Reimagination of the Possible

The resis­tance to change can be fierce. We, at Adobe, have been wag­ing a cam­paign over the past few years to not only trans­form our com­pa­ny into new ways of think­ing but also show our part­ners, friends, and poten­tial cus­tomers how to make it hap­pen. It is not an easy road to trav­el. Through our many expe­ri­ences in work­ing with our cus­tomers, under­stand­ing their tech­no­log­i­cal eco-sys­tem and devel­op­ing new tech­nol­o­gy to build an inte­grat­ed plat­form from which suc­cess is real­ized, we find resis­tance to change a major chal­lenge. That is not a tech­no­log­i­cal prob­lem. It’s a cul­tur­al and organ­i­sa­tion­al prob­lem at its root.

The truth is that change should not be so dif­fi­cult. Peter Druck­er, an amaz­ing busi­ness vision­ary, made that truth plain­ly evi­dent when he said, “If you want (to do) some­thing new, you have to stop doing some­thing old.” We always want to do some­thing new. It’s the nat­ur­al order of things. In our case specif­i­cal­ly and for mar­ket­ing, in gen­er­al, the moti­va­tor for change is the avail­abil­i­ty of data that we’ve nev­er had access to before.

On Novem­ber 11, Adobe will host Adobe Sym­po­sium Ams­ter­dam 2015. Mark Zablan, Pres­i­dent EMEA from Adobe will share key infor­ma­tion about Mar­ket­ing Trans­for­ma­tion and how deliv­er­ing great expe­ri­ences relies on a fine bal­ance between sci­ence and art. In the dia­gram above, it’s a nat­ur­al flow from ini­ti­at­ing cre­ative thought through to dis­cov­ery, inno­va­tion, and change to enable reimag­i­na­tion and trans­for­ma­tion. Change is a nat­ur­al part of that process.

Suc­cess sto­ries sim­i­lar to what Lib­er­ty Glob­al accom­plished dur­ing its dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion is what the reimag­i­na­tion of mar­ket­ing is all about. Lib­er­ty Glob­al is the largest cable oper­a­tor out­side of the Unit­ed States, serv­ing more than 34 mil­lion homes in 14 coun­tries., through 9 dif­fer­ent cable brands. The com­pa­ny has a 20-year his­to­ry and, since then, tech­nol­o­gy and evolv­ing cus­tomer demands have changed the cable indus­try. Lib­er­ty Glob­al used to work in a very frag­ment­ed land­scape, but today mod­ern cus­tomers tend to mul­ti­task over mul­ti­ple devices; they watch TV while brows­ing the web or start read­ing an arti­cle on their smart­phones before switch­ing to their computer.

In response, Lib­er­ty Glob­al has evolved its ser­vices over the years, adding broad­band, voice over IP tele­pho­ny, video on demand, mobile apps, dig­i­tal and high-def­i­n­i­tion TV, and oth­er ser­vices. This shift has also impact­ed how the com­pa­ny engages cus­tomers online across chan­nels and devices. Cus­tomers now have the Inter­net in their pock­ets and want to fol­low up on leads in a very short time span. Lib­er­ty Glob­al found that 40% of traf­fic came via mobile. The most touch points are now online in stead of in stores, and an increas­ing amount of ser­vices and con­tent is deliv­ered over the Inter­net. It is man­ag­ing these micro moments that will help to cre­ate a mag­i­cal cus­tomer experience.

Lib­er­ty Glob­al chose Adobe Mar­ket­ing Cloud, includ­ing the Adobe Ana­lyt­ics, Adobe Tar­get, Adobe Audi­ence Man­ag­er and Adobe Expe­ri­ence Man­ag­er solu­tions. Lib­er­ty Glob­al first rolled out the web con­tent man­age­ment and dig­i­tal asset man­age­ment capa­bil­i­ties of Adobe Expe­ri­ence Man­ag­er in Ger­many and gave mar­ket­ing man­agers an intu­itive inter­face to cre­ate and deliv­er dynam­ic dig­i­tal con­tent to cus­tomers across devices. Today, Expe­ri­ence Man­ag­er sup­ports Lib­er­ty Glob­al in all of their mar­kets across Europe. You can read the entire suc­cess sto­ry here.

The reimag­i­na­tion of mar­ket­ing is being dri­ven by the new wealth of data insights being gleaned via more sophis­ti­cat­ed data ana­lyt­ics. We can learn more and more about the human ele­ment in mar­ket­ing which reduces the uncer­tain­ty in know­ing what the cus­tomer wants. The same goes for fol­low­ing the data-dri­ven jour­ney of the cus­tomer through time. We know more, and that leads to being able to pre­dict with a greater degree of accu­ra­cy what to expect. Bill Ingram, who over­sees the strate­gic direc­tion and devel­op­ment of Adobe Ana­lyt­ics had this to say about the emerg­ing trends in ana­lyt­ics. “In my 10+ years in this indus­try, I’ve nev­er been more excit­ed about what Adobe Ana­lyt­ics is solv­ing for our cus­tomers. I couldn’t be more thrilled to see pre­dic­tion, machine learn­ing, and sim­ple user expe­ri­ences con­verge to serve the ana­lyt­ics needs of the world’s most inno­v­a­tive brands.”

It will take a con­cert­ed effort across the board for all mar­keters to embrace change and adopt inte­grat­ed tech­nol­o­gy plat­forms so that data can be used to its max­i­mum effect. Dr. Max McK­e­own, the award-win­ning author, and strate­gist will deliv­er the clos­ing keynote pre­sen­ta­tion at Adobe Sym­po­sium 2015. Using the art and sci­ence implic­it in any inno­va­tion strat­e­gy, Dr. Max will help you tack­le the crit­i­cal chal­lenges you face both in devel­op­ing strate­gies to embrace change and putting them into action. Join Adobe Sym­po­sium TV .