Adobe Summit Recap – Make Experience Your Business

This year, my Adobe Summit experience started off a little differently. I went hiking.

With the opportunity to take in the natural beauty of Red Rock Canyon, the experience was sensational, to say the least. But beyond getting some physical exercise, it turned out to be the perfect prologue to the keynote on Day 1 of the Summit – Become an Experience Maker.

Below are a few of my key takeaways and thoughts from Day 1 of the event, which this year is taking place in Las Vegas:

People buy experience

“Do you remember the last vacation you took?”, This was the opening question posed by Shantanu Narayen, President & CEO of Adobe, during his keynote presentation.

He then retold how he recently flew out to New York to see his son and celebrate his birthday. During his trip, he had a number of different memorable experiences, from seeing Hamilton to sightseeing, all of which included a digital element. His experience deeply resonated with me, as recently I published a blog post about the omni-channel customer experience and how everything every aspect of the purchasing experience was done digitally when I went to see an NHL game.

Shantanu used this example to highlight how people buy experiences, not products. He explains that, “It used to be that products were the basis of differentiation. But not anymore. Business must deliver real experiences to win in this increasingly competitive market. 

But what does it take to create a great experience? Shantanu put forward three ways for businesses to deliver a phenomenal experience:

1. Design for brilliance
2. Wire for intelligence
3. Architect for Action

And of course, this has to be done across every device and every touchpoint to make sure you succeed in providing a great customer experience.

Make experience your business

Brad Rencher, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Adobe Experience Cloud, then took to the stage.

Brad highlighted the business impact of investing in experience, presenting findings from a soon-to-be-released report by Forrester that highlights how business leaders who focus on the customer experience had 1.6x increase in brand awareness and 1.9x in average order value.

Source: Adobe

Brad followed-up these findings with a great quote: “Making experience your business is good for business. Especially if you want to stay in business.”.

But what about a practical example of how this is working in the real world? As fast as you could ask the question, John O’Sullivan, Managing Director and CEO of Tourism Australia took to the stage to explain how.

He walked through how a Tourism Australia ad campaign that ran during this year’s Super Bowl (shown below) was driven by data.

For John, “It is about using data to be more efficient and more effective.” He added that, “Putting the customer at the center of everything we do is a big part of our mantra and technology helps us do that.”

I couldn’t agree more with that statement, especially since at iperceptions, we also help brands do this by transforming customer feedback into insights so brands can align and execute more quickly.

John also mentioned the need for everyone to have data, from executives right down to the interns. Again, this is something I am seeing more and more. But I feel the data has to be meaningful to each team, and not just provide a data dump where departments have to sift through and find insights relating to them. Key stakeholders need to see the insights that matter to them, while also seeing the data in a broader context.

Bridging the physical and digital worlds

Another part of the keynote that stood out to me came from Coca-Cola. David Godsman, Chief Digital Officer, and James Sommerville, VP of Global Design, looked at the importance of storytelling and how everything, even the packaging, is part of the experience. 

One aspect of the presentation that shocked me was that 1.3 billion consumers drink 1.9 billion Coke-affiliated beverages a day! And every one of these consumers is interacting with the Coke brand in different ways, from the website to mobile to Virtual Reality and even voice.

Just to put that into perspective that’s 18 percent of the world population, and as David pointed out – every one of those consumers has their own set of wants, needs and expectations.

Keeping in mind, as a consumer, your wants, needs and expectations can impact how you choose to interact with a brand, especially depending on where you are in your customer journey. Gaining and grasping this knowledge about your customers is crucial if you want to deliver an enjoyable and memorable experience that stands out from the crowd.

That’s why I feel that iperceptions is at the perfect intersection of what David was alluding to as we provide a guided approach to measuring consumer wants, needs and expectations through installing customer feedback listening posts at each touchpoint across the customer journey.

If you are at the Adobe Summit please stop by the iperceptions’ booth (857-A) and have a chat with me and the team.