Navigating change and scaling innovation with Chris Young
How are financial services marketers in APAC staying agile in an era of disruption and complexity?
Chris Young, Adobe’s Senior Director of Global Industry Strategy, joins The CMO Show to unpack the challenges and opportunities facing financial services marketers across the Asia-Pacific region. From fast-changing consumer expectations to macroeconomic pressures like US tariffs, this episode offers a strategic look at how organisations can lead with data, deliver value in real time, and build trust at scale.
From cost-cutting to customer value
As APAC marketers face growing pressure to do more with less, Chris encourages a shift in mindset. “Helping people make smarter decisions with their money — that’s how you add value,” he says. Whether it’s reducing call centre volumes or improving financial wellbeing, the goal is to drive meaningful, measurable outcomes that resonate across diverse cultural and economic contexts.
AI as a force multiplier
Generative AI is transforming campaign production across the region. Chris explains how it’s enabling marketers to scale content creation, accelerate go-to-market timelines, and personalise at scale. “They went from 240 campaigns to 600, 3,600 assets to 8,000... That’s the promise of it,” he says. AI is helping bridge the gap between what customers want and what institutions can deliver.
Building the right foundations
In a region where innovation often outpaces infrastructure, Chris highlights the importance of getting the basics right. He outlines how investments in martech enablement, internal capability building, and centres of excellence can set APAC financial institutions up for long-term success. “If you take the right initial steps, you will be able to run much faster and much further with that foundation.”
The Marketer’s expanding role
Marketing in APAC financial services is no longer just about brand — it’s about business leadership. Chris discusses how the marketer’s role is becoming more technical, more data-driven, and more central to enterprise transformation. “You don’t want 10 people using analytics — you want thousands,” he says, underscoring the need for a scalable, insight-led approach.
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This episode of The CMO Show was brought to you by host Mark Jones, producers Kate Zadel and Kirsten Bables and audio engineers Ed Cheng and Daniel Marr. This is an edited excerpt of the podcast transcript.
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Mark Jones
When we think about change in marketing or in fact in any industry, in any role, I don't know if this is something you've thought about, but there can be a mindset that says, change is something I have to endure for a little while, and then it'll go away. I'll go back to normal. What if it doesn't? Hello, Mark Jones here. Thanks for joining us on the CMO Show. I am your host, and this show is brought to you by Impact Institute in partnership with Adobe.
Today, we've got a really interesting conversation about change, but not change for its own sake, or in fact, change just because you've got to deal with it as it comes and goes. But in the world of marketing, and in particular, we want to look at financial services, change has become, if you like, an ever-present issue that financial services organisations have to deal with. And even if you're not in this sector, it's interesting and instructive to learn from how we can have an always-on adaptive mindset if I can coin the phrase.
We've got to be constantly in touch with our customers. We've got to know how they're thinking and feeling, and what's the experience they have on a day-to-day level. In fact, at a very, very granular, highly detailed level. This is one of the biggest challenges we have in marketing. So I'm really excited for our conversation today. Chris Young is the Senior Director for Global Industry Strategy at Adobe here in Australia from the US, and brings a really interesting global perspective across all of the financial services. Let's hear what he's got to say.
Senior Director, Chris Young, Senior Director of Global Industry Strategy at Adobe. Thanks for joining me.
Chris Young
Oh, thanks for having me.
Mark Jones
Tell me about your role. What does it entail? The global bit I'm particularly interested in.
Chris Young
Yeah, so as Senior Director, head of Global Industry Strategy, my team focuses on taking what is considered a horizontal set of applications and then translating them into meaningful use cases for various industries. My background is financial services. The folks on my team cover various industries like retail and health and life sciences and manufacturing. The global part is this is a global company, and there's a lot of what can be learned between different regions, and what you saw, I flew in today to meet with Australian financial services companies, and I've done that in Sao Paulo, Mexico City. We have a really strong global community of customers, and a huge part of how we advance the industry overall is sharing these best practises. So it's a huge focus of us to look at those best practises between regions and then share them to move these industries collectively forward.
Mark Jones
I'm sure you've seen this idea that it's not just one financial services industry, but many when you look from a global point of view, because while there's a collective understanding, you've got differences in countries and in regions as the way they treat money. Regulations are different, and on and on it goes.
Chris Young
I had to learn what a superannuation was-
Mark Jones
See, there you go.
Chris Young
... before joining. Yeah, there's-
Mark Jones
Instead of 401K, of course.
Chris Young
It's very, very similar, but yeah, we focus, at least in financial services, on various sub-industries. There's the insurance, but there's life insurance and property and casualty. A lot of these life insurance companies operate more like a wealth management firm. We work with some of the largest asset management companies in the world, and of course, banks. And what we found is, look, there's a lot of similarities, but there are very significant differences. A lot of the business models are different, B2B, B2B to C, and in all of those cases, you have various permutations of how our applications work to engage either an individual investor or an advisor or an institution. And all of those distinctions are really important to make and for our customers to understand how to best utilise our applications.
Mark Jones
If you just go back, say the last couple of months, tell me about some of the pain points you've been hearing from customers. What's going on at the moment?
Chris Young
Well, I think that generally speaking, our customers have been and will continue to be under pressure, especially the marketers, the classic do more with less, but I think the stakes are getting higher. The uncertainty is adding to that. And look, there's been a lot of investment in MarTech over the years, and the CFO is now knocking on the door saying, look, okay, where's the show me the money.
But the types of things that our customers are looking to solve for are far more significant in terms of top-line revenue growth, expanding product portfolios, adding thousands of customers while simultaneously looking to reduce the cost of operations to increase efficiency. I mean, these are far different conversations than we've been having with customers when I first joined Adobe 12 years ago. A lot of it was how quickly can I produce this piece of content, or increase engagement, or increase click-through rates? I think it shows the maturity of the industry, but also the maturity of our applications in delivering more of these more significant business outcomes.
Mark Jones
Something I've thought a little bit about in this sector is the concept of value. Because as you drive the cost of transactions down, for example, we need to tell a different story about the value an institution might have to a customer. So it's this idea of why am I with this bank anymore? What do they do for me? That's a different conversation to rates, maybe a security story. The value conversation is an interesting one.
Chris Young
Yeah. And I think, we were talking today, we do a survey every year, the digital trends report, and I get five specific questions I get to ask to financial services responders in particular. One is like, what is the main primary objective that you're trying to achieve? And you get the usual cast of characters of things like deflection from traditional channels to reduce costs, so like less calls to the call centre or branch visits, selling more to compete with digital entrants, modernising experiences for younger generations, but one that always surfaces to the top and a significant separation is improving digital interactions to increase financial health and wellbeing. And that's basically just helping people make smarter decisions with their money. That's how you add value. There's a lot of things about cross-selling and upselling and acquiring customers, but if you go back to the meaningful outcome to that individual, it could be service-related, it could be transactional. That's where you start building trust and loyalty. That's value to an individual or to a business.
Mark Jones
I don't know if there are any standout examples of maybe banks or organisations that you've worked with where some of those things are some really great examples.
Chris Young
I mean, the one that I refer back to is that we've got a lot of the banks in Spain, as an example, that are looking to get involved real- time to a point-of-sale decline. So there's like these moments where you're looking to purchase something that's really significant or important, and you get that decline at point-of-sale, which causes all sorts of issues. And the real-time response is interesting. One is like, okay, we can extend you depending on who you are, we can extend you more money or a small loan. Maybe it's just a question of just moving balances from one account to the other. It could be another, a credit extension, all of those other things. But the idea is having that take place in real-time in that moment, and really dealing with that situation there. And I think that's the significance of it. That's the thing that a lot of our customers are looking to do, is being there in those moments that matter, real-time, and giving the right response to the customer.
Mark Jones
Yeah. So, we're seeing not just with the existing systems. But of course, with AI, we're seeing incredible levels of automation and then this agentic world. And then I'm quite interested in the orchestration that's going on. So, the sophistication of the systems that we have now to support the scenario you just spoke about is really gone through the roof. I've seen it over the last two years in particular. I wonder what your sense is as you think about the trends here. Where is this headed?
Chris Young
Yeah. I mean, I think what you're looking at there is what I would consider more traditional predictive type AI versus generative or even the AI assistance that we have. And then even further beyond that is agentic. And here's the dirty little secret, which is the financial services industry is still struggling to get these sorts of applications approved. So, when I was here this morning, "Show of hands of how many using these generative AI capabilities," not many in the room.
And the reality is that there's nothing about these applications that ultimately get in the way of legal risk and compliance. It's just a question of education. But that said, we're seeing a lot of the industry, several companies in the United States and even in Southeast Asia as an example, making really significant strides when it comes to things like content. That's like low-hanging fruit in terms of concepting, generating net new images, scaling the production of them in mass.
The idea is how long does it typically take to create a campaign? This one company, as an example, 21 days. The average for a campaign was 21 days. They produced maybe 240 campaigns a year, 3,600 assets through the use of generative AI for content and scaled production. They went from 240 campaigns to 600, 3,600 assets to 8,000, 21 days went from 16 to 10 and now to 5. That's the promise of it. It's not just the scale of content creation, but also the speed to market.
Because if you think about value and outcomes for the consumers, how do you do that? You have to increase the experimentation that takes content. They increase the level of personalization, that takes content. Because a lot of times you might have companies who are like, "Hey, I'd like to target these 10 segments." "I can only produce them for 5." So, these are unmet needs being met through lack of relevant content because of the gap in content production scale.
Mark Jones
It's an interesting time for marketers around the world because the demand to upskill is massive. And I don't think we actually talk about that enough in terms of just how much you need to understand now. What's your take on how you're seeing marketers deal with this challenge?
Chris Young
I think the role of marketing has changed pretty fundamentally. And I use this example of when I was in marketing, a lot of the times I would represent the brand to the consumer. This is why you do business with us. Now, the marketer represents the customer to the rest of the business. So, they have a much higher, much bigger seat at the table when it comes to transformations. They're getting far more technical in what they need to do, but they're also now being more responsible for ROI and impact.
So, to your point, the role of marketing as becoming more technical, more analytic in nature, not necessarily just the pure creativity and brand. But here's the interesting thing, we've done studies, all the gaps are the same. I can't find the right number of individuals with the right skill sets. I have to train individuals. One of the big ones, by the way, is just alignment of KPIs and objectives. That's the number one. If you don't solve that, none of these other things matter.
But now, we have to go back and thinking about the promise of what AI, agentic AI, even generative AI does. It's simply reduces the complexity and threshold for someone to understand a highly technical set of applications and use them to the best of their ability, because that's the other thing. You might have skill sets associated with some applications, but do they really know the full extent of the text prompts and agentic help?
It's just a great equaliser for more and more people to use these applications. You don't want 10 people using analytics, you want several thousand. And you extrapolate that across all these different more tech type applications. That's where the scale comes from.
Mark Jones
And interestingly enough, the value is created at scale too, because now you have people getting answers to the actual business problem that they've got. Not trying to, if you read the tea leaves of these apps and build something on the fly.
Chris Young
There's another dirty little secret. The role of marketing today is pretty administrative. So, asking those questions, I have to ask someone a question like that. I've got an idea. I'm probably filling out a form for someone else to create that. So, now, you think about the direction of our applications, generative AI, AI assistance, agentic as well, that allows these individuals to operate far more independently within the guardrails that are set in the use of these tools. What data can be accessed, custom models in terms of how they create content that's on brand. That's the vision of it.
Mark Jones
So, tell me about data privacy, security, ethics. That whole space is emerging rapidly. Again, you've got this unique global view where you start to pick some trends and start to see maybe how it's moving in different geographies. What's your take?
Chris Young
Well, I think these types of regulations also vary by industry, but they're universal in a sense of even a lot of the survey data that we get is there's a high expectation that the customers are giving data for very specific purposes, and they rely on these industries to use that data with a high degree of trust and security. So, that's the obligation that the industry has. And I think the way that we think about it is, are we going to have every capability to every single rule? No. But the idea is governance and setting these standards. So, our applications allow you to set these guardrails, set access to who has it. Label data at point of ingestion, meaning this is what it is, this is where it can be used, this is where it can't be used. And I think as a foundational principle for what we do, I think that flexibility and recognising you're in a privacy first environment is significant.
Mark Jones
When we think about the impact of tariffs on the financial services industry, the bottom line that I've observed is this sense of uncertainty that you touched on a little bit earlier. We've seen incredible market volatility in the past a hundred days, if you want to maybe use that as one of the recent markers from a political point of view.
Chris Young
Yup.
Mark Jones
What are you hearing, seeing, feeling in the customer base at Adobe when you start looking at the response or lack thereof, the almost sitting and waiting it out among the customer base of Adobe?
Chris Young
Let's look at this three ways. I think the first is, again, the team that I manage looks across different industries and we did a whole recording internally, retail, consumer goods, travel, what their reactions would be to these types of tariffs and what are the downstream impacts. And financial services, I went last because we're one of the last dominoes to fall. So obviously, immediate impact to things like retail, immediate impact to things like travel, but ultimately, if the consumer spending power goes down, you start getting into loan defaults and late payments and all sorts of other downstream effects that they've seen, but that's the bad news.
Also the bad news is also these companies are risk averse. So they're not going to wait for these things to happen. They're going to project. You're also hearing things like provisions for loan losses. These things were already happening. But the good news is that this industry has seen this before, right? They've seen this before with the pandemic and they understood the nature of digital and agility and being responsive, continuing to build trust and be there for these individuals in these moments. They saw how those investments that they've made over the past before the pandemic really paid off and then continued to accelerate them.
So I believe they will see very similar patterns of what they need to do for their customers. And part of that is, again, the experience, the personalization, the development of trust and the agility that's required to deliver it.
Mark Jones
They say, "Never waste a good crisis," and so there's lessons being learned, right? You mentioned COVID. We went through the crisis, we learned and the companies that lent into that as an investment opportunity, generally speaking, were the ones that came out a little bit better off.
Chris Young
Totally agree.
Mark Jones
What's your advice? I love advice for marketers who are looking in this sector in financial services, trying to keep up we've been talking about and looking to make sure that they're able to push the organisations forward, not just treading water. What's the best approach that you've seen from a global point of view?
Chris Young
I think you can get caught up quickly in a lot of these edge case-type capabilities, the flashy AI-type things. And I think it's very difficult for this industry that's risk averse to really just allow this experimentation. What I've seen really successful are just the arduous task of building the proper foundation. So I've worked with a company that is now one of our best, as an example. And when I first met with them, they were a single-application company and they were years behind. I think they were using TeamSite for their website, but they went through a real strategic, multiyear process in terms of, "How are we going to organise the marketing function? What are the types of capabilities that we need? What is the three-year roadmap of when we implement these types of ..." And that allowed them to make a massive leapfrog against companies that there were previously behind. Because if this foundation is set, if you have the proper governance in place, if you have the right roles and responsibilities and skill sets, they have something called a martech enablement team. Isn't that sort of what we're supposed to be doing? Here's like-
Mark Jones
I was going to say, shouldn't everyone have one or...?
Chris Young
Shouldn't everyone have them and also-
Mark Jones
Or be part of an existing team? Yeah.
Chris Young
That's right. And my role is simply to train as many of these individuals. I have targets for that.
Mark Jones
Yes.
Chris Young
Change management is another huge barrier. And we had another Australian superannuation firm present with me in summit, AMP. It's a public presentation. They had a dedicated change manager. Change management, well, let's have a dedicated role that facilitates that.
Mark Jones
Yeah, yeah.
Chris Young
But back to the point is this is an industry that if you take the right initial steps, you will be able to run much faster and much further with that foundation.
Mark Jones
Are you seeing more of these centres of excellence in marketing come through in different organisations?
Chris Young
Absolutely. I think the migration path is, let's call it for personalization. Marketing might be responsible for it.
Mark Jones
Okay.
Chris Young
Then you start seeing centralised capabilities and analytics team and optimization team, a data management team. And then there's a recognition that these teams have to basically interoperate to become these centres of excellence. But for our most sophisticated customers, there's a recognition, and by the way, that's a big step to get to the COE phase. But then there's this phase where the COE is never going to overtake the size of the company. It's never going to be as big as other departments. It's a finite size and ultimately it reaches its capacity if the COE executes on behalf of the entire enterprise.
So ultimately the COE has to move from, I do everything to I then scale, provision, and govern. And that is also a very tough migration. These are individuals like I'm used to setting up every test. You don't need to, you just have to create standards and best practises and scale it. And then on the other side of that, you have individuals within these business units that are desperate to use these tools and independently, have very clear swim lanes of where they operate that don't intersect with others that should be using these capabilities independently. So there's this whole push and pull between how do I enable these users? How do I scale the correct use of these applications?
But that's just again a maturity element. Point bringing it all the way back to AI, isn't this where this happens? So the skill sets become easier to train. The brand guidelines, the governance and use of data is set and a lot of the capabilities that we have that we're talking about, GenStudio for performance marketing or even things like Adobe Express, that's the end game. Scaling that to the people that want to rapidly experiment with email or social or the person in a local branch that wants to just produce an eight and a half by 11 poster for something local that they can't do normally.
Mark Jones
I mean, it just sounds like the normal... If you're like a mirror of the growth of a professional, you grow from doing the work, managing the work, to then leading the work, right?
Chris Young
That's a great analogy. That's a great analogy.
Mark Jones
And also be friends with a change management person.
Chris Young
You've got to be friends with a change, as we all know.
Mark Jones
And HR.
Chris Young
Definitely. Who do you not have? And the CFO.
Mark Jones
Okay. So everyone, there we go.
Chris Young
Friends with everybody, basically.
Mark Jones
Okay. Chris Young, thanks for your time.
Chris Young
Oh, thanks very much for having me.
Mark Jones:
I want to pick up on one thing at the end here as we think about attention to detail and it's something that we talked about with Chris because when it comes to customers, we need to really understand how they're going day to day, moment to moment, and transaction to transaction. What's actually going on? How can I support this experience? If you're in the banking sector, this question of value comes to the fore. And you need to be owning that in the marketing team. You've got to be having a team around you that understands this mission. And as Chris was saying to reflect that back into the organisation. How are they thinking and feeling? How they're responding? And how can we sustainably stay connected to this idea of attention to detail? So take that as a great bit of wisdom and advice, and I hope you go well. That's it for this episode of the CMO Show. Thanks for joining us. Until next time.