Let’s Get Personal: The Future of Personalized Digital Experiences in the Era of AI
Author
Jon Bird
Shantanu Narayen, Chair and CEO Adobe, looks back at the tech advances over the past 12 months
If you’re in the experience business, you will know Adobe from the tools you use every day. Not to mention the fact that the tech giant is consistently named a leader by analysts such as Forrester, Gartner and IDC, for its suite of tools within the Adobe Experience Cloud. But you may not be aware that their annual US Adobe Summit is the world’s largest digital experience conference and, therefore, a reliable barometer on the industry at large.
This year, the event was back with a bang - 12,000 marketers and marketing technology experts converged on Las Vegas from March 26-28, with tens of thousands more attending online. They were there to learn and be inspired by the 200+ sessions and hands-on labs, connect with peers and experts from around the world, and explore the future of AI-infused, experience-led growth.
VML presenting on boosting AI adoption with client, Ideal Industries
WPP was a Platinum Sponsor of the Adobe Summit, and VML played a major role, both on stage and off-stage, presenting and networking at our WPP stand. As VML Enterprise Solutions leader, Jeff Geheb noted, it was a perfect fit.
“There is no more natural pairing than Adobe and VML – we both have creativity and technology at our heart.”
In case you couldn’t make it in person or online, we’ve compiled some of the key highlights and takeaways.
Imagine…
A big part of Adobe Summit is envisioning the future – one that is deeply personalized and invisibly enabled by AI. That’s the promise that great martech brings. Imagine…
In banking, a Digital Personal Banker for every customer
In health, your own Healthcare Trusted Digital Advisor
In travel, your Personal Digital Concierge
This is the next level of personalization and where we are all headed. But to do that effectively and efficiently, there are still many hurdles to get over across content, data, and customer journeys. Adobe Summit tried to both sketch an outline of tomorrow, and at the same time “color in the lines” of the steps needed to get there.
Taking Generative AI from ‘Playground to Production’
Central to the Summit was (no surprise) AI, which Adobe called a “force multiplier for the human endeavor”.
As Adobe reminded the crowd, last year GenAI was all about “fun and experimentation”. This year, Adobe announced new applications which aimed to “move GenAI from a shiny new toy to technology that you can confidently put into production and derive real value from”, dramatically speeding up creation, content production, delivery, and reporting.
One of the stars of the show was Adobe’s GenStudio, a generative AI-first product, now in beta that “lets marketing teams quickly plan, create, manage, activate across apps and publishers, and measure on-brand content”. It is intended to allow one person to achieve in an hour what it used to take 3-4 people months to do.
Firefly
Adobe also showcased AI advances in Firefly, a generative AI creative engine that comes in two forms:
Base models: Available to all users, trained on Adobe data – licensed images and video – with, importantly, all source material cleared for usage.
Custom models: Trained on an individual brand’s IP, its products, styles, campaigns. This could be a “do it all” assistant brand creative – able to generate not only images, but vectors, text effects and full design. A conference case study demonstrated that using custom models resulted in a 10x increase in creative productivity, 60% faster time to market, 26x lift in engagement. Coming later this year, Adobe promised, is audio, video, and 3D generation.
In addition, Adobe announced Firefly Services, which it called “the biggest change to content creation in decades”. Two killer aspects were the ability to use “style” and “structure” reference. This means that you can instruct Firefly to create new content based on the look, feel and form of existing material.
Finally, Adobe revealed a partnership with Microsoft, where, for example, Firefly will be integrated into Office 365 applications, enabling users to call up GenAI to create imagery and copy directly within Microsoft Word. Partnerships of this nature are becoming more and more commonplace across the entire martech ecosystem as vendors join forces in the AI arms race.
Accelerating the Content Supply Chain
Adobe believes that we are in an era where “content (is) fuelling the global economy”. With that in mind, a constant conference reference was the “content supply chain” – using Adobe tools, including GenAI, to rethink how content is created, approved, published and its impact measured and optimized.
By reinventing the content supply chain, one major Adobe user achieved a goal of producing 5 x more content, with half the effort at lower cost. A major website was produced in under three weeks, and, by utilizing Firefly Services, 8,000 illustrations were generated in just four weeks.
A critical aspect of the content supply chain is measurement, down to an “atomic level”: assessing the impact of granular elements of a campaign – for example, images, style, color and tone.
Digitally Uniting Two Billion People with The Coca-Cola Company’s Brands
The main stage presentation was re-staged as a fireside chat at the WPP stand
The Coca-Cola Company is undergoing a massive marketing transformation. Previously an organization removed from its customers, it’s now on a mission to bring together two billion people with its brands digitally, refreshing their worlds and making a difference in their lives. To do this, the company partnered with Adobe and WPP and began a journey to deliver consistency and connections across a global digital ecosystem with over 1,000 websites and mobile apps.
In a sold-out, standing room only session, VML leaders took to the stage with Shekhar Gowda, Global Head, Marketing Technology, the Coca-Cola Company, to unpack the strategies, tactics and Adobe tools being deployed.
Speakers offered a look under the hood at the sophisticated engine powering the marketing transformation – which uses a variety of tools and tech from Adobe Experience Manager to Customer Journey Analytics.
Sneaks: A Peek at What’s Next
Shaq on stage for the Sneaks
The Adobe Sneaks is a Summit highlight, offering attendees a sneak peek at what’s being cooked up in the labs and asking the crowd to vote for what should be brought to market.
Guest presenter and 7’1” (2.16m) tall basketball legend Shaquille O’Neal was a willing guinea pig for some of the new tech. Demos ranged from “Project Perfect Plays”, an automatic marketing playbook generator, to “Project Ready Click Go”, which promised the ability to build digital experiences in minutes.
A crowd favorite was “Project Promo Mojo” – a GenAI moderated marketing influencer program. In the first instance, Promo Mojo is a digital marketplace which quickly matches marketers with ready-to-be published content from influencers. Once an influencer has been selected, GenAI can be used to integrate messaging into pre-existing videos, podcasts, blogs, and social posts – cloning the influencer’s voice and video image. It was equal parts fantastic and frightening.
VML and KFC Win Big at 2024 Adobe Experience Maker Awards
One of the Summit highlights is always the Adobe Experience Maker Awards (the “Oscars of Digital Experience”), and VML client KFC Malaysia was crowned the outright global winner of the Disruptor category.
The Disruptor award recognizes the successful partnership of VML, KFC and Adobe to power personalized, immersive experiences, delivering finger lickin’ goodness from over 700 restaurants directly to the comfort of customers’ homes.
Introducing dayparting, localization, and gamification, as well as a brand-new loyalty program, KFC saw uplifts in conversion rates, order volumes and revenue.
As ever, Summit delivered big! If you’re attending, you can’t avoid being bowled over by the sheer scale of the event. However, if you were to leave with just one single takeaway for 2024, it would be this. The scale of change that AI will deliver across the martech landscape in the next few years is set to be exponential. Let’s do it!
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