-centric approach to creating personalized journeys with Adobe solutions.
The winner
Costa Crociere transforms fragmented guest interactions into seamless, personalized journeys across digital and human touchpoints.
The story
For more than 75 years, Costa Crociere has delivered distinctive cruise experiences to travelers around the world. To meet rising expectations and to stay relevant, the company set out to transform how it engages its guests throughout their journey. This includes everything from inspiration and booking to pre-cruise planning across digital, call center, and onboard touchpoints.
Using Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform as its foundation, Costa Crociere unified previously fragmented data into a single actionable view of each guest. They also use Adobe Journey Optimizer, Adobe Target, Adobe Customer Journey Analytics, and Adobe Commerce to orchestrate personalized experiences for guests across web, email, paid media, WhatsApp, mobile app, and customer support, enabling consistent, real-time engagement at scale.
This customer-first approach has delivered strong results. By personalizing nearly half of its digital traffic, Costa Crociere has increased ecommerce conversion rates by 97% and boosted loyalty registrations by 76%. This more relevant engagement has also reduced cost per lead by 50% and driven higher net ticket revenue.
The Ambassador
This award recognizes individuals sharing their Adobe product expertise and best practices to help their peers and colleagues succeed.
The winner
Digital marketing operations leader Samantha Tuttle empowers teams at Newell Brands to scale content creation, accelerate time to market, and unlock the value of generative AI across a portfolio of iconic consumer brands.
The story
Newell Brands is a global consumer goods company behind more than 50 household names, including Sharpie®, Rubbermaid®, Yankee Candle®, and Coleman®. Guided by Samantha Tuttle, Director of Marketing Operations and eCommerce Strategy, the organization set out to modernize how content is created and delivered across an increasingly complex omnichannel ecosystem.
Samantha has been a driving force behind Newell Brands' content supply chain transformation, championing the adoption of Adobe Experience Manager Assets, Adobe Workfront, and Adobe Firefly to unify workflows, improve consistency, and scale production. Under her leadership, teams now generate up to five times more content while reducing manual effort and accelerating delivery across ecommerce and digital channels.
Beyond her impact at Newell Brands, Samantha is a trusted advocate within the Adobe community. She regularly shares best practices through speaking engagements at Adobe Summit and Adobe MAX. She also serves on Adobe's Customer Advisory Board and leads hands-on training initiatives that help teams and peers adopt AI-powered workflows, turning Adobe innovation into real, repeatable business impact.
The Catalyst
This award recognizes companies using Adobe Real-Time CDP to build bridges across systems and teams to deliver personalized and engaging customer experiences.
The winner
As one of Brazil's largest education groups, YDUQS unifies systems and teams in real time to deliver personalized education journeys with Adobe Real-Time CDP.
The story
YDUQS serves more than 1.3 million students across undergraduate and postgraduate programs, delivered through digital, hybrid, and on campus models. Operating across multiple brands, regions, and delivery models, the company set out to unify its marketing and data ecosystem to better engage prospective students while improving efficiency across acquisition and enrollment journeys.
Using Adobe Real‑Time CDP as its foundation, YDUQS connected data from media platforms, web analytics, CRM, academic, and financial systems to create a single, governed view of each student. This unified profile enabled the organization to replace manual, fragmented audience management with real‑time orchestration across paid media, web, and messaging channels. The company also uses Adobe Customer Journey Analytics, Adobe Target, and AI‑driven modeling to now support predictive audience qualification, automated suppression, and personalized remarketing across brands and regions.
This integrated strategy has produced quantifiable results. YDUQS reduced customer acquisition costs by 9% to 30% through predictive audience activation, increased conversion rates by up to 97% with personalized remarketing, and cut wasted media spend by 32% through real‑time audience suppression. By building bridges across systems and teams with Adobe Real‑Time CDP, YDUQS transformed data into a shared engine for personalization, efficiency, and growth at national scale.
The Conductor
This award recognizes companies optimizing content creation and delivery workflows to accelerate time-to-market with Adobe solutions.
The winner
TSB Bank helps millions of people across Britain to feel more confident about banking. By modernizing its content operations with Adobe, it is accelerating time-to-market while scaling compliant personalization across channels to connect with and support its customers.
The story
TSB is a UK-focused retail and small business bank serving millions of customers through a blended model that combines online, mobile, over the phone, and branch experiences. To deliver experiences that feel personal across every touchpoint, the bank initiated a modernization effort to optimize the planning, creation, approval, and activation of marketing content across all channels, while maintaining efficiency, compliance, and brand integrity.
TSB rebuilt its content supply chain using Adobe Workfront, Adobe Experience Manager Assets, Adobe Creative Cloud, and Adobe Firefly to unify planning, production, governance, and activation in a single, connected workflow. By automating approvals, streamlining collaboration, and enabling rapid creation of compliant, on-brand assets, the team replaced manual handoffs with end-to-end orchestration. This approach allows TSB to respond to market triggers in days rather than weeks, while supporting large volumes of creative variation across paid, digital, and in-app channels.
These improvements have delivered measurable gains in efficiency and time to market.
TSB accelerated content production time by 60% and reduced creative idea revision time by 50%, enabling TSB to move quickly to connect with its customers and help with their money confidence.
By optimizing its content creation and delivery workflows with Adobe AI, TSB has built a scalable, compliant content supply chain that ensures more customer communications are personalized to customer needs.
The Disruptor
This award recognizes companies fueling business growth by delivering personalized, immersive experiences using Adobe Commerce.
The winner
Alshaya Group reimagines omnichannel commerce at scale, delivering personalized retail experiences across 70+ global brands using Adobe Commerce.
The story
Founded in 1890, Alshaya Group is one of the world's leading brand franchise operators, managing 70+ international retail brands across 15+ markets in the Middle East, Türkiye, and Europe. To support rapid digital growth across this diverse portfolio, Alshaya set out to replace fragmented commerce and content systems with a unified platform capable of delivering fast, localized, and personalized shopping experiences at scale.
By building the Alshaya Experience Platform (AXP) on Adobe Commerce, Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Real-Time CDP, and Adobe Target, the company gained a single foundation for content, commerce, and personalization. Real-time customer profiles provide tailored product recommendations, localized promotions, and dynamic storefront experiences across brands and regions, while Adobe's Microservices, API first, Cloud-native, and Headless (MACH) architecture enables zero downtime deployments and consistent performance during peak demand periods.
This transformation has delivered measurable business impact. By unifying commerce and content with Adobe Commerce and activating AI‑driven personalization, the Alshaya Group increased session duration by close to 11%, reduced bounce rates by 23.1%, and grew returning visitor rates by 9.32% across its digital channels. At the same time, reusable templates and automated workflows enabled 200% faster content delivery and reduced asset creation time by 70%, accelerating time‑to‑market across 15+ regional markets.
The Experience Maker of the Year
This award recognizes individuals or teams delivering exceptional customer experiences and business impact leveraging Adobe solutions.
The winner
The National Football League's (NFL) marketing and technology team, led by Amit Khare, Director of Marketing Technology, drives fan engagement across the League and its 32 clubs. By orchestrating personalized, real‑time experiences at scale, the team transforms fan interest into meaningful engagement and measurable business results.
The story
As one of the world's most powerful sports and entertainment brands, the NFL engages fans across games, media, merchandise, live events, and digital platforms year-round. To meet rising expectations for relevance and consistency on a global scale, the NFL set out to unify its decentralized marketing ecosystem. This effort focused on connecting League and club data, content, and activation while preserving local flexibility.
Led by Amit Khare, Director of Marketing Technology, the NFL integrated Adobe solutions with League and club platforms to create a harmonized fan engagement engine – a first-of-its-kind model that connected the League's MarTech stack with those of all 32 Clubs. Adobe Real-Time CDP, Adobe Journey Optimizer, and Adobe Customer Journey Analytics power a unified view of the fan across web, mobile, ticketing, merchandise, and live event interactions. This foundation enables the League and its clubs to orchestrate real-time, personalized journeys through email, push, SMS, paid media, and in-app experiences. It transforms personalization from isolated campaigns into always-on fan relationships at scale.
The impact has been significant. The NFL increased draft registrations by 91%, drove a 215% lift in ticket conversions, and reduced fan opt-outs by minimizing over communication across League and Club messaging. This transformation was made possible through the leadership of Amit Khare, as the League connected physical and digital moments and scaled personalization across one of the most complex marketing ecosystems in the world. The NFL has successfully established a new benchmark for how fan engagement can be delivered at global scale.
The Experience Maker Executive of the Year
This award recognizes leaders using bold vision and digital transformation to drive their business forward with Adobe solutions.
The winner
Derek Gominger, COO of Global eCommerce at Lenovo, reimagines how data, AI, and creativity come together to deliver personalized, omnichannel experiences at global scale.
The story
Lenovo is the world's number one PC company, operating in more than 180 markets, digitally active in 60, and selling directly in 35 countries. It has been serving customers across consumer, SMB, and enterprise segments. The company generates $70B+ in annual revenue and ranks 196 on the Fortune Global 500 list. Derek has led Lenovo's digital transformation to make web, media, and commerce interactions smarter and more connected, supporting its mission of smarter technology for all.
He helped Lenovo unify customer data, analytics, content, and decisioning across channels. By standardizing personalization and experimentation globally, Lenovo scaled journey-level experiences across hundreds of digital touchpoints while dramatically accelerating time to insight and execution. Adobe Real‑Time CDP and Customer Journey Analytics now power real-time decision making across Lenovo’s digital channels. While Adobe GenStudio and Adobe Firefly have transformed content production, shrinking six-week cycles to hours and enabling 1,000+ AI‑generated assets across 500 experiences.
These efforts have delivered measurable business impact. Lenovo has improved conversion rates, increased revenue per visit, and consistently elevated customer satisfaction, while scaling AI-driven personalization across markets with minimal increases in resources. Derek has enabled Lenovo to establish a new standard for worldwide, customer-focused digital experiences by combining strong executive foresight with Adobe's platform.
“AI doesn't replace creativity — it accelerates it. It transforms every ordinary customer interaction into an extraordinary experience, ensuring every touchpoint tells a consistent Lenovo story that is human, personalized, and powered by intelligence.”
Derek Gominger
COO, Global eCommerce, Lenovo
The Groundbreaker
This award recognizes individuals or teams advancing customer experiences and laying the foundation for increasingly personalized journeys at scale with Adobe solutions.
The winner
Maruti Suzuki India Limited, under the leadership of Dr. Tapan Sahoo, pioneers AI‑driven, end‑to‑end digital automotive experiences, setting a new benchmark for personalization at national scale.
The story
Maruti Suzuki India Limited (MSIL) is India's largest passenger vehicle manufacturer, commanding a 41% market share with FY24–25 sales of 2.23 million units. MSIL contributes over 50% of Suzuki Motor Corporation's global sales and profits and generates approximately $18.3 billion in annual revenue. It serves millions of customers across a vast network of brands, dealerships, digital properties, and service touchpoints.
As customer expectations shifted toward digital-first, personalized engagement, MSIL, under the leadership of Dr. Tapan Sahoo, Senior Executive Officer, Digital Enterprise, set out to reimagine how consumers discover, evaluate, purchase, and service vehicles across the entire ownership lifecycle. MSIL unified its digital ecosystem using Adobe solutions, creating an AI-powered, real-time platform for customer engagement.
Adobe Experience Platform, Adobe Customer Journey Analytics, Adobe Journey Optimizer, and Adobe Experience Manager integrate to unify online and offline data, enable predictive intelligence, and personalize journeys across web, mobile apps, WhatsApp, dealers, and service touchpoints. Advanced AI features, like image parts search, smart car configurators, next-best-action planning, and service-due predictions, have transformed customer and dealer interactions with the brand.
Under Dr. Sahoo's leadership, the impact has been significant. MSIL dramatically improved digital performance and engagement, accelerated time to market for new experiences, and scaled hyper-personalization across millions of customer interactions. Maruti Suzuki unified 200M+ profiles to boost personalization accuracy by 25%, drive 640% growth in AI-powered test drive bookings, and reduce page load times by 78%. Together, these gains are redefining experience-led automotive engagement at scale in one of the world's most complex markets, India.
The Maverick
This award recognizes visionary companies reimagining customer experiences through inventive strategies and breakthrough use of Adobe solutions.
The winner
The Coca-Cola Company pioneers AI-driven, persona-led content at scale, redefining how personalized experiences are created and activated across global marketing channels.
The story
The Coca-Cola Company (TCCC) is one of the world's most iconic beverage brands, engaging consumers across a vast portfolio of products and markets. To meet growing demand for relevance and personalization, Coca-Cola set out to transform its content supply chain, moving beyond manual, resource-intensive workflows that limited its ability to deliver tailored experiences at scale.
Backed by Adobe solutions and Adobe GenStudio for Performance Marketing, Coca-Cola unified its proprietary PRISM motivational segmentation framework with generative AI to produce highly personalized content across web, email, display, and conversational channels. By integrating Adobe GenStudio with Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Real-Time CDP, and Adobe Target, the company enabled marketers to generate, score, and activate persona-specific content variants quickly while maintaining brand integrity and compliance across regions and languages.
This innovative approach has delivered measurable impact. Coca-Cola drove a 4x engagement lift, reduced copywriting time by 65%, and unlocked up to 40x more personalized assets using AI-powered content generation. By combining deep human insight with AI-powered content generation, Coca-Cola has challenged legacy marketing norms and set a new benchmark for scalable, audience-led personalization in the consumer-packaged goods industry.
The Transformer
This award recognizes companies transforming their organization to create a digital-first customer experience delivering measurable business growth with Adobe solutions.
The winner
Chow Tai Fook Jewellery Company Limited transforms a 95-year-old luxury brand into a data-driven, digital-first enterprise, boosting growth through personalized, omnichannel customer experiences.
The story
Chow Tai Fook Jewellery (CTF) is one of the world's most established jewelry brands, with a 95-year legacy and an extensive retail footprint across Greater China and global markets. As it approached its 100th anniversary, CTF undertook a strategic transformation to modernize its operations and align its digital strategy with a long-term purpose: to be a trusted lifetime partner for every generation.
To enable this transformation, CTF reorganized its teams around a customer-first digital operating model, aligning marketing, retail, and operations to work as one.
Powered by Adobe solutions, the company unified once fragmented retail, ecommerce, and loyalty data to create a single source of truth and automate lifecycle engagement across online and instore touchpoints. Shared content libraries and workflow automation strengthened cross-departmental collaboration, enabling creative, IT, and data teams to operate within a unified, agile framework. The result is a fully aligned organization, one that combines craftsmanship, culture, and intelligence to deliver emotionally resonant, personalized experiences at scale without compromising brand heritage.
The results demonstrate the impact of this organization‑wide shift. CTF increased average order value by 25% through AI-powered recommendations, drove a 40% rise in repeat purchases through personalized loyalty engagement, and achieved 95% cross-channel content consistency across retail, app, and ecommerce experiences. All of this contributed towards better relevance, and cumulative performance led to a 28% increase in return on ad spend with a notable 12-point boost in brand sentiment among younger audiences. Together, these outcomes reflect CTF’s transformation into a data driven, generative AI-enabled enterprise delivering customer experiences that are not only efficient, but emotionally resonant.
