A Guide to the Design-led Customer Experiences Track at Adobe Summit

This year at Adobe Summit, we are putting a big spotlight on how design and creativity are driving customer experience. Delivering exceptional, design-led customer experiences is the fundamental way for marketers, brand strategists and creative pros to ensure their organizations are differentiated.

In fact, companies that integrate design thinking into corporate strategy can outpace industry peers by as much as 228%. These companies know how to create standout experiences and drive brand affinity through data-driven design that allows for personalization across touchpoints. They use informed decision-making not only to craft great design, but also to establish more efficient workflows and scale content production for their teams.

For the first time at Summit, we have a track of sessions dedicated to this topic, called “Design-led Customer Experiences.” This track will explore what great design means and how you can use it for competitive advantage. Join us to hear from industry-leading creative thinkers who will inspire and empower you to create great experiences for your customers.

Here’s a breakdown of the topics and speakers:

Future-proof your brand (S907): Tuesday, March 27, 1:00-2:00pm

Speakers: Leland Maschmeyer, Chief Creative Officer for Chobani; Brian Collins, CEO/Chief Creative Officer of COLLINS

Brands are no longer in competition with each other – they are in competition with the future. Brand loyalty is more fleeting than ever, as more nimble, innovative competitors appear around every corner, every day. The most successful companies know how to look around these corners to create the product, the experience and the communications that propel them far ahead of where they and their customers are today. To establish mass customer intimacy for the long run, they craft digital ecosystems at scale to establish experiences that are familiar to us – and, more importantly, that surprise us.

If you never want to look over your shoulder again, join Leland Maschmeyer, Chief Creative Officer for Chobani, and Brian Collins, CEO/Chief Creative Officer of COLLINS, a brand experience design company, for this intriguing discussion.

Creating Customer Connections through Design & Innovation (S908): Tuesday, March 27, 4:00-5:00pm

Speakers: James Sommerville, VP Global Design at Coca-Cola; Dmitri Siegel, VP Global Brand at Sonos

The best brands in the world know that the secret to creating meaningful customer connections in an ever-fragmented and distracted market is to design digital experiences that touch customers wherever they are. After 130+ years in business, Coca-Cola, who consistently ranks at the top of the Interbrand Global brands list, has instituted a digital- and design-first strategy to communicate the attributes of a globally recognized product as an experience that connects with two billion customers day. Sonos, a brand born of the digital age, is reinventing the home audio speaker market to make audio a valued and connected experience for their customers.

In this session, James Sommerville, VP Global Design at Coca-Cola, and Dmitri Siegel, VP Global Brand at Sonos, will discuss the surprising similarities for what companies both old and new need to do to attract new customers, while remaining loyal and authentic to the ones they’ve had for years.

Transforming the Brand / Agency Relationship (S906): Tuesday, March 27, 5:30-6:30pm

Speakers: Steven Moy, EVP & CTO and Richard Ting, EVP & Global Chief Design Officer, both of R/GA; Emmanuel Miran, Global CTO at Mondelēz International

The rapid pace of digital transformation is reframing the traditional brand-agency relationship. Designing great brand-to-consumer experiences requires an in-depth understanding of the customer, a data-driven approach to reaching them, and an application of both into existing business processes. Doing this at scale requires unprecedented creative efficiency.

These dynamics are shifting the value proposition of the brand-agency relationship and changing the rules for how brands collaborate with agencies, and even their own in-house creative teams. In this session you will hear from both a major brand and an industry leading agency: Steven Moy, EVP & CTO and Richard Ting, EVP & Global Chief Design Officer, both of R/GA; and Emmanuel Miran, Global CTO at Mondelēz International, one of the largest snack companies with brands including Nabisco, Oreo, Ritz, Trident, Dentyne and more. These speakers will discuss how they are navigating the changing waters of the brand/agency relationship and partnering for unprecedented success in the digital age.

Accelerating Content & Design with Artificial Intelligence (S909): Wednesday, March 28, 2:30-3:30pm

Speakers: Elizabeth Kiehner, Global Design Director at IBM iX; Scott Prevost, VP Adobe Sensei & Search

The impact of artificial intelligence on marketing, creativity and design will undoubtedly accelerate the rapid pace of digital transformation and change the way we work, live, and play at a scale the world has never experienced before. But we shouldn’t fear these changes. With this change, marketers, designers and creative professionals gain huge benefits in productivity, content scale and workflow efficiencies, while unleashing expanded career opportunities for workers in these industries. This session, led by Elizabeth Kiehner, Global Design Director at IBM iX, and Scott Prevost, VP Adobe Sensei & Search, explores the challenges, opportunities, and benefits for AI in the digital age.

There are also several other sessions in different tracks that are highlighting topics relevant to design, creativity, content and customer experience. I encourage you to check these out as well:

View this and other Summit sessions on demand and read more stories from Adobe Summit.