Adobe Symposium 2016 showcases what experience businesses are capable of

Adobe Symposium 2016, the annual digital marketing conference that drives the future of marketing and business transformation through Adobe Marketing Cloud, was all about driving the 'experience' business, what Adobe terms the type of business that will thrive in the digital age.

According to the company, digital has set a new bar for customer expectations and made it essential for brands to lead with the customer experience. The new experience that customers today expect and demand must be compelling, personalised and supported throughout their journey with a brand – from brick-and-mortar stores to mobile apps and websites. 

Paul Robson, President, Adobe APAC, said that Adobe Symposium is the largest event of its kind in Southeast Asia, reflecting the demand for information and ideas in the area. "Those brands are laser focused on customer experiences at every touch point, and already pulling ahead of competitors by creating a new normal for consumers. Experience is the new competitive advantage,” he said of the brand representatives speaking at the event. 

“StarHub aims to provide a differentiated, best-in-class customer experience across our channels, including StarHub.com. Adobe’s platform allows us to continually track, analyse and synchronise our data to better understand our customers’ needs, so we are constantly improving the on-site experience with more intuitive designs, relevant and timely content,” said Rod Strother, Vice President, Digital Transformation, StarHub.

“At Great Eastern Life, we have steadily built up our digital platforms to enable us to more proactively engage our customers and at the same time provide them a differentiated customer experience,” said Clement Lim, Group Head, Digital Marketing and Loyalty Programme, Great Eastern Life Assurance. “In this increasingly competitive business landscape, we believe that customer-led digital transformation is the way to go. Our partnership with Adobe has helped us transform the Great Eastern brand from a passive brand to an active and more customer-centric brand. We have seen increased traffic to our new website with noticeably increased levels of engagement.”

At Adobe Symposium, Adobe announced several new capabilities to help brands become experience-led businesses:

 Connected shopping experience advancements: According to a recent eConsultancy report, Asia Pacific (APAC) organisations are nearly twice as likely as their European and North American counterparts to say that more than half of their overall e-commerce revenue is transacted directly on mobile devices. Adobe Sneaks, which offers a peek at the innovations under development at Adobe featured the unveiling of the “adaptive store” kiosk, which integrates personal shopper information and data-driven product recommendations into the offline shopping experience.

Demonstrations during the event keynotes showed how mobile software development kit innovations from Adobe allow businesses to improve a customer experience.

For example, merchants can now track a user's behaviour all the way from the presentation of an advertisement to download an app to the installation of that app, and beyond. This was previously not possible, the company said.

Signing in to the app means an opportunity to get to know the potential customer, while geo-location support enables marketers to personalise the experience further, for example by notifying the user via push messaging that there is a physical store nearby, said Vineeta Bathija, Senior Solutions Consultant (SEA) - Digital Marketing, Adobe.

Deeplinking - which links a user directly to a product page rather than the home page, saving clicks - further accelerates the sales cycle while simplifying the buying process. In the example presented at a keynote, viewing earphones through a browser led to an invitation to download the mobile app for the company making the earphones. Once the app had been installed, it displayed the same earphones within the app. "There is no need to search and research," said Bathija.

The new Adobe capabilities also allow the pairing of a 'smart shopping bag' within a physical store with the digital shopping cart within the app. When the physical shopping bag is filled with items, the digital shopping cart fills up with virtual copies of the same items. With beacon technology, the system is smart enough to identify whether the shopper has left the store without paying, and if so bills the user directly via the app.

"No cards, no queues, just cool new headphones," said Bathija. "With the power of Adobe and recently announced mobile innovations, this is a reimagined customer shopping experience."

Michael Stoddart, Director, Digital Experience, APAC, Adobe, on sttage with Janie Lim of Adobe to showcase some of the new features in the Adobe portfolio, including virtual reality and how easy it is to add an advertisement straight into VR content. 

Asian customers for Adobe Primetime.

 Virtual reality (VR) capabilities: Adobe also showcased how it is enabling end-to-end delivery of video experiences across virtual reality devices. New capabilities within Adobe Primetime include ad-driven monetisation for VR, the support of playback of digital rights management (DRM)-protected content (using Adobe Access) for both Virtual Cinema and 180/360^o VR video scenarios plus device support for Samsung Gear VR and Google Cardboard. Support for Oculus Rift and HTC Vive will come later.

Michael Stoddard, Director, Digital Media, APAC, Adobe, speaks at a media luncheon.

Michael Stoddart, Director, Adobe Digital Media, Adobe APAC, predicts that virtual reality (VR) is going to be the next big thing for digital marketing, especially by Christmas 2017. Stoddart demonstrated how advertising can easily be drag-and-dropped into a 360-degree video with Adobe software during an Adobe Symposium 2016 keynote, and said that there are already reasonably-priced 3D cameras available (Stoddart recommends the ones from Ricoh).

Stoddart added that there will be 275 million VR users by 2025, and that recording a 360-degree video will be easier than ever in the future as 3D imaging capabilities will be built right into mobile phones.

Adobe Experience Manager and Adobe FrameMaker integration: Consumers are becoming even more sophisticated in how they research throughout the purchase process, and are increasingly referencing technical documents like user manuals. This new integration helps brands manage and publish complex technical content across all channels, devices and formats.

Gemma O'Brien  Typographer,said: "As we move into a digital future the idea of authenticity and the definition of what that means will change." She also shared at a keynote about the evolution of her craft and how her spew bag challenge went viral.

This year, Adobe Symposium featured a Tweet-for-Good campaign to raise up to US$10,000 for billionBricks, a Singapore-based non-profit innovation studio providing shelter and building infrastructure solutions for the homeless and vulnerable. Adobe contributed S$5 per tweet with the hashtag #AdobeSymp towards billionBricks projects. Prasoon Kumar, Founder and CEO, billionBricks has a design background and started the company to focus on higher-quality homes for the poor than the alternatives available today. "We want whatever homes are built for the poor to be done well and last a lifetime," he said.

Kumar introduces billionBricks to the audience at Adobe Symposium and thanked everyone who had tweeted.

The company has projects in India, Cambodia, India, Malaysia and Nepal, not only for building homes but also for schools.

Hashtag: #AdobeSymp