After a four-year pause, Adobe Summit reconvened in person in Las Vegas. Bringing together more than 10,000 industry professionals, the three-day event served as a showcase for major product announcements, thought-provoking insights and brand digital transformation stories.
Wunderman Thompson speakers and clients were prominently featured in key sessions throughout the Summit.
For their session Mazda: Personalization Inspired by Japanese Hospitality, Wunderman Thompson’s Erica Lewkowicz, VP, Director of Analytics and Optimization, and Rachelle Maisner, Analytics Director, were joined by Kaitlin White, Product Marketing Manager, Adobe, to explore how our client Mazda uses technology to create personalized, joy-inducing digital experiences.
Steve Martinez, VP of Digital Solutions at Wunderman Thompson Commerce & Technology client Univar Solutions, presented Debunking Top B2B Commerce Myths on how Univar undertook their digital transformation – debunking common B2B commerce myths in the process, and how brands can surmount similar challenges. Helen of Troy’s Harish Ramani, Chief Information Officer, and Kadima Lonji, VP of Digital Technology, presented Helen of Troy's Direct-to-Consumer Digital Transformation and how they approached their complex, yet necessary, transition into direct-to-consumer sales.
Marcus East, Executive Vice President and Chief Digital Officer of T-Mobile, delivered a keynote where he discussed the brand’s journey to simplify and digitize the customer experience.
Here are more of our key highlights from the event:
Content Needs Exponentially Growing
According to a recent study by Adobe, 88% of marketing leaders indicated demand for content has more than doubled in the past two years, and two-thirds of respondents anticipate that content needs will grow another five times in the next two years. This has led to spiraling costs and immense pressures on creative and marketing teams not only to keep up with present demand, but to scale for the future. Adobe acutely recognizes this customer need, and the bulk of product announcements were centered on addressing how brands can meet it.
Generative AI
Generative AI was far and away the most discussed topic at the event. In the opening keynote, Adobe unveiled Adobe Firefly, “a family of Adobe’s own generative models specifically created for content generation for creative output.” Integrated across its suite of products, including Adobe Experience Cloud, Firefly will enable content creators to use text prompts to produce a virtually limitless range of images and text effects at scale. Launched initially as a private beta, Firefly also comes with prebuilt safeguards that allow creators to add “do not train” tags for those that do not want their work used in training the AI model.
Adobe Sensei GenAI leverages multiple large language models, including ChatGPT through Microsoft Azure OpenAI, to provide real-time insights and assist marketers with content creation and experience management. Embedded in products from Adobe Experience Manager to Adobe Customer Data Platform, Sensei GenAI can be deployed for a number of use cases, including personalization, content editing, marketing copy creation and powering conversational experiences, like chatbots.
Wunderman Thompson has been a strong advocate for brands to integrate AI in their operations and experiences. Have a look at Adopt or Fail: Why Business Needs AI for a deeper look at the topic.
Content Supply Chain
For those unfamiliar with the term, content supply chain is the process of producing and delivering the content that makes up the bulk of the customer experience. As channels and consumer touch points grow, optimizing the content supply chain has become top of mind for many brands. Adobe’s content supply chain solution, announced at the Summit, fuses AI with simplified authoring tools to provide marketers with real-time audience insights and new ways to produce, approve and publish content at scale. This lays the groundwork for brands to deliver experience-led growth.
Adobe and Wunderman Thompson collaborated on a recent report, Unlock and Deliver Dynamic Content Faster, that provides strategies for how brands can move at speed without sacrificing quality.
The Importance of B2B Commerce
B2B commerce gets less attention than the consumer side, but its significance has not been lost on Adobe. During the Summit, Adobe presented data showing that B2B commerce revenue will continue to grow to be five times larger than B2C commerce by 2025, while also noting that an overwhelming 89% of B2B purchases are digitally influenced (versus 59% for B2C). As a result, the Adobe Commerce roadmap session featured a slew of planned enhancements to the platform’s B2B functionality. This included new data connectors to create unified customer and account profiles, advanced company and buyer management tools, flexible procurement workflows, and features to better enable composable commerce. As even consumer brands must manage B2B channels (e.g., retailer purchasing), these enhancements can pave the way for even greater adoption of digital commerce in the B2B space.
If you were unable to attend Adobe Summit, you can watch many of the sessions on demand here.
Like Wunderman Thompson, it’s clear that Adobe is investing in new ways for brands and businesses to inspire their customers.
If you need insights or support as you continue to navigate your organization’s digital transformation, contact us to learn how we can help.
