Adobe Summit EMEA 2017 Highlights

Adobe Sum­mit EMEA is over for anoth­er year now, and it was our largest so far, with over 5000 atten­dees join­ing us for two jam-packed days of pre­sen­ta­tions and net­work­ing. The keynote ses­sions kicked off each day and there were two over 100 ses­sions in the after­noons, and of course a busy com­mu­ni­ty pavil­ion. Now it’s all over, let’s take a look back:

Day One

Adobe CEO & Pres­i­dent** Shan­tanu Narayen and EVP & GM Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing, Brad Rencher** kicked off Adobe Sum­mit EMEA 2017 with an impres­sive line-up of speak­ers to lead us into day 1 – with the theme ‘Make Expe­ri­ence Your Busi­ness’. Dr. Rain­er Feur­er from BMW Group empha­sized how their brand is putting expe­ri­ence at the heart of their busi­ness; **Nick Drake **explained how T‑Mobile was com­plete­ly focused on being cus­tomer-cen­tric and expe­ri­ence-obsessed; while Chris Tay­lor, Tele­graph Media’s CIO, high­light­ed the need to diver­si­fy rev­enue streams and keep up with chang­ing con­sumer demands. The keynote fea­tured a great cross-cloud sto­ry, with chap­ters on Expe­ri­ence Intel­li­gence, Adver­tis­ing, Design & Cre­ativ­i­ty and Con­nect­ed Expe­ri­ences. This was brought alive by sev­er­al inspir­ing demos — kudos to an amaz­ing demo team!

The break­outs are a chance to deep dive into the mul­ti­tude of top­ics cov­ered at Adobe Sum­mit. We had 200+ speak­ers deliv­er­ing over 110 ses­sions across the two days, includ­ing a new “Cre­ativ­i­ty & Design” track. And as a first for Sum­mit, we ran sev­er­al “Silent Dis­co” ses­sions with wire­less head­phones to ensure all that con­tent good­ness was loud & clear, just with­out the danc­ing! A per­son­al high­light was James Som­merville, VP of Glob­al Design at The Coca-Cola Com­pa­ny, who gave a fas­ci­nat­ing insight to design at Coca-Cola. You can watch our short edit here:

“We designed the sys­tem, but we for­got how to design the poster”. @jamesommerville dis­cuss­es all things design at @CocaCola. pic.twitter.com/3sTnUniXoJ

— Expe­ri­ence Cloud (@AdobeExpCloud) May 11, 2017

It’s an intense first day, we know – which is why it’s impor­tant to unwind. Two Door Cin­e­ma Club were the def­i­nite high­light, clos­ing a action packed first day!

Day Two

On day 2, an ener­giz­ing intro­duc­tion from VP of Strat­e­gy, Busi­ness Devel­op­ment & Mar­ket­ing at Adobe, John Mel­lor, remind­ed us that emo­tion is the cur­ren­cy of expe­ri­ence. Build­ing on this theme, the CMO of Hostel­world, Otto Rosen­berg­er, evan­ge­lised for rel­e­vant dig­i­tal con­tent across its “mobile every­thing” busi­ness to cre­ate true con­sumer expe­ri­ence. Joseph God­sey from Adi­das mean­while focused on con­sumer expe­ri­ences that are pre­mi­um, con­nect­ed and per­son­al­ized. Sports pre­sen­ter **Gab­by Logan **inter­viewed Chelsea FC leg­end Frank Lam­pard about how ear­ly rejec­tion inspired his ulti­mate suc­cess, while Ann Lewnes’ inter­view with actor Col­in Firth cov­ered democ­ra­ti­za­tion of dig­i­tal media and the need for edi­to­r­i­al safe spaces.

Sum­mit Sneaks

Sneaks are always a pop­u­lar ses­sion at Adobe Sum­mit. If you’re not famil­iar with the Sneaks ses­sion, it’s where our data sci­en­tists take cen­ter stage and give us all a pre­view of what they’re cook­ing up in Adobe’s research labs. Although each Sneak demo is only about four min­utes long, it rep­re­sents work that has been months — or maybe even years — in the mak­ing. While we’ve got thou­sands of engi­neers at Adobe doing a lot of amaz­ing things, only a select few projects will ever become Sneaks. So you can see why it’s become a fan favorite at Summit. Jonathan Ross was a great co-host with our very own Steve Ham­mond! If you missed it, not to wor­ry — we’ll be shar­ing the record­ings of each sneak short­ly: Sum­mit Online

Off the main stage

Adobe Sum­mit is more than just the keynotes and break­out ses­sions, there are plen­ty of activ­i­ties in and around the event. Here are a cou­ple of high­lights from this year:

Part­ner Day

For those not attend­ing Part­ner Day you may not have been aware, but on the Tues­day we bring our (500+) part­ners togeth­er for a day of pre­sen­ta­tions, break­outs, and net­work­ing. For Adobe Part­ner focused events are very impor­tant and are key to our shared suc­cess, so thank you to all those who attend­ed. In par­tic­u­lar I’d like to call out Accen­ture Inter­ac­tive for win­ning ‘Part­ner of the Year’ in EMEA.

Adobe Dig­i­tal Insights: State of Dig­i­tal Adver­tis­ing Report

On the eve of Adobe Sum­mit we launched our State of Dig­i­tal Adver­tis­ing Report, this report exam­ined trends in dig­i­tal adver­tis­ing invest­ment and con­sump­tion in West­ern Europe based on a sur­vey of 1000+ con­sumers and 300 mar­keters. One of its most inter­est­ing find­ings is that, while only one-third of Euro­pean con­sumers believe adver­tis­ers have improved their abil­i­ty to deliv­er com­pelling ads in the last two years, there is sur­pris­ing­ly high con­sumer appetite for ad per­son­al­iza­tion: More than half of mil­len­ni­al con­sumers express pref­er­ence for con­tent that is tai­lored to their interests.

CMO.com Launch in Germany

Dur­ing the week of Sum­mit we launched the Ger­man-lan­guage ver­sion of CMO.com. So what can you expect? Well, each week we will deliv­er arti­cles and inter­views that will offer you insights, exper­tise, and inspi­ra­tion for and by mar­keters and busi­ness lead­ers – in Ger­man and focused on the Ger­man mar­ket. This is a great step for­ward for CMO.com and we look for­ward to the growth of the Ger­man section.

CMO.com cov­er­age of Summit

There was also some great cov­er­age from CMO.com dur­ing and post-Sum­mit, I would rec­om­mend the fol­low­ing articles:

• http://www.cmo.com/features/articles/2017/5/10/ride-the-customer-experience-wave-before-it-drowns-you.html
• http://www.cmo.com/features/articles/2017/5/11/generation-alpha-sexiest-bedroom-death-empathy-and-altered-reality.html
• http://www.cmo.com/opinion/articles/2017/5/15/10-things-we-learnt-at-summit-emea-2017.html
• http://www.cmo.com/features/articles/2017/5/10/digital-transformation-is-like-teenage-sex-jokes-deutsche-post-dhl-groups-vp.html
• http://www.cmo.com/features/articles/2017/5/5/15-mindblowing-digital-marketing-stats-for-germany.html#gs.jd6JvmY
• http://www.cmo.com/opinion/articles/2017/5/15/10-things-we-learnt-at-summit-emea-2017.html

https://twitter.com/CMO_com/status/864397664439246848

Social Zone

As you entered the social zone after reg­is­tra­tion we had the social posts dis­played with AEM Live­fyre, as well as our bespoke social game across the trio of 10 metre screens. Con­grat­u­la­tions to Joost van Dun from Philips main­tain­ing first place to the end! https://twitter.com/JVDDesign/status/862301473354506241

For those inter­est­ed in the cre­ative process, we have a blog post planned to show how the social game was cre­at­ed with Cre­ative Cloud, and how Adobe XD was used in the process.

We also host­ed some video inter­views in the social zone in part­ner­ship with CMO.com where we spoke to cus­tomers, speak­ers, and our team here at Adobe on the top­ic of expe­ri­ence busi­ness. Here are a cou­ple if you missed them at the event:

John Wat­ton, Senior Direc­tor, Enter­prise Mar­ket­ing, Adobe and Jason Miller, Glob­al Con­tent Mar­ket­ing Leader at LinkedIn:

“How far can you take tra­di­tion­al mar­ket­ing ideas and push them for­ward in this new envi­ron­ment?”. Hear from LinkedIn’s @JasonMillerCA. pic.twitter.com/yBt0dKULAg

— Expe­ri­ence Cloud (@AdobeExpCloud) May 12, 2017

Tama­ra Lohan, Co-Founder Mr & Mrs Smith:

“I real­ly believe that when dig­i­tal meets a human con­nec­tion, that’s when the mag­ic hap­pens”. Hear more from @TamaraLohan at #Adobe­Sum­mit. pic.twitter.com/2xUN8x5Qeb

— CMO.com (@CMO_com) May 11, 2017

Adobe Spark

For those of you who watched the Sneaks you’ll remem­ber Steve’s live demo with Jonathan Ross, show­ing how easy it is to cre­ate social visu­als using the Adobe Spark Post app. For any­one involved in social, or just attends con­fer­ences and needs to cre­ate con­tent on the fly – this is a real­ly use­ful tool to have in your social arsenal.

If you’ve not tried it yet, you can down­load at any time for free: https://adobe.ly/spark

Twit­ter Chats

A new tra­di­tion we start­ed last year was to run a twit­ter chat each day of Sum­mit to facil­i­tate some dis­cus­sion on the key top­ics of expe­ri­ence busi­ness and the future of mar­ket­ing. Tak­ing the baton from Jay Shet­ty last year, Simon Kemp mod­er­at­ed both twit­ter chats and sup­port­ed some great con­ver­sa­tion on the top­ics. A big thank-you to Simon for his sup­port and insights! You can also watch the video inter­view of Simon live at Sum­mit here: https://www.facebook.com/cmocom/videos/10155132642256977/

If you are inter­est­ed in join­ing the reg­u­lar #AdobeChat twit­ter chat, there’s one every evening at 9pm BST (GMT+1), with a new top­ic for dis­cus­sion every week.

You, the attendees

Even with the keynotes, the cel­e­bra­tion, and all the indi­vid­ual pro­grammes that make up Sum­mit it is you, the atten­dees that make Sum­mit what it is. So thank you: for your enthu­si­asm, the con­ver­sa­tion, and, of course the social buzz with the event trend­ing in both UK and Germany.