For the third year, Adobe organizes the EMEA (Europe Middle East Africa) version of its Digital Marketing Summit in London on May 14-15th, 2014.
If you missed last year's edition, you will find a summary in these articles of my blog.
John Watton, Director Digital Marketing at Adobe, shares some insights about this year's edition hightlights in the interview below.
Nicolas Malo: Hello John, could you please first explain the concept of the Adobe Summit?
John Watton: Marketers today are facing more pressure than ever before. Digital media has completely reinvented the ways in which consumers engage with brands, seek information, and ultimately make their buying decisions—in turn forcing marketers to entirely transform the ways in which they plan, execute and track their marketing campaigns.
And research shows digital marketers are hungry—hungry for more education, knowledge-sharing and inspiration around the latest marketing strategies. As pressure increases to prove ROI on marketing spend, the lack of formal digital marketing training is starting to take a toll. Summit aims to target exactly these needs, and we bring together 3,000 of Europe’s smartest marketers to discuss, share and learn about the latest in digital marketing best practice.
Nicolas Malo: What are the hot topics for this year's edition?
John Watton: At a high level, the theme of Summit is “Revolution. Reinvention. Reimagination”, i.e. how marketers have to respond to the current revolution in consumer behaviour, reinvent their marketing and reimagine the future. To achieve this marketers need to think about their people, processes and technology. Do they have the right skills in their team? Do they have the right organisation? And is their technology fit for purpose? When it comes to people & processes we’ve seen benchmarking becoming increasingly important to brands. It’s about how you stack up against your industry and what steps can you take to improve your business. We’ll be sharing some approaches here.
And in terms of technology we’ll be covering the topics at the top of the CMO/CIO agenda – including Big Data, mobile, social & personalisation. The theme here is that 2014 is about turning the hype of recent years into reality.
Nicolas Malo: Who are the top speakers lined up?
John Watton: Attendees will benefit from an impressive lineup of over 200 speakers. In terms of industry luminaries we have the likes of Jez Frampton, group CEO of Interbrand; Amber Atherton of My Flash Trash; Michael Acton Smith, CEO of Mind Candy; Michael Aidan, Head of Digital of Groupe Danone; Mathieu Straat, Digital Director of L’Occitane en Provence; Pete Blackshaw, global head of digital marketing and social media for Nestlé; Dietmar Dahmen, chief innovation officer of ecx.io; Catherine Barba, founder of the CB Group; David Cooperstein, VP, research director of Forrester; David Edelman, principal at McKinsey & Company; Ann Lewnes, CMO of Adobe; and Brad Rencher, SVP and GM of Digital Marketing for Adobe.
I’m particularly looking forward to the keynote from actor Kurt Yaeger. Here is someone who suffered a life threatening accident and overcame adversity to recover & reinvent his career. Very inspirational.
Nicolas Malo: Which takeaways should expect attendees?
John Watton: What I love about Summit is that its designed to give delegates some concrete actions to come away with. As well as great content, we’ll be sharing some self-service business benchmarking & skills development tools too. Broadly we want people coming away with the feeling that they have seen the future of marketing, that they have the tools to reinvent themselves and that of course Adobe can help. Which means everyone should have at least 3 things to do once back in the office!
Nicolas Malo: How much does it cost?
John Watton: We have a number of ticket options. More details at http://summit.adobe.com/emea/
