Inside Adobe and LinkedIn's Upskilling Partnership

Adobe and LinkedIn have launched a training programme to help organisations prepare their marketing teams for automation and increased AI use.

According to the LinkedIn Economic Graph, AI skills are the number one area of focus for marketing professionals. The share of marketing job postings requiring AI literacy skills has more than doubled year-over-year.

The two companies have announced a partnership to deliver AI essentials for marketers. Courses are designed for individuals at any stage of their career and feature short-form learning formats to support flexible training alongside daily workflows.

Upskilling the marketing workforce

"Marketers everywhere are eager to embrace AI but need the right skills to do it with confidence," says Rachel Thornton, Chief Marketing Officer of Adobe Enterprise. "AI Essentials for Marketers is about more than mastering new tools; it's about reimagining what creativity, marketing strategy and customer relationships look like in an AI-powered era."

According to Rachel, marketers can now access through the partnership hundreds of hours of content, training, videos and expertise from a global community of marketers and technologists who are using and shaping AI and marketing tools and products.

"Training and reskilling are top of mind for CMOs and at Adobe we are excited to partner with LinkedIn to make it easier and faster for teams to learn and train on what's next for marketing, creativity and AI," she continues.

Role-based training courses

The AI Essentials for Marketers initiative builds on prior commitments made by Adobe through its Digital Academy, which looks to foster a diverse and inclusive workforce through modern apprenticeships.

The programme will include four role-based courses, available in 47 languages. It will span key marketing functions that have been based on LinkedIn's economic graph data and designed by Brand Works.

Learners will cover subjects such as digital marketing, content and creative, social and communications and data analytics. They will gain practical knowledge through expert insights, real-world customer case studies and marketing research conducted by Adobe and LinkedIn.

"Together with Adobe, we're helping make AI skills accessible to every marketer – not just technical specialists – through scalable, practical learning designed for the realities of modern work," says Jessica Jensen, Chief Marketing Officer of LinkedIn.

Automation threat to roles

Marketing roles are being impacted by developments in AI, with Anthropic's Labour Market Impacts Report finding that nearly two-thirds of tasks performed by marketing professionals are at risk of being automated.

According to the report, 64.8% of marketing tasks are likely to be replaceable by AI. It ranked market research analysts and marketing specialists at fifth place in a list of 800 roles at risk of AI job displacement.

Daniela Amodei, President and Co-Founder of Anthropic, has previously said that she believes employees in industries impacted by AI such as marketing should prioritise the development of soft skills.

She told ABC News: “I continue to believe that humans plus AI together actually create more meaningful work, more challenging work, more interesting work, high-productivity jobs. 

“And then I think it will also open the aperture to a lot of access and opportunity for many people.”