Day two at Adobe Summit in Las Vegas was case study day with B&T digging into a a range of specific use cases for Adobe’s ever-expanding suite of marketing automation solutions.
The key purpose of Adobe’s innovations, according to its own rhetoric, is to achieve personalisation at scale. Adobe’s use of agentic AI is defining customer journey orchestration and is transforming the way both business to consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) brands interact with each of their customers with a personalised approach. Stepping back quickly for those not down with the latest buzzword, ‘agentic AI’ is artificial intelligence systems that operate with a degree of autonomy, making decisions and taking actions to achieve specific goals without constant human intervention.
An array of Adobe’s most strategic clients took to the Summit stage to discuss how using Adobe’s applications can not only benefit the customer journey and support advertisers to target segments more effectively, but also can facilitate an efficient and cost-effective content supply chain.
Nine
One Australian client benefitting from the Adobe Experience Platform (AEP) technology is Nine. Angelo Sinibaldi, director – data commercialisation and strategy, Nine, spoke to B&T in Las Vegas about how AEP is enabling Nine to grow its digital revenue while allowing brand advertisers to safely and effectively connect to their audiences.
According to Sinibaldi, one of the key benefits of AEP for Nine is the data governance functionality. Particularly when working with advertiser’s first-party data. Sinibaldi explained that “data governance is a really key selling point. The ability to say that we can apply data governance labels and protect their data is key – it gives an extra level of assurance”.
Sinibaldi also discussed the value of having the ability to recognise and monetise a new Nine user within AEP in real-time ‘this means that when you sign up to watch the Australian Open, we’re putting you into a segment so you become targetable by the end of the day.’ The benefits have lead to Nine growing data revenues by 265 per cent over 4 years.
Marriott International
From a global perspective, Hilary Cook, VP & global head of marketing orchestration, Marriott International took to the keynote stage to ask the question: “Are we as marketers truly ready to take advantage of Adobe’s innovations? I’m going to say what we’re all thinking, which is that we’re not but I do believe the readiness is within our control, and it is far simpler than we thought.”
Cook then went on to talk about how Marriott has achieved personalisation at scale via AEP. “Once we had our data in order and we had executive alignment, we were able to stand up a really robust CDP [customer data platform] and had a single view of the customer. This was incredibly important, because when you think about the five regions that we have and we have thousands of marketers, all marketers must define an audience in the same way to protect the customer experience. We selected Adobe Experience Platform to lead the charge for us.”
And the results? Cook said: “We took 45 processes down to one. We had a unified view of the customer. We were 93 per cent faster when updating content or offers about being able to update content or offers . . . We were six times ahead of our revenue goal.”
Finally, Adobe ran through an example of how Adobe’s new audience agent, which is tightly interwoven into its CPD, will further benefit Marriott International to target the hotel chain’s particular audience segments with particular messaging. Marriott International, as well as all of Adobe other customers will also soon be able to use Adobe’s Brand Concierge product to interact directly with each customer with a personalised approach.
IBM
Not only does IBM watsonx’s AI underpin the Adobe Experience Platform, IBM also use Adobe’s suite for its B2C business and for its clients via IBM consulting.
IBM Consulting uses Adobe’s entire creative and marketing clouds to implement efficient content supply chains for its clients. One case study highlighted by IBM was its work with Wimbledon. “Our Wimbledon client case study specifically involved generating highlight clips and overlaying AI audio commentary . . . We used AI to identify what the highlight actually was based on a bunch of signals e.g. a fist pump, a roar of the crowd, the ball movement,” IBM’s global head of design Billy Seabrook told the Summit audience.
When asked about Adobe’s new GenStudio platform, Seabrook said: “Adobe’s announcements around GenStudio get me very excited. All of these great tools are being stitched together and there’s a lot of value to be had there.”
ServiceNow
ServiceNow’s global CMO, Colin Fleming described Adobe as “absolutely our ride or die partner in our transformation. A truly trusted advisor, helping us with all kinds of things right now . . . We’re moving from a product led organisation to a brand led organisation that’s not the marketers word, that’s our CEO’s words.
“The transformation requires a huge culture shift to make this change and it has to happen across the entire organisation. We have to think about how we change, how we think about making decisions, how we invest in our businesses, and ultimately, how we measure success. We have to reimagine everything, including how we deliver experience, and with Adobe Experience Platform, we can do exactly that.”
B2B 3.0
Amit Ahuja, senior vice president of product management, product marketing and strategy for the Digital Experience Business at Adobe, emphasised the business’ key focus on its B2B capabilities within the day 2 keynote. “B2B is an area we have continued to invest very, very heavily in.” He described the next phase of the software giant’s technology as B2B 3.0, allowing for teams to scale personalised buyer engagement, growing pipeline and revenue for sophisticated deals.
Brian Glover, senior director, Adobe Experience Cloud compared the company’s B2B 3.0 technology to a self-driving car. “It’s autonomous, it’s reacting to all of the signals around it, and it can do all of this in real time,” he said.
