dmexco 2015: Building the Bridge Between the Customer and the Brand

Adobe is pleased to be an offi­cial part­ner of the 2015 Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing and Expo­si­tion Con­fer­ence (dmex­co) in Cologne. dmexco’s theme of “Bridg­ing worlds” aligns well with what we’re see­ing at Adobe. The cur­rent atmos­phere of mar­ket­ing inno­va­tion and rein­ven­tion involves a dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion on a scale nev­er before expe­ri­enced in mar­ket­ing his­to­ry. One that requires tra­di­tion­al mar­ket­ing to bridge the gap with cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. We are just at the begin­ning of that change to a new econ­o­my, one where expe­ri­ences define suc­cess. Our focus will indeed be on estab­lish­ing the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence as the new cor­po­rate brand. Adobe’s inno­v­a­tive busi­ness mod­els and mar­ket­ing tools have already cre­at­ed con­crete strate­gies that can be applied to real-life busi­ness today.

There has nev­er been a more excit­ing time to be a mar­keter. The lines of demar­ca­tion where mar­ket­ing begins and ends have changed. Cus­tomer expe­ri­ence has been the cat­a­lyst in extend­ing those bound­aries into a “mar­ket­ing beyond mar­ket­ing” con­di­tion. The seis­mic shock­waves caused by the mil­lions of track­able cus­tomer inter­ac­tions cre­at­ed across mut­li­ple touch­points and devices has top­pled organ­i­sa­tion­al silos of both func­tions and data. In the after­math of that dis­rup­tive change, cor­po­rate mar­ket­ing has been reborn with a new inclu­sive man­date. It must include data ana­lyt­ics to build a bridge to the time sen­si­tiv­i­ties of con­sumer sen­ti­ment. Cre­ative design must cap­ture the customer’s atten­tion imme­di­ate­ly. Search mar­ket­ing must spread the mes­sage far and wide in win­ning new cus­tomers. IT must build the web prop­er­ties need­ed in real time to wel­come the cus­tomer home to the brand. Per­son­al­i­sa­tion of cus­tomer inter­ac­tion must con­vert new cus­tomers and cre­ate brand loy­al­ty. Loy­al­ty pro­grams must retain val­ued cus­tomers and devel­op cus­tomer advo­ca­cy to draw in fam­i­ly and friends to the pos­i­tive expe­ri­ence. Cus­tomer expe­ri­ence has become the new cor­po­rate brand and the mar­keter is at the epi­cen­ter of it all.

As I said, cus­tomer expe­ri­ence is still in the begin­ning stages; by 2018 more than 50 per­cent of all com­pa­nies will have trans­formed their busi­ness mod­els for an opti­mised cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. But that hasn’t hap­pened yet. At dmex­co we host­ed an Exec­u­tive Brief­ing to unveil the results of of a Euro­pean study, “Holis­tic Cus­tomer Expe­ri­ence in the Dig­i­tal Age,” con­duct­ed by ana­lyst firm Pierre Audoin Con­sul­tants (PAC). Nicole Dufft from PAC pre­sent­ed the key find­ings of the sur­vey of 450 cor­po­rate deci­sion-mak­ers in Ger­many, France and the UK; the results are enlight­en­ing and demon­strate very clear­ly where bridges need to be built in real­is­ing the impor­tance of cus­tomer expe­ri­ence to every brand.

• Top man­age­ment in France (82%), Ger­many (69%) and the UK (58%) are increas­ing­ly putting the spot­light on align­ing cor­po­rate func­tions to break down the tra­di­tion­al organ­i­sa­tion­al and tech­no­log­i­cal siloes that are ham­per­ing their abil­i­ty to see a com­plete view of their customers.
• Depart­ments with direct cus­tomer con­tact have the great­est abil­i­ty to influ­ence con­sis­tent cus­tomer expe­ri­ence – mar­ket­ing, sales & com­merce (84%), and cus­tomer ser­vice (81%) – tra­di­tion­al back-office func­tions like logis­tics (69%), billing (66%) and prod­uct devel­op­ment (66%) are now increas­ing­ly seen as respon­si­ble for con­tribut­ing to the over­all cus­tomer experience.
• Rough­ly two-thirds (65%) do not yet have a cen­tral port of call for cus­tomers across all touch­points and just 14% have a ded­i­cat­ed Cus­tomer Expe­ri­ence Man­ag­er or depart­ment. More encour­ag­ing­ly, 69% of Euro­pean com­pa­nies have a ded­i­cat­ed C‑level exec respon­si­ble for digi­ti­sa­tion and transformation.
• It is going to get more com­plex with busi­ness­es need­ing to reach their cus­tomers via more chan­nels than ever before. The growth in impor­tance of: mobile solu­tions (GER: 66%, FR: 74%, UK: 65%), omnichan­nel inte­gra­tion (GER: 60%, FR: 73%, UK: 56%) and social media (GER: 57%, FR: 70%, UK: 69%).

You can down­load the study here: Holis­tic Cus­tomer Expe­ri­ence in the Dig­i­tal Age

The view of the cus­tomer is crit­i­cal to under­stand­ing how to make your mar­ket­ing strate­gies use­ful, most par­tic­u­lar­ly in rela­tion to mak­ing the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence the new cor­po­rate brand. Liv Brahin, Head Group Mar­ket­ing & Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Ser­vices at UBS, who took part in our brief­ing, comes from the per­spec­tive that “In order to con­sis­tent­ly deliv­er a supe­ri­or cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, a high per­form­ing, scal­able and flex­i­ble oper­at­ing mod­el is a neces­si­ty. The hard work does not stop with an excel­lent expe­ri­ence and tech­nol­o­gy imple­men­ta­tion”.

Thorston Michel of DHL joined the con­ver­sa­tion and pro­vid­ed some inter­est­ing views on the need to trans­form mar­ket­ing by putting the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence at its core.

Karl Isaac, our head of brand strat­e­gy and inno­va­tion, con­clud­ed the brief­ing with an in-depth pre­sen­ta­tion on Adobe’s focus for this con­fer­ence — ‘Cus­tomer Expe­ri­ence is the New Brand’. Be sure to catch his ses­sion at dmex­co tomor­row (17th Sep) “What a Brand wants“ start­ing at 2:00pm in the Debate Hall.

I would be remiss in not bring­ing John Travis’, Adobe Vice Pres­i­dent of Mar­ket­ing EMEA, recent blog post on this dis­cus­sion. John’s unique view of the oppor­tu­ni­ties for mar­keters in this new digi­con­o­my is both inter­est­ing and thought pro­vok­ing. The resur­gence of mar­keters influ­ence in the board room is cru­cial to the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion of every com­pa­ny that wants to expand their cus­tomer base through mas­ter­ing the cus­tomer experience.

The bot­tom line is this. We all talk about digi­ti­sa­tion and trans­for­ma­tion. How­ev­er, talk doesn’t get the job done. We need action.

Adobe is tak­ing up this challenge!