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Adobe Marketing Summit attendees heard a lot this week about the value of personalization, but the nuts and bolts of constructing a tailored digital experience were brought into greater focus during a Thursday morning breakout session led by Adobe Senior Digital Marketing Consultant, Brittany Chandler, and NetApp Director of Digital Experience, Zann Aek.
Chandler equates the implementation of a personalization program to building a "dream house," but warns that businesses need the right materials and the proper foundation.
First on her list is ensuring organizational readiness. Personalization programs require the input of several different stakeholders, so it's crucial for a marketer to acknowledge the resources available and the gaps that may exist.
From there, defining workflows and establishing clear lines of communication within the team are paramount.
The second piece of Chandler's foundation is leveraging data to create a complete view of customers, their journeys and their propensity to buy. Once the appropriate data is gathered, the personalization team should start making hypotheses about the needs and wants of customers in order to inform conversion tactics.
Chandler's third priority is the integration of content marketing. Data shows that 67% of B2B buyers rely on content to inform their purchase decisions, so businesses need to use this trend to their advantage.
Creating a content marketing strategy starts with evaluating the company's existing library of content, and then deciding which pieces best-serve the conversion hypotheses for high priority customers.
The final facet of Chandler's "dream house" is to establish a prioritized, strategic roadmap for launching the program. This requires diving into analytics to determine where content has the most reach and influence.
Of course, the roadmap isn't complete without a healthy dose of "remodeling" – testing content and operationalizing learnings to introduce new levels of granularity. "How do you go from making your site a house into a home?," Aeck says.
So although it may take time to finalize a personalization program, it's a core component of becoming an experience-led business, and it's a transformation that will position companies for success in the digital era.
The 2016 Adobe Marketing Summit has been about digital transformation – using data to fuel consistent, continuous and compelling experiences.
So on Day 3 of the Summit, the Media and Entertainment Super Session needed to answer one simple question about a beloved analog medium: What about TV?
The answer is that TV isn't going anywhere, per se, but it's not immune from the digitization trend. According to Adobe's Jennifer Cooper, TV Everywhere (TVE) experiences, like WatchESPN and HBO GO, have seen a 102% increase in viewing.
It's the same TV content, just with a slightly modernized look.
This is good news for legacy TV providers with TVE extensions, but digitization still presents some challenges for marketers.
That's why Cooper called in some industry heavyweights to talk about how media and entertainment companies can stay ahead of the game in the digital world.
"The mobile mind shift," as Roy calls it, is the biggest driver of change in entertainment.
Because of increases in mobile usage and tailored mobile experiences, customers are becoming conditioned to expect personalized, relevant and real-time content.
The mobile mind shift is certainly an opportunity area for companies that are willing and prepared to answer the call, but Roy cautions that it will require operating at high speeds.
1.	Technology will evolve your marketing capabilities. This principle is perhaps the most fundamental – and pairs well with the themes of the Adobe Summit – but leaning on technology will help businesses reach audiences where they are meet the evolving demands of the industry.
2.	Put the customer at the heart of everything. Use data to uncover what the customer is really looking for, and create ways to deliver it.
3.	Understand that the customer will not come to you on one device alone. A fully optimized mobile strategy will account for the fact that a customer journey is not limited to a single device. Failing to recognize a customer's complete online presence could cost a business valuable touch points.
4.	Baseline your tech stack to accommodate the unknown. Don't attempt to solve tomorrow's tech problems today by creating a "finished" system. Instead, start by building a solid base that can adapt as use-cases evolve.
5.	Invest in the human relationships that come with technology. Technology is only as useful as the people who know how to use it. The ideal tech solution is a compliment to a team of analysts and engineers who can make the most out of it.
Video has been at the core of ESPN's digital experience for more than 20 years, so David Coletti was never worried about TV being replaced by the Internet.
However, ESPN's offerings have changed substantially to meet the growing appetite for online content. That's why Coletti says that the most successful digital experiences are ones driven by insights.
The 2010 World Cup was a turning point for ESPN: The sports network had recently unveiled its streaming platform, ESPN3, and supported a relatively small mobile video experience. But despite their respective youth, ESPN's non-traditional outlets shined.
World Cup coverage on ESPN3.com notched 7.4 million unique visitors and 942 minutes of viewing time. And coverage on ESPN Mobile (keeping in mind that 2010 was still relatively early days in smartphone history) garnered 10 million unique views and 93 million minutes of viewing time.
It was clear that ESPN's audience craved digital experiences, and those insights set off a chain of events that have since turned ESPN into a dominant multi-platform player.
Today, Coletti says ESPN's insight-driven approach has led to a greater understanding of who their hyper-connected customers are – serving both on mobile and over-the-top audiences – helped prioritize which platforms should receive certain content and helped solidify a cross-channel strategy that speaks to customers wherever they are in ESPN's ecosystem.
Digitization may have changed the way TV looks, but the medium is far from dead.
When you picture the president of a storied American company, you don't see Richard Dickson.
With shoulder-length hair, thick-rimmed glasses and a mismatched three-piece suit, the Mattel president and COO looks, instead, like a startup founder. And he carries himself like one, too.
In some ways, he is running a startup. Under his leadership, Mattel has completely reinvented itself, and is now unrecognizable from the Mattel of a decade ago. So he doesn't seem out of place when he starts talking about creativity and staying on the cutting edge of pop culture.
But the more he talks, the more one crucial truth becomes evident: Standing on-stage at the Adobe Marketing Summit in front of 10,000 marketing professionals, Dickson represents everything marketing should be – an idea the vast majority of brands are terrified of.
It's been the major theme of the Adobe Summit thus far, which has detailed how new technologies and heightened customer expectations will demand that businesses adapt to an experience-driven economy. Mattel is a prime example.
When Dickson became president and COO of Mattel, he realized that his brand experience was built on a story that had long-since been forgotten. So he did what any steward of innovation would do: He tore the brand down and built it back up using its founding principles.
Mattel began as a creations company, a passion project for designers, not toymakers. The brand believed in insightful ideas, taking risks and ultimately delighting children. In fact, it was this thinking in Mattel early days that led the company to pioneer the unproven medium of television advertising.
"We acted like a leader and thought like a challenger," Dickson says.
But after years of success, Dickson explains that the brand devolved into a packaged-goods company that happened to make toys.
Fast-forward to the Dickson era: The company needed to transform, to become relevant again by returning to its roots as a creations company. And that had to start with the company's most iconic brand, Barbie.
"We needed to disrupt the category that we created, without losing the things that made the brand great in the first place," Dickson says. "Girls had to love her again, and moms had to like her a bit more."
So Mattel kept an open mind and asked customers what they wanted to see in Barbie.
The result was a completely reimagined doll: One with 20 different skin tones, hair types and facial structures, different body types and even the ability to talk – all based on customer feedback.
Suddenly, people started talking about Mattel again. Barbie even got a cover story in TIME Magazine. "Creative bold decisions created content money can't buy," Dickson says, and started the company down a new path of innovation.
Now, the president and COO is bringing the same approach to Mattel's other brands, using technology like 3D printing to lead the way.
"We're reestablishing ourselves as a creation company that inspires the wonder of childhood," he says. "We want to create valuable relationships with children and their families that transcend our brand."
Mattel is an experience-led business. And all it took to get there was a willingness to be bold and creative, to transform the brand identity based on a true story that the world needed to hear.
Day 1 of the Adobe Marketing Summit was about reimagining businesses as experience-creators, and to kick of Wednesday's General Session, John Mellor decided to walk the walk.
Not five minutes after stepping on-stage Mellor joined by Vegas legend, Donny Osmond, and shortly after, the two were belting out a portion of "I'll Make a Man Out of You" from Disney's Mulan.
A playful start, for sure, but Mellor was interested in more than just an icebreaker – he wanted the song's opening line, "Let's get down to business," to echo in the audience's mind.
Because while it's all well and good to think of digital marketing in terms of experiences, the meat of the proposition requires some buckling down; it requires using technology to craft a narrative about your brand, "to be boldly creative in a world driven by data," Mellor says.
That, he explains, is the essence of the experience-led business. And it's the marketer's responsibility to create interactions that have meaning.
With the stakes properly set, it was time for some inspiration. For that, Mellor called upon a group of guests who know a few things about storytelling and the transformation of industries.
Abby Wambach, former captain of the U.S. women's soccer team, has enjoyed the highest levels of success in her field (literally). However, after leading her team to victory in the 2015 World Cup, she was struck by something disturbing: Despite notching the highest-ever viewership for a soccer match in America, her team was only rewarded with $2 million for winning the tournament.
Of course, $2 million seems fine, except when you compare it to the prize awarded to the men's team from Germany, which was awarded a sum nearly 40-times the size just a year earlier. Wambach knew, then, that something had to be done.
Now retired, Wambach has since dedicated her life to spreading awareness of gender inequality across the world, working both with global organizations and FIFA to pursue a solution. Luckily, Wambach has faced tougher odds before, and she's confident that her story can help make a difference.
Alma Derricks, VP, sales & marketing at Cirque du Soleil, says her brand is on the right side of history when it comes to experiences, but finished product – the performance – is only one part of the brand's story. And transforming her business will be about unpacking the components of the experience.
"The most radical thing we can do is be more intimate," she says, "being closer to audience, bringing them behind the curtains." In her opinion, that's where the real story begins.
That's how Cirque Shops and Spark Sessions came into being. Derricks says that Cirque is filled with talented people in a variety of disciplines, all operating at the top of their game, and that experience can be extremely valuable in the hands of young artists and global corporations alike.
Cirque Shops are master class sessions that allow aspiring dancers and musicians to learn from Cirque professionals – on the official Cirque stage, in front of their families – and then attend the full show later in the evening.
Spark Sessions is a corporate team building retreat that takes employees out of their comfort zones to get a different perspective on trust, leadership, even human resources.
The programs are reimagined stories for Cirque, but Derricks hopes they ultimately elevate the brand to new heights.
George Clooney smugly will tell you that "age" is biggest transformation in his life.
However, he admits that social media has triggered a profound change in the entertainment industry.
Clooney recalls, earlier in his career, when films attempted to "steal a weekend" – or, in other words, convince people to go see a movie before the bad reviews came out. These days, social media makes reviewing immediate, and allows viewers to hold Hollywood accountable for quality.
"It's healthy," Clooney says, describing how the storytelling has improved as a result of social policing. He also thinks it's improved the overall experience and helped open alternate avenues for storytelling.
"Now, if you look at the things you see [on television], the quality is so much better than the quality of most of the films you see – the storytelling, being able to tell a story over ten episodes – I think it's great for our industry."
Of course, Clooney still won't be joining Twitter anytime soon, but thinks the transformation of entertainment through democratization is certainly a story he can get behind.
The first session on Wednesday morning picked up where Tuesday left off: Making digital marketing about people, rather than devices.
Naturally, at the heart of this conversation was the recently-announced Adobe Marketing Cloud Device Co-op. But it wasn't a bragging opportunity – it was a very real conversation about an inflection point in advertising.
Just as targeting technology replaced "spray and pray" media buys, shifting perception from "devices" to "people" will be the next shift in marketing that defines the line between success and failure.
Waddell says that data bears this idea out: 33% of screen time is simultaneous use of TV and a digital device; 40% of people who start a journey on one device finish it on another; and 60% of adults use at least two screens per day.
Operating purely on a device basis neglects the vast majority of interactions a customer is having with a brand in their journey.
Waddell says that people-based marketing is about evaluating those touch points in context and capitalizing on them – because conversions that require multiple touch points are, on average, 26% more valuable than single touch point conversions.
However, an optimized cross-channel approach cannot exist in the absence of new technology. Kelly Maves, SVP data solutions and product management at VivaKi, admits that while strategy has to exist before technology – not the other way around – brands that fail to adapt to move foward could be left behind.
"We need to evolve our thinking about how we're distributing our content and how we're spending out marketing dollars," he says. "The goals haven't changed, [but] there's new data and technology to take advantage of."
Devices don't buy products, people do.
When Asa Whillock, engineering manager at Adobe, concluded his talk at Tuesday morning's General Session, he exited the stage to a chorus of confused and intrigued murmurs from the crowd.
He had just stunned the room by announcing something brand-new, and totally revolutionary for the Adobe Marketing Cloud.
So when it came time, just a few hours later, for David Devisser to host a breakout session on the features and functionality of the new Adobe offering, excitement had reached a fever pitch. The small conference room intended for an intimate presentation had packed-in an over-capacity crowd that thirsted for details.
What was the announcement that sent the Adobe Marketing Summit into frenzy?
The launch of open platform that will allow marketers to change the context of analytics from "device" to "person." Because, as the slogan goes, "devices don't buy products, people do."
It's called the Adobe Marketing Cloud Device Co-op, and its simple idea – thinking in terms of people, not devices – has massive implications for the accuracy of digital marketing.
As it stands now, customer data sets have no way to reconcile ad engagement by the same person on multiple devices. Instead, each device is treated as a unique view, which skews performance data and disregards the customer journey.
However, sites that require an "authentication event" (the user logging-in), can determine which devices are linked to a particular user.
Rather than create more authentication events, the Device Co-op aims to let Adobe Marketing Cloud members pool their data on device-usage in order to paint a more accurate, collective picture of the customer.
It's important to note that only "the link" between devices will be shared, not user profiles or site-visit data. In doing so, the Device Co-op will be a powerful, shared marketing resource that also respects customer privacy.
Devisser says the Device Co-op will be fully integrated into Adobe Marketing Cloud tools and help solve four fundamental problems with digital advertising: 1) Fragmented, device-based reporting, rather than human interaction; 2) inconsistent targeting leading to inaccurate conversion data; 3) ill-advised ad buys due to misguided conversion attribution; and 4) incomplete segmentation groups because of missing trait data.
The Device Co-op will begin a private beta immediately after the conclusion of the Adobe Marketing Summit, and potentially roll out to all Adobe Marketing Cloud users by the end of 2016.
The anatomy of the experience-led business.
Picture our world on the eve on the industrial revolution: We're cooped-up in our houses, making goods by hand, completely unaware of how silly our processes are, and how much better they could be with a little innovation.
But whereas factories ignited the industrial revolution, we're facing a transformation at the hands of the experience-led business.
Data shows that in 2016, 89% of companies will compete primarily on the basis on customer experience. And data also suggests that by 2020, 85% of our relationships with brands will take place without human contact.
In other words, now is the time to invest in your brand's customer experience, because by the end of the decade, it will be the primary and crucial touch-point.
To Loni Stark, the industrial revolution comparison is apt outside of the imagery of an industry-wide tectonic shift: It has very real parallels in the realms of production, quality, and productivity.
The industrial revolution saw production move from decentralization (in homes) to centralization (in factories). This, in turn, saw quality move from unpredictable to predictable, and productivity move from low to high.
In the experience economy, the categories remain the same, but they'll revert: Production will decentralize thanks to open source programming and innovations like 3D printing; quality will go from being a brand standard to a consumer standard, enforced with ratings systems; and productivity will move from mass goods to mass personalization.
Many of these changes are already happening, but the transformation will accelerate exponentially when Generation Z becomes the predominant consumer (40% of the digital population) by 2020.
Stark says Gen Z traits – they multitask across five screens, they prioritize privacy because sharing isn't a novelty, they have short attention spans but will engage if content meets their standards of education and knowledge, they love to communicate with images rather than text – will demand a shift in the consumer experience.
As a result, companies will need digital roots to monitor Gen Zs where they are, create content quickly and use data to construct immersive, connected experiences.
For this to happen, Aravind Narasimhan, head of platform, program and product management at Samsung, says companies will need to start thinking in terms of customer-centrism, rather than organizational-centrism – creating experiences that are primarily value-drivers for the customer, not strategic points of emphasis for the business.
Comedy Central is not a TV network.
Walter Levitt is not funny – seated before a standing-room crowd at the Adobe Marketing Summit, he wants that fact to be abundantly clear.
He does, however, work with the funniest people on the planet. And in doing so, the CMO has transformed Comedy Central from television channel to comedy brand.
Levitt says it's no secret that millennials are the biggest audience for comedy, so much so that data indicates "taste in comedy" is one of the most important factors in shaping millennial identity.
But reaching the millennial audience has required stepping outside the framework of traditional television.
"We need to be the favorite comedy brand anywhere millennials want to laugh," Levitt says. And that's why Comedy Central adapted its content for social media and over-the-top streaming platforms.
"When something is funny, you share it on social media and your friends think you're cool and funny for finding that content. It's social currency," he says.
Levitt's work isn't just about using new channels to find his brand's audience – it's also about being data smart to create promotional content.
The introduction of Trevor Noah, the new host of The Daily Show, is the first example to come to Levitt's mind. After announcing Noah as the replacement for TV legend, Jon Stewart (a task Levitt calls "one of the scariest of coolest opportunities of my career"), the marketing team at Comedy Central started noticing something peculiar.
In addition to run-of-the-mill Google search queries like, "who is Trevor Noah?," search data revealed more nuanced – and hilarious – queries like "Trevor Noah girlfriend" and "Trevor Noah single".
It became clear to Levitt and team that this data could help them create an in-depth, digital-first way for Noah to introduce himself to the Internet, and set the record straight on their most burning questions.
What followed was a series of 30 unlisted YouTube videos, starring Noah, which could only be found when users entered precise search terms. Each video featured Noah hilariously providing answers to even the most trivial of questions – and the campaign went gangbusters.
Levitt says that comedy is driven by a core idea that's trying to be ahead of the data – trying to be the next big searchable term. But from a marketing perspective, it's the exact opposite.
"From a marketing perspective, we don't start a campaign until we've looked at the data," he says. "What do we have? What do we know? We always start there, and that drives a ton of our decision-making."
So, no: Walter Levitt is not funny. But knowing now how he uses data to create hilarious content, maybe that's a good thing.
Digital experiences today have the power to transform every aspect of our lives.
Shantanu Narayen walks onto the stage like a rock star, accompanied by a heart-palpitating audio-visual experience projected on the stage behind him and two massive screens visible from every angle of the exhibition room.
The audience of 10,000 goes wild.
Despite the fanfare of the occasion, however, Narayen doesn't waste any time before cutting straight to his core message: We are living in the experience age, and the brands that can deliver compelling and contextual digital experiences will be the brands that dominate the era.
The Adobe CEO points to case studies from Deadpool and MasterCard campaigns, which have leveraged customized consumer touch-points to launch and transform the brands, respectively, and challenges the audience to evaluate how they can elevate the experiences created for their customers.
Of course, in kicking off the 2016 Adobe Marketing Summit, Narayen realizes that the complete path to an experience-focused business will be revealed in the days to come – but he does offer that the solution to his challenge can be found within Adobe's core competencies.
"Great experiences always start with great content," he says, describing how the Adobe Creative Cloud equips agencies and marketers with best-in-class tools for content creation. But Narayen also acknowledges that content in a vacuum can only be so powerful. "Experiences are powered by data," he says, detailing how the Adobe Marketing Cloud can help marketers put the right message in front of the right people at the right time.
"Our innovation agenda is focused on bringing these clouds together to create powerful experiences," he says.
"We are, all of us, in the experience business – it is that simple and it is that big."
Brad Rencher is almost too excited to take the reigns from Narayen.
And it's understandable, Rencher will serve as emcee for the remainder of the session and be responsible for announcing brand-new features of the Adobe Marketing Cloud and interviewing keynote speakers.
But first, he builds on Narayen's message in a more concrete way, detailing the "table stakes," as he calls them, for operating in the digital arena. And to merely secure a place at the table, he says, brands will have to adopt technology in ways they haven't had to in decades.
So far, technology has disrupted business in "two waves." It started with the digitization of the back-office – being able to seamlessly connect orders with their fulfillments, and speed-up commerce – and the digitization of the front office – using customer relationship management technology to optimize sales and make the most of leads.
Now, he says, those two aren't enough: In the same way that engineers talk about computing powering doubling every 18 months, Rencher says consumer expectations double every 18 months as well, requiring new points of contact.
And that bring us to Rencher's third wave of disruption: The experience economy – or in simpler terms, using technology to surprise and delight customers with contextual content and meaningful interactions.
"They expect you to know them, and deliver an experience that is consistent, continuous and compelling," he says. "This wave is about goosebumps, it's about smiles, it's about bringing people closer together. It's about doing our jobs so well that consumers don't even know that you and I exist."
"We're on a journey of complete transformation of experience for customers."
McDonalds is the definition of scale. But how does a company so huge operate in the experience economy?
The fast-food giant serves 26 million customers per day, and has grown to such size by perfecting a small and consistent menu of food items. So the concept of personalization would seem counter-intuitive.
However, when Deborah Wahl sat down with Brad Rencher on the Adobe Marketing Summit Stage, she said that McDonalds acknowledges the modern, expectation-filled audience, and recently decided to pursue a future built on a smaller scale.
That's meant switching up food offerings to serve more diverse customers, and using technology to improve communications.
So far, the new direction has seen the creation in a brand new mobile app that already has 10 million downloads, kiosks for new ordering options and faster-than-ever response times to customer service queries.
Wahl confessed that, when bringing technology into a business, it can be easy to get distracted by the shiny new "toys," but making the commitment to become an experience business is about prioritizing the right solutions that can be delivered at scale.
"There is so much incremental power in the little things," she says. "We can build to the other things, but bigger gains will be from every day, practical aspects of the business."
"We're a customer-focused, data-driven slice of awesomeness"
In 2014, Giles Richardson wasn't impressed by his bank's digital presence.
"We were terrible," he says, just before explaining that RBS had a "fireworks culture," in which they'd launch a new experience and then disappear without measuring its effectiveness.
For a bank that serves 24 million customers across the globe – including the Queen – Richardson felt that was was unacceptable.
"You know the Rule of Digitization? 80% of everything you do online doesn't work out the way you thought it would," he says. "We were probably making things worse."
To combat this culture of guesswork, Richardson created the "Superstar DJs" program, a fun way to encourage testing and measuring among data analysts at RBS that equated digital marketing with building a career as a pop DJ. And with the help of the Adobe Marketing Cloud, teams could work seamlessly to optimize the bank's digital campaigns.
Thanks to the new program, RBS went from conducting two measly optimization tests in 2014, to conducting 400 in 2015.
And now, with the company firmly entrenched in the future of digital experiences, Richardson couldn't be happier. "We're a 300 year old bank, but we only care about the last 10 seconds a customer spent with us online," he says.