Adobe Summit in London: Our live blog
2 p.m: We end the day in London with a short roundup (see below). The conference here is coming to an end, at 4 pm the doors of the Excel halls close. Tonight the plane goes back to Zurich. Thanks a lot for reading along - it was fun to report for you !1 p.m: We were able to use the time after the sneaks to talk at length with Jeff Allen, Senior Director Product Marketing Adobe Analytics. In our conversation with Jeff, we reviewed what we had heard over the past day and a half - and I, editor Johannes Hapig, would now like to try to put it all into perspective for you. The following sentences are therefore colored by some personal reflections.Adobe focused on customer experience at the London Summit 2018. The company plans to make it even easier for its customers to collect, analyze and interpret customer data - all with the aim of making every customer feel personally addressed all the time.A gas station attendant should know that a customer is in for a free car wash if they hand in their loyalty card or give their name. Flight attendants should know their passengers' birthdays - and whether they drank alcohol on previous flights so that they can serve them champagne or lemonade. In short, what used to require personnel who knew and remembered the customer, Adobe envisions will soon require only frictionless algorithms.Dear readers: You all appreciate the waiter who always brings you two sugars with your espresso or the greengrocer who always reserves you a basket of strawberries - transferring this customer experience, this feeling of personal appreciation, to large corporations and their customer contacts is the goal of numerous Adobe programs. At the same time, Adobe is planning to simplify the use of creativity tools. Along with the customer experience aspect, this has been one of the very important points of the past day and a half - and I was also able to discuss this with Jeff Allen. The trend that Adobe wants to support is to move towards "hybrid" employees in companies - creativity and analysis should not run in parallel but independently, but should be increasingly interwoven.You can see this concretely in the fact that programs like Photoshop are being simplified. Artificial intelligence now takes care of tasks that Photoshop professionals used to have to solve by hand in just a few minutes. In the field of analysis, a sneak peek today showed possibilities for preparing data three-dimensionally in virtual reality; analyzing and immediately correcting anomalies in an almost playful and "sexy" way. In short: In the future, even non-designers should be able to do qualitatively proper design, even non-analysts should be able to handle data relatively easily. According to the company's management, marketeers and creatives should not worry that they will be replaced by new digital tools and artificial intelligence - it is simply a matter of allowing people to concentrate again on what is really important.
--10:30 a.m: It is time for Sneaks. Adobe presents developments from their labs - not yet completely ready for the market, but promising. Comedian and actor Rob Brydon supports the presentation with a lot of humor. Some highlights of the presentation:-. Experience AnalyticsProgram for evaluating customer experiences that can combine online and offline data. Example is the purchase of a swimsuit - experience analytics should make it possible to trace the customer's journey from online research to offline purchase. MasterPlan: A campaign tool that not only suggests images for stores according to tested patterns, but also lets you create matching marketing mails.- See and ShopSuppose a visitor to a hiking blog sees a pair of outdoor pants in a photo. But the blogger has not mentioned or linked them. With the help of AI Sensei, it should be possible to insert product links after the fact - "to make engaging moments shopable. It is then no longer necessary to link everything manually for followers - AI helps and makes the whole thing easier. VideoAdAIWith the help of millions of matches, the Sensei AI can subsequently add metadata to advertising videos - and automatically ensure that they are played to the right audience. At the same time, advertising videos whose performance is not convincing on all channels can be individually adapted to individual channels. The Sensei AI takes care of this, too, without human interaction. If this is desired, it is still possible.
--10:30 a.m: It is time for Sneaks. Adobe presents developments from their labs - not yet completely ready for the market, but promising. Comedian and actor Rob Brydon supports the presentation with a lot of humor. Some highlights of the presentation:-. Experience AnalyticsProgram for evaluating customer experiences that can combine online and offline data. Example is the purchase of a swimsuit - experience analytics should make it possible to trace the customer's journey from online research to offline purchase. MasterPlan: A campaign tool that not only suggests images for stores according to tested patterns, but also lets you create matching marketing mails.- See and ShopSuppose a visitor to a hiking blog sees a pair of outdoor pants in a photo. But the blogger has not mentioned or linked them. With the help of AI Sensei, it should be possible to insert product links after the fact - "to make engaging moments shopable. It is then no longer necessary to link everything manually for followers - AI helps and makes the whole thing easier. VideoAdAIWith the help of millions of matches, the Sensei AI can subsequently add metadata to advertising videos - and automatically ensure that they are played to the right audience. At the same time, advertising videos whose performance is not convincing on all channels can be individually adapted to individual channels. The Sensei AI takes care of this, too, without human interaction. If this is desired, it is still possible.
--10 a.m: Victoria Beckham is here. The fashion designer, footballer's wife and former girl group singer may seem like a somewhat unusual keynote speaker for the Adobe Summit. Not only is Beckham exceptionally reflective, humorous, and eloquent about the end of her musical career and building her fashion brand, she also has sage advice on customer experience - in retail and beyond.For her, the successful businesswoman says, the focus is always on communicating with her customers - whether digitally via website and chat or via social media such as Instagram, or in her retail stores, where she herself likes to help out. A customer experience is successful when customers feel special and important afterwards.
--9:30 a.m: Heavyweight Anthony Joshua talks about inspiration and the importance of personal discipline - important in sports as in business. Interviewer Gabby Logan from BBC Sport asks him if he enjoys his career - Joshua addresses the audience directly: "I think I'll enjoy it more when I'm retired. Right now it is always the next goal. If you want to be really successful, there is hardly any time to relax."
--9:15 a.m: Adobe presents the Experience League - a kind of self-learning portal that explains Adobe products on two tracks. On the one hand, you can see examples of successful campaigns that were realized with Adobe tools - on the other hand, the algorithms of the Experience League recommend training courses, livestreams and expert support based on the behavior and needs of the users. If you want to take a look, you can download the here do
--9 a.m: Day 2 ! We are looking forward to Victoria Beckham - stay tuned for exciting stories from London!5 p.m: With a few impressions from the Excel Hall in London's Docklands, we say goodbye to the evening. Tomorrow we will continue with the talk of pop icon Victoria Beckham, the speech of heavyweight Anthony Joshua and many other inputs. Of course live again on m-k.ch !4:30 p.m: A great interview with Nicolas Mériel, Senior Digital Strategist at Swisscom, just ended. He is one of the speakers at the Adobe Summit and talked to MK about the topic of customer experience, which is a particular focus here in London.At Swisscom, says Mériel, they are experimenting with how customer data can be used for marketing - but want to proceed respectfully. Instead of flooding customers with non-targeted advertising, the idea is to offer tailored suggestions. It is conceivable - but still a dream of the future - that an additional option for a mobile subscription could be offered automatically, for example, if this is indicated by evaluable user behavior. The system would then recognize a need that the customer himself does not yet have. At the same time, it would have to understand which contract options the customer has already taken out - so as not to offer something that is already covered. Frustration on the part of the customer, says Mériel, should be avoided at all costs.Particularly exciting in the conversation was his attitude to creativity. Nicolas Mériel supports the Adobe leadership's course of focusing on hybrid personnel in companies: It is becoming increasingly important for companies to look for people who bring both analytical and creative skills to their work. In other words, people who know what to do with both Photoshop and Excel. However, even though Adobe is developing smart tools that enable synergies, there is still a need for experts in the individual areas.
--4:00 pm: We were absent for a while - but have a good excuse: First, there was an exciting Twitter chat with interesting German-speaking colleagues, which you can follow under the hashtag #SummitChatDE you are welcome to read again. We journalists only had about one minute for each question - but the answers are really impressive, I think.--12:10 PM: Q&A with Brad Rencher, EVP & GM, Digital Business; Shantanu Narayen, President and CEO; and Abhay Parasnis, EVP & CTO. The three Adobe leaders talk about innovations Adobe will unveil during the London Summit. Here are some key topics:New opportunities for cooperation within companies. In the future, designers and marketeers should work together more smoothly, and designers should even be able to perform marketing tasks themselves. According to Brand Renchner, this requires the creation of low-threshold marketing tools that can be used intuitively, and it is fitting that the Adobe Experience Cloud is no longer used only by branders - but also by stakeholders in various departments of a company. Customer data and what can be derived from it are not only important for marketing - because the perfect customer experience is a holistic matter that concerns all employees.Artificial Intelligence (AI). Abhay Parasnis talks about how artificial intelligence (AI) will make many software programs easier to use. It will take much less specific program knowledge to achieve interesting and high-quality results with software - because AI will take a large part of the effort away from the user. AI will also handle repetitive tasks in the future, leaving more room for creativity for human users."Enhancing creativity" is a motto that you hear from the speakers again and again anyway. Brad Rencher and Shantanu Narayen respond to a critical question from the audience - namely, whether creativity in connection with AI does not merely mean millions of A/B tests - accordingly: They believe that technologies such as Adobe's "Sensei" lead to freeing up resources for creativity.The future role of agencies. That's why advertising agencies are still needed to create concepts and plans to drive marketing. According to the Adobe manager, a campaign based entirely on artificial intelligence from A to Z is neither desirable nor realistic - the human factor remains significant, the concentration of the "human resource" would simply shift.The EU GDPR. The EU General Data Protection Regulation comes into force on May 25. Adobe has prepared itself for this with various tools, but does not see its primary task as providing these tools to competitors. According to Shantanu Narayen, each company must decide for itself how to deal with the new EU directives.What comes after touchscreens? Abhay Parasnis believes that voice and visual controls will also become increasingly important in the design sector. They even have the potential to replace the touchscreen - the revolutionary technology of the past decade, according to Parasnis. He paints an interesting picture of a design process: if someone wants to design a template, he says it should soon be possible to ask the computer for initial drafts via voice control. Quite intuitively: "I want to say put a mountain in front of a black background, maybe add some water," says Parasnis' thought process, "and then the system provides initial suggestions that I can freely work with."
--At 14:50 Swiss time MK is taking part in a Twitter chat on the topic of digital marketing. Anyone who wants to read along is welcome to do so viahttps://twitter.com/MKRedaktionsehr. Or just keep your eyes open for the hashtag #SummitChatDE!10:15 AM: Steve Martin, Senior Account Solutions Consultant at Adobe, presents a customer case from Adobe partner Shell: New technology could provide loyalty program customers with perfect offers at any time. In the customer case, the imaginary customer Tom has an urgent need to wash his car - and the Shell database suspects this because it knows his habits. It knows that Tom is overdue for a car wash. The next time he goes to fill up, the service station employee suggests a free wash if Tom pays for his gas.Developing and synchronizing processes like this, he says, is a perfect way not only to satisfy customers - but to surprise them again and again with comparatively few resources.
--4:00 pm: We were absent for a while - but have a good excuse: First, there was an exciting Twitter chat with interesting German-speaking colleagues, which you can follow under the hashtag 
--At 14:50 Swiss time MK is taking part in a Twitter chat on the topic of digital marketing. Anyone who wants to read along is welcome to do so viahttps://twitter.com/MKRedaktionsehr. Or just keep your eyes open for the hashtag #SummitChatDE!10:15 AM: Steve Martin, Senior Account Solutions Consultant at Adobe, presents a customer case from Adobe partner Shell: New technology could provide loyalty program customers with perfect offers at any time. In the customer case, the imaginary customer Tom has an urgent need to wash his car - and the Shell database suspects this because it knows his habits. It knows that Tom is overdue for a car wash. The next time he goes to fill up, the service station employee suggests a free wash if Tom pays for his gas.Developing and synchronizing processes like this, he says, is a perfect way not only to satisfy customers - but to surprise them again and again with comparatively few resources.
--10:00 AM: "Embrace the speed of change": that's the bottom line from Clarie Cronin, Virgin's CMO Atlantic. Digital transformation in marketing has never been as fast as it is today - and yet it will never be as slow as it is today. A contradiction? No, if you look at it closely. What Cronin means is that developments that seem rapid to us today are likely only a harbinger of digital revolutions to come. Marketeers shouldn't make the mistake of fighting against it - they should be more careful. "if you try to fight change, you will fail" Cronin points out.--9:35: "Are you an experience maker?"Brad Rencher, EVP&GM, Digital Business at Adobe, urges professionals not to settle for the solutions and products that companies (including his employer) put in front of them. Adobe doesn't claim to be celebrated for innovation - it's about "experience makers" at every level of a company's hierarchy engaging with customer experiences. They should be so passionate and customer-focused that any new innovation is initially met with skepticism.
--9:15 AM: Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen welcomes the participants and talks about the importance of personalized digital marketing. The holy grail for marketers, he says, is the perfectly tailored experience for each customer - Adobe is working with the advancement of artificial intelligence, among other things. "Sensei" is exactly that. We should still hear a lot about "Sensei" today.
--8:50 AM: Starting the day refreshed and in a good mood (but the exhaustion is probably still coming) ... here's a snapshot of the author, MK editor Johannes Hapig. I'm in London on behalf of the editorial team and look forward to providing you with info and insights.
--8:50 AM: First get lost ... the Excel area is so big that it is not so easy to find everything...
--8:45 AM: The calm before the storm. At Excel London, a conference center in Docklands, about 6,000 professionals, journalists, and bloggers will gather for Adobe Summit 2018. In addition to high-profile speakers such as Victoria Beckham and heavyweight Anthony Joshua appearing on Friday, the keynotes from Adobe executives are most eagerly anticipated. What digital marketing innovations will the company unveil?
