Catalyzing on-brand content creation.

Modern consumers expect personalized digital experiences delivered at breakneck speed — and as the infrastructure powering many of those experiences, Lumen Technologies felt that pressure acutely. Meeting the nonstop demand for customized, on-brand content had become increasingly complex.

Lumen needed a catalyst — a way to scale creation without adding chaos. Led by Moria Fredrickson, vice president of brand and DX, the Fortune 500 provider found that catalyst in Adobe Express.

Building on its Adobe-powered content supply chain, Lumen rolled out Adobe Express to help teams create brand-aligned content quickly and confidently. What followed was a step-change in brand impact, efficiency, and creative capacity.

But for Fredrickson and her teams, the transformation wasn’t just about performance gains. It was about rediscovering joy, momentum, and humanity in their creative work, even as expectations continued to rise.

Scaling impact while minimizing chaos.

Content that deviates from brand guidelines goes by many names. To Fredrickson, brand-sapping was known as “rogue creative,” and it ranges from social ads built with unapproved tools to blog posts with messaging that missed the mark. Left unchecked, this kind of content chaos can become both a brand and business risk — eroding consistency, slowing execution, and diluting impact.

As Lumen strategists and creatives hustled to meet skyrocketing content demands, vital brand commitments began to slip. Fredrickson and her colleagues quickly discovered that creating and distributing content across countless digital touchpoints is hard — but scaling that content without breaking brand guardrails is even harder.

“We have to make sure that every single touchpoint matters,” Fredrickson says. Every interaction needed to feel uniquely “Lumen” — catering to the right persona, journey stage, and vertical while bringing the brand’s story to life. Missing even one touchpoint would diminish brand equity, weaken the brand narrative, and risk confusing or alienating the very customers Lumen was on a mission to win over.

Video content posed a particular challenge. As the top performing content type, it was in high demand — but without scalable production processes, Lumen was struggling to keep up. Specialized teams spent weeks editing videos, leading to delays and missed deadlines.

Fredrickson knew it was time to pivot. In search of a way to improve productivity while preserving brand strength, Lumen turned to Adobe Express.

Supercharging an Adobe-powered content supply chain.

Lumen’s existing content workflow is strong. Adobe Firefly helps teams generate on-brand iconography, Adobe Workfront streamlines content creation and approvals, and Adobe GenStudio for Performance Marketing allows teams to quickly adapt creative across industries, verticals, and more.

Adobe Express gives Lumen’s content engine extra horsepower, enabling creatives and strategists to scale without sacrificing quality. With locked templates and brand kits, teams spanning growth, solution, and mass marketing can now self-serve while maintaining brand control.

The impact was immediate. Before the pivot, Fredrickson’s teams faced a constant tradeoff — rush content themselves and risk slipping off‑brand or wait on specialists and risk bottlenecks. With the new workflow, teams produce polished, on‑brand assets quickly and independently using Workfront’s built-in approval flows — no delays, no friction, and no rogue creative.

Adobe Express also helps Lumen democratize the creative process, turning brand guidelines designed for specialists into something anyone can apply. Together, these improvements strengthened Lumen’s content supply chain — increasing speed to market, enhancing brand consistency, enabling content reuse, and reducing production costs at scale.

Generating brand lift with sky-high ROI.

Powered by its enhanced workflows, Lumen increased brand familiarity by 44% year over year — while allocating only 1% of its revenue to paid campaigns. These outsized brand gains were largely due to its streamlined and scalable content processes.

By optimizing production and enabling self-service, Lumen reduced reliance on specialized resources and lowered the cost of creating and scaling content. Fredrickson estimates that Lumen has saved $5 million via its new production workflows, which incorporate Adobe Firefly Custom Models within Adobe Express to slash production times by an average of 90%.

The results are becoming evident in Lumen’s day-to-day operations as well. Video editing that took weeks now takes mere hours, enabling faster content delivery and eliminating bottlenecks. With Adobe Express, Fredrickson says, “Our product experts can now record their own video, drop in the pieces they need, and add the brand polish we’d been missing — without waiting on a video specialist.”

Experts aren’t the only ones benefiting. This modular approach allows teams to build content components they can easily reuse and adapt across campaigns, channels, and audiences. This matters because content is a company-wide need, not just a marketing function.

Teams ranging from product to partner marketing can work independently, watching their creative visions come to life with minimal friction. Lumen’s workflows now better reflect the human creative process, allowing employees to spend less time wrestling with technical issues and more time creating impactful campaigns.

“For our field marketing teams, Adobe Express has become essential — they can move at the speed of the business without sacrificing the brand,” says Fredrickson.

Empowered teams and a thriving culture.

With its revitalized creative excellence and efficiency, Lumen is shifting its focus to real-time marketing, deeper personalization, and higher impact strategic work. Equipped with the Adobe product suite, Fredrickson and her colleagues have discovered more joy and humanity in their daily efforts.

“Adobe Express has opened up space for my team to grow — not just in what they create, but where they’re headed in their careers,” Fredrickson says.

Both Lumen and its teams are advancing in lockstep — the company as the enterprise-ready backbone of the AI economy, and its employees as the creative and strategic engine driving the work forward.

Try Adobe Express for Business, the quick and easy app for creating and scaling on-brand content.

Pierre Tapia is Head of B2B Product Marketing for Adobe Express, bringing over a decade of experience in B2B software. With a deep passion for empowering teams through technology, Pierre is dedicated to helping organizations reclaim their creative power and drive impact in their industries.

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