The Experience Business and TV on the Cloud — Adobe Summit 2017

In Las Vegas last week, IBM and Adobe both revealed where the winds are blowing their marketing clouds. The companies held nearly simultaneous summits, and each one offered a new marketing paradigm along with new capabilities that would not have been imaginable a few years ago. This week, I'm collecting my thoughts on Adobe. Next week, I'll talk about IBM. The Experience Business On top of bringing out Peyton Manning, Ryan Gosling and Penn & Teller ... [caption id="attachment_63989" align="aligncenter" width="500"] I knew who I was there to see.[/caption] ... Adobe announced a transformed version of its cloud. According to Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen, transformation is all or nothing. You either commit to it, or you don't achieve it. And Adobe came to Vegas to commit to the "Experience Business." What Adobe means is that successful businesses must be committed not to their products, culture or business processes, but to the customer experience. According to Adobe EVP Brad Rencher, consumers have become very demanding. Connecting with them is not about the things companies are selling, but about the experiences they're delivering. "A great experience doesn't just save time for your customers," says Rencher, "it maximizes the time they spend with your brand." What does an experience business look like to customers? Will know me and respect me. Will speak in one voice. Will make technology transparent and let's the consumer dry the terms of our interaction. Will delight me at every turn because it knows that today's experience, although it wows me today, will disappoint me tomorrow. According to Rencher, there are four imperatives for the company to be able to deliver those experiences: Focus on context: Not just are they shopping, but where, when and why are they shopping? What's the context? Tech can help deliver context at scale, but you must develop your data strategy into a context strategy in order to do that. Design for speed and scale, across your company: Rethink your entire content supply chain so it can deliver exactly the right content for the context of their visit. Real-time response is essential: "Milliseconds make the journey," said Rencher. It is essential that you can respond to your customers in real-time (still at scale) in order to be able to leverage what you know about the context of their visit. Put customers first: Your content and other responses should match what the customer needs regardless of contact channels or your own silos. Systems integration is key to this as channels expand. "From CEO to the newest hire, we are all responsible for the experience," said Rencher, "and fractured technology doesn't get you there." Every vendor conference has it's share of spin, but I don't think Adobe is off-base on this concept. The best businesses are remembered for the experiences they provide. For example, later in the conference I caught a session where Southwest said "We were always an experience business, we just happen to fly people around too." Adobe's offering is designed to give you the tools to do that easier. And in order to better align their tools with those goals, they announced a new organization and several new pieces for their cloud. Adobe Experience Cloud ... Now With TV! [caption id="attachment_63988" align="aligncenter" width="500"] The Adobe Experience Cloud and it's structure.[/caption] "Experience Cloud is where you do the work of the experience business," said Rencher. And it's now the name of the entire enterprise side of the Adobe cloud. Underneath Experience Cloud, you have the enterprise Document and Creative clouds, along with Marketing Cloud, Analytics Cloud and the new Advertising Cloud. Sensei Within the Experience Cloud, marketers not only have access to all of those components, but also to a new AI, machine-learning digital assistant system called Sensei. Sensei is not a single AI entity, but a category of learning, artificial intelligence tools that help marketers spot trends and anomalies, automate some marketing processes and help with the dirty work of crunching numbers and planning marketing. Advertising Cloud The new Advertising Cloud is probably the most exciting addition to the Adobe cloud. This tool leverages Adobe's recent acquisition of TubeMogul's programmatic advertising software to allow all of your media planning and buying to be integrated into one solution. That includes both digital marketing and in-line television ads, and marks the first time I know of that TV ad buying can sit in your marketing automation platform and be accountable in the way. To power that, Adobe is also launching its own, independent advertising network that you'll be able to access through the app. A Wrap Those were my highlights of the Adobe Summit. Were you there or following along from home? Did I miss anything that impressed you? If so, let us know in the comments.

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The Experience Business and TV on the Cloud — Adobe Summit 2017

The Experience Business

Thorin McGee

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Thorin McGee