The Five Most Interesting Takeaways from Adobe Summit London

Posted on the 21 May 2014 by Discerningdigital @DigiDiscern

One of the biggest events in the European marketing calendar took place last week with the Adobe Summit EMEA in London on May 14-15th.

With almost 4000 marketers and hundreds of brands in attendance, the digital marketing conference examined how and why marketers should reinvent themselves, using data and algorithmic technologies to reach their customers with more meaningful content.

Unsurprisingly, there is a wealth of social updates, blogs and articles around the event. We know how hard it is to keep up so here are our five favorite takeaways from the event.

1) The Next Big Things in Digital

Adobe Digital Index principal analyst Tamara Gaffney presented on the upcoming digital trends marketers need to be aware of. Key predictions? Online video is booming, the tablet market will flatten in favour of the ‘phablet’ market and the growth of wearables as the fastest-growing browsing device.

Her advice? Test, test and keep testing.

Read the full post here on Adobe’s CMO.com blog.

2) How New Tech Is Impacting Society Around the World

Minter Dial is a leading light in the digital transformation space, not to mention one of our favorite thought leaders here at Discerning Digital.

His presentation at the Summit focused on emerging tech trends and their significance for society. Top developments include crime prediction technology, productivity and wellbeing monitors – and a digital lollipop.

Check out the SlideShare:

New tech trends - How new tech is impacting society around the world from Minter Dial

3) Flashback in Tweets

Prefer social updates to blog posts? Then you’ll like this article, summarising the theme of digital marketing reinvention in just five tweets, which includes a quote from the Vatican’s Head of Internet. Yes, really. 

Get the Flashback in Tweets here.

4) Are You Being Held Back by a Digital Roadblock?

Adobe has published an interesting new report into the state of digital marketing in Europe, revealing that almost 73% of European marketers believe they need to reinvent themselves to succeed.

Surveying more than 350 marketing professionals in the UK, Germany and France, ‘Digital Roadblock: Marketers Struggle to Reinvent Themselves, European Edition’ reveals that marketers perceive expanding marketing technologies and platforms as the driver for their need to reinvent, and identified organisational challenges over personal ones as the barriers to success.

Key Findings

  • 68% of European marketers believe that marketing has changed more in the last two years than in the previous 50, and more than half (54%) expect their own roles to change in the next year.
  • 65% of marketers expanded number of channels and platforms to reach audiences as the most important driver of change.
  • 58% of European marketers say that marketing success is dependent on organisational change, with perceived obstacles including a lack of training in new skills (30%), confusion over roles and responsibilities (30%) and company resistance to trying new programs (30%).

Read the full report here.

5) And Finally

Watch this great video by Adobe and get inspired about the opportunities for reinvention in digital marketing.

The Challenge and Opportunity of Digital Reinvention 

Marketing is changing, and the role of marketing in your business is changing. It can feel like a challenge to keep up but as digital transformation impacts all functions of business, including marketing, the challenge is one that must be risen to.

Get ready for the change with our marketing transformation checklist.