Adobe and LinkedIn announced a joint global training initiative this week to help marketers adapt to artificial intelligence. It was framed as an act of industry leadership. It reads, more accurately, as a form of corporate self-preservation.
Fortune reported that AI is triggering one of the sharpest recessions the marketing profession has experienced in decades. Firms are cutting marketing budgets. Headcounts are falling. LinkedIn — one of the two companies now volunteering to rescue the profession — acknowledged it has itself pulled back on marketing spend, contributing to the broader contraction hitting the sector. Adobe, meanwhile, is under mounting investor pressure to prove that its AI tools justify their price as the creative software moat it spent 30 years building begins to erode.
Two companies with existential exposure to the health of the marketing industry have jointly announced an initiative to keep that industry viable. That is not a coincidence.
