When content demand outpaces headcount.

The human + AI operating model.

For Fredrickson and her team, this new process begins with the decisions only people can make. Campaign teams define the customer, strategy, story, and creative direction. Designers build the core visual system in Adobe Creative Cloud while copywriters and strategists shape the messaging.

From there, every step in the content supply chain shares the same brand context, audience data, and approval workflow — so what the creative team sets in motion stays connected as it scales across channels and teams.

The brief flows into Adobe Workfront, where connected workflows automate project setup, task coordination, and approvals — giving project managers and teams earlier visibility without chasing updates. That integration alone moved workflows​ ​roughly 50% faster by eliminating the lag between briefing and project setup.

With the creative direction set, designers use Adobe Firefly Custom Models to extend approved concepts across formats and audiences. Because the model is trained on Lumen’s approved brand assets, teams produce on-brand variations instead of correcting generic outputs later, saving approximately 70 hours per campaign concept. Designers remain responsible for the creative idea and quality, while AI accelerates the production that follows.

Approved copy, imagery, and templates then move into Adobe GenStudio for Performance Marketing, where content marketers can quickly adapt campaign variations for different personas and channels. Adobe Real-Time CDP brings together customer data and audience segments, while Adobe Target helps personalize and optimize experiences in market. Together, they connect audience intelligence with content and performance insights to help marketers deliver more relevant experiences.

As more of Lumen’s growth, solution, and mass marketing teams take part in content creation, Adobe Express for Business makes brand standards easy for non-designers to apply. Locked templates and brand kits allow them to create on-brand content quickly and confidently. Approvals route through Workfront, while assets feed into GenStudio for Performance Marketing to keep the content supply chain connected.

“We didn’t drop AI on top of the old process; we redesigned the process around it,” Asdourian says. “AI handles the rote work, while our people own the idea, the story, and the judgment about what’s good. Humans lead; agents accelerate.”

Turning greater capacity into lasting momentum.

Lumen’s AI-powered workflow is changing both the pace of production and the work people have time to pursue. Automated content production through Adobe Firefly Creative Production for enterprise ​​​​​​has brought creative production in-house, saving an estimated $5 million annually. People retain control of creative direction, review, and approval, while automation reduces repetitive production work, and that capacity can be redirected toward higher-value creative and marketing work.

Firefly Creative Production for enterprise is a key part of that shift, bringing repeatable creative production workflows in-house and automating work that previously required teams to manually build and adapt asset after asset. Once creative direction is established and core assets are approved, Lumen can use those workflows to scale multiple variations of creative across audiences and channels without requiring creative resources to grow at the same rate.

“The hidden win is how Adobe lets us combine the ingenuity of our team with the processing power of AI, so each can focus on the work they do best,” Fredrickson says. “That has allowed our teams to unlock their creativity in new ways, with more time to innovate, grow, and think strategically.”

Linear handoffs have given way to a connected, real-time workflow that keeps creatives, marketers, operations teams, and AI systems aligned from concept through execution.

As teams reclaim that capacity, they can scale content without scaling the production burden. Lumen has achieved a 15-fold increase ​in ​social content scale, with content marketers producing email campaigns 5 to 10 times faster than before. That model is already supporting business growth. Lumen’s order-booked sales increased 292% in the first half of 2026 compared with the same period in 2025.

Leading into the agentic era.

Looking ahead, Lumen plans to deepen AI-powered personalization and testing through Adobe Target and Firefly; expand GenStudio for Performance Marketing into additional channels, including early work on AI-driven CTV ad creation; and extend Adobe Firefly Services and APIs. As Adobe adds capabilities such as Adobe Brand Intelligence, ​​​​AI Collaborators in Adobe Workfront, and Adobe CX Enterprise Coworker, Lumen sees an opportunity to connect intelligence across even more of its planning, production, and optimization workflows.

“Where we’re headed is a human plus AI advantage that runs across everything,” Asdourian says. “The principle doesn’t change as we scale — Coworker agentic workflows carry orchestration, and our people carry the ideas.”

By building this model inside its own marketing organization, Lumen is bringing its operations closer ​to the future it helps customers create. Humans lead; agents accelerate — and Lumen is living that principle before it asks anyone else to.