CXO CASE INSIGHT STUDY

Tell me more about Canva and the services it offers.

Launched in 2013, we’ re an all-in-one platform for visual communication and collaboration, built to empower everyone to design. Canva’ s Visual Suite has become ubiquitous with individuals, teams and enterprises alike – used in more than 190 countries and by more than 95 % of the Fortune 500, including household names from Europe like Tecnocasa, and global enterprises like Salesforce. From novices to creative professionals, our platform ensures users have what they need to create a wide range of visual content.

Within our platform, we offer a comprehensive library of designer-made templates and content, along with a suite of products and proprietary AI tools that elevate yet simplify how individuals and enterprise teams create, collaborate and communicate. Whether you’ re a salesperson crafting impactful client presentations, a marketer launching multi-channel campaigns at speed or an HR Manager onboarding new hires with engaging training materials, Canva is increasingly being used for visual communication at work.

Today, over 230 million people use our platform every month. With more than 367 designs created every second( and over 35 billion designs created since launching), we’ re experiencing rapid growth as more people turn to Canva to create content. The growing global adoption across the world’ s most influential companies has helped to propel us to achieve more than US $ 3 billion in annualised revenue, marking an increase of more than 30 % over the last year.

How are businesses using AI to understand customer behaviour?

Understanding customer behaviour is all about understanding what makes customers tick. And to do that, it’ s about working with and unpacking data. Whether it’ s understanding purchase history, social media engagement, feedback to chatbots, AI can spot patterns and trends in data that would take humans weeks to unpick. For example, we’ re seeing marketing teams leverage AI to turn data into visually appealing and easily digestible charts or entire presentations. According to a recent report Canva launched, it was found that 89 % of sales and marketing workers use data weekly, yet two-thirds( 66 %) feel anxious doing so. An AI backed approach means less guesswork and more precision.

At Canva Create this year, we introduced new AI-powered tools like Magic Charts, Canva Code, Canva Sheets and Canva AI, all designed to make working with complex data more intuitive and to unlock creativity in the workplace. Canva Sheets simplifies data-driven work with AI features like Magic Insights, which scans datasets to highlight key patterns and takeaways, and Data Connectors, which import data from other online sources. This makes it easier for businesses to bring data to life and spot opportunities that matter.

ourselves within the sales team at Canva: AI-driven insights shape everything from product development right through to the way we communicate, helping us stay one step ahead and target the right audiences with certain campaigns.

How can marketers use AI without losing creativity?

There’ s a misconception that AI replaces creativity, but we see it as a catalyst. AI takes care of the busy work, whether that’ s reorganising meeting notes or turning a whiteboard of ideas into a captivating pitch deck so that marketers can focus on what they do best: bringing ideas to life. What’ s important is what we’ re seeing mostly with our customers: successful teams are the ones that use AI as a starting point rather than the finished product. According to our recent State of Marketing & AI report, 85 % of marketing and creative leaders trust GenAI tools, yet 95 % still apply human oversight, reviewing and refining outputs in ways that ensure accuracy, quality and brand consistency.

The key is to treat AI as a creative partner, not a shortcut. It can spark inspiration, speed up workflows and free up time for the kind of thinking that machines simply can’ t replicate. As an example: take a marketing campaign within a global organisation, with teams scattered across multiple markets, working in multiple languages. For a social media post to be edited, translated and sent across teams, this can take hours. But what we’ re seeing is AI can become that partner – almost an assistant – where at the click of a button, assets can be translated, re-formatted and, importantly, scaled with ease. Suddenly a time-consuming piece of work can be done in an instant, leaving more time and space for creativity and ideation.

However, just as important as creativity is honesty. To avoid‘ AI glazing’, I believe AI shouldn’ t simply agree with every idea, but should act as a trusted partner, offering constructive feedback and keeping the focus on empowering users, not just flattering them.

We’ re seeing more that AI gives teams a clearer picture of each customer journey, often highlighting needs or pain points that might otherwise get missed. It’ s something we’ re seeing

Ultimately, creativity still comes from people, they just now have more space, capacity and wider perspective to explore and experiment with their ideas.

www. intelligentcxo. com

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