dmexco: Customer Experience Comes First

Greet­ings from Cologne where a busy DMEXCO con­fer­ence is under­way, and where all of this week we’ll be meet­ing with part­ners, cus­tomers, mar­ket­ing lumi­nar­ies and some of Europe’s top brands to talk about the lat­est trends in dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing and the future of our indus­try. This year we’re proud to be one of the main spon­sors of DMEXCO, which has grown mas­sive­ly over the last few years into a tru­ly glob­al event.

This year’s con­fer­ence theme is all about the impact of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion on busi­ness – pre­cise­ly the con­text that’s dri­ving every con­ver­sa­tion on dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing we’re hav­ing at Adobe. Indeed every aspect of a com­pa­ny is now impact­ed by dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion: oper­a­tions, infra­struc­ture, mar­ket­ing, IT, CRM, busi­ness mod­els. Dig­i­tal is the new nor­mal. You could say that dig­i­tal has nev­er been eas­i­er or more acces­si­ble than it is today – but as dig­i­tal becomes the norm, it has also raised expec­ta­tions and com­plex­i­ty in ways that none of us have faced before.

For one thing, it is redefin­ing the way brands and cus­tomers relate to one anoth­er. It is giv­ing mar­keters more choice than ever about how they reach cus­tomers, and cus­tomers more pow­er than ever to engage with brands on their own terms. All cus­tomers have a voice now. The age of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion is the age of cus­tomer empowerment.

As we’re hear­ing this week in Cologne, this is both a mas­sive chal­lenge and oppor­tu­ni­ty for brands. In order to stand out in this new world, brands need to cre­ate expe­ri­ences than can tru­ly engage their audi­ences in more per­son­al ways. At Adobe, we believe that brands are, in effect, no longer just in the busi­ness of deliv­er­ing prod­ucts or ser­vices – they are in the busi­ness of deliv­er­ing experiences.

One of the themes that’s emerg­ing this week is the chal­lenge for brands to deliv­er these expe­ri­ences con­sis­tent­ly across such a dizzy­ing array of cus­tomer touch­points. These chan­nels con­tin­ue to mul­ti­ply and inter­re­late in fas­ci­nat­ing ways. Just look at the Poke­mon Go phe­nom­e­non, where the phys­i­cal and dig­i­tal are com­bined on a scale like we’ve nev­er seen before. As the ‘mobile first’ con­sumer becomes the norm, tech­nolo­gies like VR and wear­ables are now enabling whole new ways of inter­act­ing with brands—and giv­ing more pow­er to con­sumers as to how and when they choose to engage. We’re only begin­ning to grasp the mag­ni­tude of these changes, and how these expec­ta­tions bear on brands.

Meet­ing the needs of the new ‘Expe­ri­ence Busi­ness’ will require an entire­ly new approach and set of capabilities—across both data and content—that enable brands to build, man­age, and deliv­er per­son­al­ized expe­ri­ences that delight their customers.

This, and plen­ty more, is what we’re set­ting out to dis­cuss in Cologne this week. If you’re join­ing us at the Koel­n­messe, don’t miss our inspir­ing booth in Hall 7, where we will be show­cas­ing the future of cus­tomer expe­ri­ences and the lat­est inno­va­tions of Adobe Mar­ket­ing Cloud around cross-chan­nel mar­ket­ing, data-dri­ven mar­ket­ing, mobile mar­ket­ing, and pro­gram­mat­ic advertising.

At the booth we’ll also have a great inter­ac­tive instal­la­tion on The Future of Shop­ping, show­ing how the blur­ring of online and offline worlds, the vir­tu­al and the phys­i­cal, is impact­ing retail.

And there’s more: Adobe’s own Suresh Vit­tal, VP of Strat­e­gy for Adobe Mar­ket­ing Cloud, will be giv­ing a keynote on The Pow­er of Great Expe­ri­ences on Wednes­day after­noon togeth­er with Andi Gall, Chief Tech­nol­o­gy Offi­cer at con­tent pow­er­house Red Bull Media House—a brand that knows a thing or two about deliv­er­ing great con­sumer expe­ri­ences. Suresh and Andy will be dis­cussing some of the key ingre­di­ents of great cus­tomer expe­ri­ences: delight­ing cus­tomers at every turn; mak­ing tech­nol­o­gy trans­par­ent; and the need to speak con­sis­tent­ly in one voice.

On Thurs­day morn­ing, Adobe Germany’s Timo Kohlberg will also be giv­ing a talk on how mar­keters can turn data into con­text so that they can deliv­er the right con­tent to the right cus­tomer, on the right chan­nel, and at the right time.

And today we’re also releas­ing Adobe’s annu­al Adver­tis­ing Demand Report, look­ing at the impact of dig­i­tal adver­tis­ing on brands and the con­sumer expe­ri­ence. Among the find­ings: Despite their sen­si­tiv­i­ties around adver­tis­ing, Euro­pean con­sumers are open to more per­son­al­ized or tar­get­ed advertising—but it has to be done right.

If you can’t join us in Cologne this week, be sure to fol­low us on Twit­ter and Linkedin to get the lat­est Adobe news and insights from Cologne. It promis­es to be a great conference.