Time to bring your content to life on Mobile!

It’s now a well-estab­lished trend that con­tent has moved to mobile – more specif­i­cal­ly, to mobile apps. In 2014, for instance, we saw a stag­ger­ing 86% of mobile con­tent being con­sumed on mobile apps, as opposed to 14% on a mobile web brows­er. Mar­keters, need­less to say, need to adapt.

Adap­ta­tion, and change, were in fact what kicked-off our Lon­don DPS Sym­po­sium 2014 last Novem­ber 6. In an age ruled by con­tent as the de fac­to cur­ren­cy for smart dig­i­tal mar­keters, the mes­sage of the day was clear: it’s time to bring your con­tent to life.

Tony Markovsi, Head of EMEA Dig­i­tal Pub­lish­ing Sales at Adobe, kicked-off the event with an impor­tant ques­tion – “what is the future of dig­i­tal busi­ness?” – which result­ed in three answers. First, the future is now; “it hap­pened yes­ter­day,” as we see more and more smart mar­keters work­ing to get ahead. Sec­ond, as more peo­ple shift their con­tent con­sump­tion to their smart­phones and tablets, the future is mobile. Third, pow­ered by the right tools, the future is all about the right mindset.

It’s now para­mount that mar­keters shift from the mind­set of the dis­rupt­ed to the mind­set of the dis­rup­tor and become what Tony labelled “digerati.” And what makes these “digerati” dif­fer­ent? Let’s quick­ly look at the num­bers: on aver­age, they’re 26% more prof­itable, gen­er­ate 9% more rev­enue and car­ry a 12% high­er mar­ket value.

How should brands adapt to this new real­i­ty? Next on stage was Scott Seaborn, an award-win­ning cre­ative direc­tor and trustee of D&AD who pre­sent­ed his vision for mobile in 2020. Mobile, in Scott’s words, is the new can­vas for cre­ativ­i­ty, and brands need to become more agile to ful­ly lever­age its poten­tial. Accord­ing to Scott, we need to “work with change, but change as you work,” and in an age where agile frame­works allow com­pa­nies to effec­tive­ly ship new mobile prod­ucts in less than a week, being lean is essen­tial. The main insight for a hyper-con­nect­ed world: do few­er things but do them more fre­quent­ly and learn as you go with user feedback.

So which brands are doing it right? The Museo del Pra­do is a great exam­ple, and to show­case that we wel­comed next on stage the museum’s Gen­er­al Man­ag­er Cristi­na Alo­viset­ti and Graph­ic Design­er Fer­nan­do Gutier­rez. By enrich­ing the muse­um expe­ri­ence with the mobile app “Guia del Pra­do,” which fea­tures 400 high-qual­i­ty images, 9 lan­guages, 50 enlarged works, 50 relat­ed works and more, we were able to under­stand how mobile is also chang­ing the way we cel­e­brate the arts.

After a short break, Roys­ton Sea­ward from Deloitte Dig­i­tal stepped on stage to dis­cuss how mar­ket­ing depart­ments are evolv­ing to stand out in a dig­i­tal world. The pace of change, accord­ing to Roys­ton, is accel­er­at­ing, and we can expect fur­ther dis­rup­tion with a third wave of tech­nol­o­gy. Specif­i­cal­ly, there are five forces of dis­rup­tion to con­sid­er and Deloitte’s research is clear: mobile and social are the biggest influ­ences on con­sumer pur­chas­es today. Brand trust is key.

One of the par­tic­u­lar chal­lenges is how seem­ing­ly more con­ser­v­a­tive or cor­po­rate brands can craft inter­est­ing sto­ries through dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing. The per­fect exam­ple would come soon enough, as edi­tor in chief Mario Vigl show­cased what Allianz are cur­rent­ly doing with mobile: enter the Allianz 1890 mag­a­zine. Through it, Allianz has a direct line of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with its cus­tomers through long-form sto­ries which, accord­ing to Mario, bring human­i­ty to the brand. One of the top exam­ples to wrap-up the first half of the day: a thor­ough thought exer­cise around how much would cost to insure Mid­dle Earth.

We resumed the after­noon with two break­out ses­sions. The first, host­ed by Thomas Euster­holz from effi­cientM, show­cased BMW’s world­wide efforts to empow­er their sales rep­re­sen­ta­tives at scale and con­firmed the ubiq­ui­ty of mobile even in a cor­po­rate sales envi­ron­ment. On a sep­a­rate room, Sieg­bert Matthe­is got the audi­ence to play with tablets, to make his case on how the boom­ing gam­i­fi­ca­tion indus­try can effec­tive­ly com­bine with smart mobile apps to accom­plish busi­ness objectives.

Next on stage was Matt Collins, founder and cre­ative direc­tor of cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tion agency Zephyr, with the inspir­ing World Trade Orga­ni­za­tion case study. Accord­ing to Matt, under­stand­ing your audi­ence is essen­tial to deliv­er an opti­mal mobile expe­ri­ence, and Zephyr’s work with the WTO con­firmed that Adobe DPS was the right tool for the job.

One ques­tion was left in the audience’s mind: “what can Adobe DPS do for my busi­ness?” To answer that, Adobe’s own Mitch Green and Klaas­jan Tukker wrapped-up the event with a more prac­ti­cal talk around how Adobe DPS enables busi­ness­es to effec­tive­ly bring their con­tent to life. Shift­ing con­tent to a mobile for­mat is more than sim­ply adapt­ing what already exists, because as Klaas­jan men­tioned, “brows­ing through a brochure is nice, but I want an experience.”

The best part is that many com­pa­nies and brands are already chang­ing to face these new challenges:

• Hyundai has increased brand engage­ment with its mobile prod­uct brochure that fea­tures, among oth­ers, an inter­ac­tive view of the cars’ inte­ri­ors with in-line video, audio, 360 rota­tion, smooth scrolling and inte­grat­ed shop­ping tools.
• Sotheby’s devel­oped an app that pro­vides its sales rep­re­sen­ta­tives with engag­ing con­tent, lead­ing in these last two years to 130,000 app launch­es and 70,000 folio down­loads world­wide, while sav­ing £1 mil­lion in print­ing costs annually.
• Tech­nol­o­gy con­sult­ing firm Booz Allen Hamil­ton cre­at­ed an app to deliv­er com­pelling con­tent to its staff, with 18,000 of the firm’s 25,000 employ­ees now enrolled in a mobile device man­age­ment solution.

It is no longer a sur­prise that the mobile con­tent train is mov­ing, so the ques­tion remains: how can brands smart­ly get on board? Is yours already on the move? If you’re inter­est­ed in know­ing more about how dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing can help your busi­ness, you might want to start with its trans­for­ma­tion­al role in sales enable­ment. Or maybe dis­cov­er how renowned brands like PADI or Red Bull have been using dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing to fos­ter engage­ment in the mobile age – with proven results.

If you’re inter­est­ed in dis­cussing how you see dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing impact­ing your busi­ness, you can also find us on Twit­ter at @AdobeDigitalPub.