Adobe Summit EMEA: Day 2 Overview

Guest blog from Ben Donkor.

Adobe VP John Mel­lor kicked Day 2 off with a great com­par­i­son between the Adobe Sum­mit and the “rise of the cof­fee hous­es” that led to the Age of Enlight­en­ment in Eng­land around the 18th cen­tu­ry. The Sum­mit is not only a place for us to hear about the lat­est inno­va­tions in mar­ket­ing, but it’s also a great space for mar­keters to talk amongst each oth­er and share their expe­ri­ences and come up with new ideas for the next “Age of Enlight­en­ment” in dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing — start­ing now.

John also shared the results from the Adobe Matu­ri­ty Self-Assess­ment Tool, a large study con­duct­ed by Adobe over the past few months around the matu­ri­ty lev­el of brands in the dig­i­tal space. The results were pre­sent­ed with an expla­na­tion of the Dig­i­tal Matu­ri­ty Matrix, which assess­es the per­for­mance of brands and com­pa­nies in three areas: Prod­ucts, Peo­ple and Process­es. Defi­cien­cies were high­light­ed in dif­fer­ent areas, such as mobil­i­ty, sales assign­ment and knowl­edge, and that was a wake-up call for all mar­keters in atten­dance — what’s cur­rent­ly stop­ping you from evolv­ing? (You can read more about the road­blocks that most mar­keters face here.)

We were then treat­ed to some very inter­est­ing expe­ri­ences from the keynote’s spe­cial guests:

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Michael Acton Smith, founder of Moshi Mon­sters , a vir­tu­al world for chil­dren that makes use of “stealth edu­ca­tion”. Michael had to rein­vent him­self and his busi­ness, tak­ing advan­tage of mobile devices and oth­er touch points.

Dr. David Cox, Chief Med­ical Offi­cer of Head­space, an online plat­form ded­i­cat­ed to “med­i­ta­tion for mod­ern liv­ing” using mobile devices to be present in the lives of its followers.

Justin Cogh­lan, co-founder of Movem­ber, an 8‑year old move­ment that rein­vents itself every year through social media.

We also heard from Pao­lo Yuveni­co of Dig­i­tal­sLBi and Aldo Agostinel­li of Sky Italia on how data and tech­nol­o­gy “changed the game” for them.

Peeks

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The day end­ed with a sneak peek at the lat­est devel­op­ments from Adobe Labs. Host­ed by Adobe’s Steve Ham­mond and the hilar­i­ous David Schnei­der (yes, THE David Schnei­der), we were treat­ed with bad jokes…

…some insights on David’s life/work bal­ance (which some of us can cer­tain­ly relate to)…

…and a few sneak peeks into what Adobe might intro­duce in its Mar­ket­ing Cloud in the (near?) future.

I have to say, I’m quite impressed by what Adobe has been work­ing on — from new fea­tures to tweaks, big and small, to improve the Mar­ket­ing Cloud.

One fea­ture I’m extreme­ly hap­py about is a seem­ing­ly small one but very rel­e­vant to me — an update to the sen­ti­ment analy­sis in Adobe Social and the introuc­tion of Robert Plutchik’s “wheel of emo­tion” with­in the plat­form, to show the under­lin­ing emo­tions behind the three main sen­ti­ments (pos­i­tive, neu­tral, and negative).

I’m very par­tic­u­lar about sen­ti­ment analy­sis, as I’ve already spo­ken (and writ­ten) at lengths about it, so I’m real­ly hap­py to see Adobe take it up anoth­er notch to make this already excel­lent plat­form even better.

Not The End

Adobe Sum­mit may be over for this year, but this is def­i­nite­ly not the end. What were your high­lights from Sum­mit? Tweet @AdobeSummit and share your thoughts!

Until next year’s Adobe Sum­mit, keep evolving!