Innovations and Thought Leaders (Day 1) Adobe Summit EMEA 2015

It’s just two weeks until Adobe Sum­mit EMEA 2015 gets under­way and the final touch­es are cur­rent­ly being put into place as we pre­pare our­selves for the biggest Sum­mit to date. I have had the priv­i­lege of, once again, man­ag­ing the Inno­va­tions & Thought Lead­ers Track. My mis­sion has been to pull togeth­er a group of indi­vid­u­als that will inspire the audi­ence and pro­vide lead­er­ship insights and strate­gies that will enable del­e­gates to build the next gen­er­a­tion of mar­ket­ing suc­cess for their organisation.

The Inno­va­tions Track will fol­low the same pop­u­lar for­mat as last year with 16 ses­sions tak­ing place across the two days. This con­tent will be deliv­ered in 20 minute TEDTalk-style ses­sions. Short­er than the oth­er track ses­sions but still long enough to inspire and ignite inno­va­tion, cre­ativ­i­ty and busi­ness improvement.

I am incred­i­bly excit­ed with this year’s ros­ter of thought lead­ers – from busi­ness lead­ers to mar­ket­ing prac­ti­tion­ers, indus­try com­men­ta­tors to inspi­ra­tional speak­ers – and I encour­age you to reg­is­ter ear­ly for their ses­sions to avoid disappointment!

Below is a sum­ma­ry of what we have planned for Day 1:

The Data** Rev­o­lu­tion in Media Consumption**

The age of mov­ing images is tak­ing a leap for­ward. Ever since its incep­tion back in 2007, Red Bull Media House has con­sis­tent­ly deliv­ered con­tent which involves its audi­ences emo­tion­al­ly – not only through breath-tak­ing video footage, but also with rev­o­lu­tion­ary technology.

Pre­pare your­self to expect the unex­pect­ed as Andi Gall, Chief Tech­nol­o­gy Offi­cer of Red Bull Media House show­cas­es a series of exam­ples of how Red Bull make media expe­ri­ences feel even more thrilling. Today, wear­ables and sen­sors col­lect meta­da­ta which Red Bull seam­less­ly inte­grates into mov­ing images. The era of in-motion insights and data intel­li­gence has tru­ly started.

‘Tan­gi­ble stuff that does things’ ver­sus ‘the thing that does tan­gi­ble’

Next up is a ses­sion which reflects on the incred­i­ble speed of change in our world. It is expect­ed that by the end of the decade self-dri­ving cars will be com­mon­place in our soci­ety, while wear­able and embed­ded tech­nol­o­gy will be pro­vid­ing a con­stant stream of Big Data. Mobile com­merce will be cen­tral to the suc­cess of busi­ness­es, and man­ag­ing per­son­al brands will become essential.

Jez Framp­ton, the Group CEO of Inter­brand, which annu­al­ly ranks the most influ­en­tial and pow­er­ful brands on the plan­et in an author­i­ta­tive sur­vey, speaks engag­ing­ly on this sub­ject. Framp­ton con­tends that brands which pro­vide a val­ue cre­ation mech­a­nism that pro­vides trust, under­stand­ing, dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion and desire are the most like­ly to be successful.

How to achieve long-term organ­ic prof­it growth

Patrick Bar­wise, Emer­i­tus Pro­fes­sor of Man­age­ment and Mar­ket­ing, Lon­don Busi­ness School, pro­duced an acclaimed tome, “Beyond the Famil­iar: Long-Term Growth through Cus­tomer Focus and Inno­va­tion”, on which this ses­sion will be based. It will also draw on the authors’ pre­vi­ous book “Sim­ply Bet­ter: Win­ning and Keep­ing Cus­tomers by Deliv­er­ing What Mat­ters Most”; win­ner of the Amer­i­can Mar­ket­ing Association’s 2005 Berry-AMA Book Prize.

What could be more valu­able to com­pa­nies than achiev­ing long-term organ­ic prof­it growth? Well, Bar­wise here offers some prac­ti­cal and straight­for­ward advice which can help busi­ness­es in the process of achiev­ing this holy grail. Bar­wise pro­vides prac­ti­cal exam­ples from real world set­tings which illu­mi­nate and inform.

How to become an influ­en­tial senior marketer

The last ses­sion before lunch will be chaired by Lead­er­ship Expert Thomas Bar­ta, who will give fas­ci­nat­ing and valu­able insight into the largest ever study car­ried out into the sub­ject of what makes a suc­cess­ful mar­keter. In par­tic­u­lar, Bar­ta assess­es the 40 rel­e­van­cies which will enable you to become a respect­ed mar­keter with­in your organisation.

Sim­ply get­ting a han­dle on these rel­e­van­cies will enable you to lead the cus­tomer agen­da, dri­ve cus­tomer-focused inno­va­tion, build and lead great teams, and devel­op your per­son­al career vision. This is unques­tion­ably a huge­ly valu­able ses­sion for all dig­i­tal marketers.

The Human API — Plug­ging into the source of human engagement

After a one and a half hour break for lunch and net­work­ing, the inno­va­tion track reopens with this fas­ci­nat­ing exam­i­na­tion of the dif­fi­cul­ty of engag­ing cus­tomers in the 21st cen­tu­ry. It seems today that the aver­age per­son has an incred­i­bly short atten­tion span, and increas­ing num­bers of dis­trac­tions in this mobile, dig­i­tal-focused soci­ety and culture.

Bri­an Solis will teach mar­keters how to break through this fog of dis­trac­tion and engage with every­day peo­ple by sim­ply offer­ing them infor­ma­tion and con­tent which is rel­e­vant to their needs. Solis refers to this as “Respon­sive Sto­ry­telling”, and this ses­sion will out­line his par­tic­u­lar vision for dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing in the present and future.

If you’re inter­est­ed in this ses­sion I’d like to draw your atten­tion to an inter­view with Bri­an Solis on CMO.com

The need for speed: From cre­ation to exe­cu­tion — asset shar­ing at For­mu­la One

Facil­i­tat­ing more seam­less col­lab­o­ra­tion between design­ers, mar­keters and agen­cies is a chal­lenge that most organ­i­sa­tions face. In this par­tic­u­lar ses­sion, Chris Mus­cutt, Dig­i­tal Devel­op­ment Man­ag­er at Shell will pro­vides us a behind-the-scenes look at how Adobe Mar­ket­ing Cloud and Cre­ative Cloud pow­er its on-loca­tion For­mu­la One rac­ing social mar­ket­ing — from live action pho­tog­ra­phy to cre­ative to pub­li­ca­tion across social channels.

Cre­at­ing expo­nen­tial val­ue in con­verg­ing data from the Inter­net of Things and cus­tomer journeys

Big Data was a rev­o­lu­tion­ary con­cept a few years ago, but although the gen­er­al pub­lic has per­haps not yet caught up with this tech­nol­o­gy, Big Data has already become a main­stream mar­ket­ing tool. Busi­ness­es all over the world have been col­lect­ing, col­lat­ing and analysing Big Data for sev­er­al years already, and new chal­lenges are now emerg­ing in this sphere.

Increas­ing­ly, com­pa­nies need to gain mean­ing­ful insights that can be mon­e­tised from Big Data, and utilise this to cre­ate addi­tion­al val­ue for cus­tomers. This par­tic­u­lar ses­sion will argue that the embry­on­ic tech­nol­o­gy of the Inter­net of Things will be a strong enabler in expand­ing the loca­tion, time, con­text and inti­mate val­ue of information.

Ali­son Evans, Senior Busi­ness Con­sul­tant in Busi­ness Val­ue Con­sult­ing at Adobe, Ludovic Levy, Vice Pres­i­dent of Big Data at Orange Group and Gre­goire Pau­ty, Sales Man­ag­er, of Adobe Glob­al Ser­vices will chair this impor­tant ses­sion which will exam­ine some of the most impor­tant and influ­en­tial tech­nolo­gies of the present and com­ing years.

New tech trends around the world

Of course, the very nature of dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing ensures that this is one of the fastest mov­ing indus­tri­al nich­es in the world. So this ses­sion will take a panoram­ic look at new dig­i­tal trends, emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies and tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tions from all four cor­ners of the plan­et. This pre­sen­ta­tion will be based on the find­ings from the Net­ex­p­lo Obser­va­to­ry, which is part­nered with UNESCO and many of the top uni­ver­si­ties worldwide.

How to get the mon­ey AND the girl

The final pre­sen­ta­tion of the day will come from Diet­mar Dah­men, who can best be described as a cre­ative con­sul­tant, vision­ary, futur­ol­o­gist and inno­va­tion expert. Dah­men will walk atten­dees through the way to stay ahead of the com­pe­ti­tion through incred­i­ble inno­va­tions. Busi­ness­es can some­times be con­ser­v­a­tive, and Dah­men will strong­ly argue that the way to keep cus­tomers hap­py is to con­tin­u­al­ly chal­lenge your­self and inno­vate when­ev­er conceivable.

This wraps up the first day of the Inno­va­tions & Thought Lead­ers Track at Adobe Sum­mit EMEA, but there is still an engag­ing sec­ond day for all par­tic­i­pants to look for­ward to.

Cov­er Image © ra2 stu­dio — Fotolia