Adobe Digital Report 2024: Trends shaping our digital experience
On this episode of The CMO Show, Mark is joined by Emily McReynolds, Head of Global AI Strategy at Adobe, and Jodie Sangster, Board Director and CMO.
Listen in as we examine the digital trends impacting marketers in 2024, courtesy of Adobe’s Digital Trends Report.
Marketers and CX professionals are navigating a new era of customer experience.
Innovations, like generative AI, are redefining personalised interactions across the board.
Emily McReynolds, Head of Global AI Strategy at Adobe, says generative AI is revolutionising the way we interpret data and facilitating a marketer-first approach across organisations.
“Something we’re seeing with the platforms that Adobe provides is being able to have access to that data. Previously, you might need a data scientist to figure out who people are, but now, the marketer can pull that data themselves”, says Emily.
She adds the technology is also a powerful and efficient tool for marketers looking to scale their campaigns.
“If you have an image that needs to be put into 17 different sizes for five different platforms in 3 different, localised campaigns, generative AI can do that for you. When you’re looking at targeting different designs for different cultures, using an automatic system is one of the real advantages,” Emily explains.
Jodie Sangster, Board Director and CMO, agrees, adding that generative AI complements the way marketers like to work, specifically around the trusted, personalised relationships they want to build with customers.
“When I first started in marketing, we used first-party data religiously. You had to gather data from your customer and build trust and relevance. Then, we moved into the world of cookies, where we could gather third-party data. It was helpful, but it made us lazy,” says Jodie.
“Now, as we move back into first-party data, we’re moving back into more contextual targeting – content that isn’t based on specific cookies, but rather, where that customer is in a journey. This is what makes generative AI so helpful – it allows us to produce a lot more content, which is just what we need right now,” Jodie says.
For deeper insights on how your brand can accelerate up the AI maturity curve, hit the play on this episode of The CMO Show and download your copy of the Adobe Digital Trends Report 2024.
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Credits
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The CMO Show Production Team
Producer - Pamela Obeid
Audio Engineers – Ed Cheng & Daniel Marr
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Transcript:
Mark Jones
Don’t look now, but 2024 is halfway done!
And there are two big trends shaping the professional lives of CMOs
Gen AI, of course, and how we create personalised customer experiences at scale, for really relevant and specific target audiences.
While that might not be new, it’s not an easy task!
CMOs must bring their whole organisation on this journey.
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Hello, Mark Jones here and you’re listening to The CMO Show, a podcast made for and made by marketing professionals, brought to you by ImpactInstitute in partnership with Adobe.
Now, marketers and CX professionals are encountering a new era of customer experience.
Emerging innovations, like generative AI, are revolutionising customer engagement and redefining personalised interactions.
In today’s episode we unpack the digital trends impacting marketers in 2024.
Our friends at Adobe recently published its annual Digital Trends report.
The Global and APAC versions contain a number of key findings, like the growing need for personalisation, and the correlation that generative AI has with improved marketing performance.
Here to talk to this report today we have Emily McReynolds, Head of Global AI Strategy at Adobe, and Jodie Sangster, Board Director and CMO. They’re here with me today to talk through some of the top 2024 digital trends arising, and the opportunities they bring for the year ahead.
First up, Emily McReynolds, who provides an interesting perspective into global versus sub regional comparisons. Prior to her time at Adobe, Emily held positions related to AI at New York University, Meta, and Microsoft.
Emily, thank you so much for joining us.
Emily McReynolds
Thanks for having me.
Mark Jones
Now, we are really fascinated by GenAI as a professional collective. What is the thing that you think is driving GenAI at the moment compared to the broader machine learning context?
Emily McReynolds
I think we've seen new and unique uses for it. I like to say that AI is a 70-year overnight success story because the original paper laying out how you might test if something was artificially intelligent is actually from Alan Turing in 1950. Fifteen years ago, we weren't talking about generative AI. We were barely talking about machine learning. The buzzword 15 years ago was big data, and that's really what we've seen change. That's really what's made the difference, the ability to put trillions of data points into AI and make it function in a way we wouldn't have seen possible.
Mark Jones
Yeah. I love that idea that it's not an overnight success and I've heard references to that, but if I'm understanding you correctly, there's this idea that we're building upon the layers. Right? Because once you've got your big data, then what? Then, once you've got really great search and really high speed computing and you've got cloud at scale, then what? Is that right?
Emily McReynolds
I think so. I think that's a fair evaluation of how we've gotten to where we are today. I think what's unique about GenAI is people are trying it out and seeing it work for themselves, and that is different than when you needed coding skills or you needed to understand how a neural network worked to engage with the technology.
Mark Jones
I want to talk about the digital trends report that Adobe has put together. Emily, I had the privilege of attending Summit this year and saw you talk about this report, which is quite fun. The idea of being able to personalise at scale really means, at least from my perspective, if you're, for example, manufacturing shoes and you want to create a certain colour that appeals to a niche audience, but that niche audience, maybe they like a particular shade of purple, but they're in multiple countries. You could create this audience of a thousand, but it's actually scaled across every country in the world, for example, and you can then go and pitch that through your marketing channels to those specific people.
Emily McReynolds
One of the things we're seeing with the platforms that Adobe provides is being able to have access to that data. Previously, you might need a data scientist to figure out who those thousand people are. Now, with the platforms we have available, the marketer can pull that data themselves. What we see with generative AI is once you've got those numbers and that data, you can localise that campaign. We often talk about how something that is very rote, you have an image and you need to put it into 17 different sizes for five different platforms in three different campaigns. That can be done very quickly with generative AI. It can do the resizing for you. When you're talking about the colour and who you're targeting it at, well, if you're talking about multiple countries, then you're talking about localization and making sure it works in that culture, in that language. Being able to do that with a system that will do it automatically versus manually, I think is one of the real advantages.
Mark Jones
You've got scale. You've got personalization, and you've also got speed. I think that really is what's different. Right? There's the sense that we can move more quickly, but also just to add another layer is this tighter integration between product marketing and product development and sales and marketing. What's the data and your experience telling us about what's happening there?
Emily McReynolds
I think one of my favourite anecdotes right now, I was talking to a company actually at Summit this year and they were saying that they had been examining their processes to figure out where AI was a good fit, where in their steps it should go and exactly how can you bring these different groups together. A lot of the examples you see, the demos you see show 40 emails back and forth and instead being able to use a platform and to generate automatically. Not only did they get the benefit of figuring out where AI would go, but they improved their processes overall.
Mark Jones
What's the report telling us about next generation workflows in that context? Because I'm a bit of a systems' nerd. I love when you map it all out. One of the reasons I love that, by the way, is you get better quality, but you need more people to really understand that though, right? This is a set of interconnected systems that's going to flex and respond rather than being set. Is that a fair reflection of what the report's telling us?
Emily McReynolds
Yeah. I think you can see that in the middle of the report talking about the customer data system and what they can do and what has changed with the adoption of AI. You see something whether the company is maintaining a holistic view of the customer or if they can get consistent data across all customer points. Those are considerations that make a difference in how they can respond.
Mark Jones
Yeah. That's awesome. Now, another thing that I was reflecting on in this report was around the use of personal data and security responsibility that is a really big part of this whole conversation. Of course, third party cookies is a key component of that. What is the important takeaway, do you think, for CMOs who are moving more towards this first person, first party data mindset? At the same time, are bringing together all of these digital sources to create a single customer view? This is obviously a big conversation that's been going on for a long time, but GenAI and some of these underlying technologies, we're hoping they'll be the enablers. Right?
Emily McReynolds
We're all looking at a cookie-less future and trying to figure out what that looks like in terms of our ability to get data, to leverage data. I think what we're going to see a lot of is those brands and companies that provide the information necessary for their customers to trust them, will be more likely to get the data they need. What are your data security policies? Are you making your customers feel creeped out by the personalization that's going to them? What do you need to do to convince them that you're protecting their data, that you're treating them and their data appropriately? I think that's going to be critical in a cookie-less future.
Mark Jones
Well, let's look ahead then and look at the investment trends. What's the report teaching us about the mindsets for leaders when they're thinking about adoption of digital CX? Harking back to earlier in our conversation, this layering. Right? We get the implementation and we get people developing these flexible, really powerful workflows. What's the next level of performance?
Emily McReynolds
You can see this in the report in terms of what is effective. We're not just talking about the last layer of technology and making a cool image. We're talking about what data do you have in place, what systems do you have in place and how can you leverage those to get what you need out of them? There's a number of really good bits of data in here in terms of what the executives are thinking about and what they're looking at investing in. We can see that they're talking about the data analytics and management, content workflows, customer journey management.
Mark Jones
What's the one trend or exciting aspect of this that you're really looking forward to seeing come to fruition? We were talking earlier about what's happening in search engines and GenAI and how people are using all of these tools in a really nuanced way. What's really piquing your interest right now?
Emily McReynolds
I think the potential around personalization is a really interesting area. I've heard personalization talked about for years and years and years. Now, I'm seeing it actually work. One of the key findings of this report is the personalization across Asia Pacific, Japan markets being different. We're also looking at a fair amount of regulation. Thinking about how to do it right when you do personalization is going to be really critical. I think I often say two years from now, my job is going to be totally different than what it is today. Because today, we're talking about how the technology works and how we can implement it and find value in it. In two to three years, we'll be used to using this technology. We will have incorporated it. Even the people who are slower to adopt right now, they'll get there. Thinking about where you want your business to be, how that personalization works for you, I think will be a critical thing.
Mark Jones
Yeah. That's awesome, Emily. It sounds pretty exciting to think about the sorts of things that we'll be creating at that point in time. You are head of global AI Strategy and joining us from Seattle. That means that also in the future, potentially you could be joining us and working from down here in Australia. In Sydney, maybe. Who knows?
Emily McReynolds
It's a beautiful place I've seen.
Mark Jones
All right. Well, thank you so much, Emily. Emily McReynolds, global head of AI Strategy at Adobe Thank you so much for joining us on the show.
Emily McReynolds
Thanks, Mark.
Mark Jones
That was Emily McReynolds, Head of Global AI Strategy at Adobe.
One key takeaway we can gather from my chat with Emily is continuing to think about the next level of performance. What data do you have in place? What systems are working for you? How can you leverage these to build your own use of Generative AI?
Some food for thought there as I introduce our next guest, Jodie Sangster.
Jodie has worked in marketing and director positions across the board at IBM, amaysim, and ADMA. She’s an absolute powerhouse and is here today to speak to the Digital Trends report in an APJ context.
Thanks for joining us, Jodie! How are you, Jodie?
Jodie Sangster
I'm very well, thank you. Nice to be here.
Mark Jones
You've got an incredible career. You've had a really great set of experiences from board roles and working in membership, and all that sort of fun stuff. What are you up to now?
Jodie Sangster
So, now I am a future skills mentor for RMIT University, and specialising in AI in marketing. So, it brings together technology, it brings together marketing, and also interestingly, where I started my career, it brings in some data protection and the legal side as well.
Mark Jones
Great question for you then. What are students asking you about this world?
Jodie Sangster
So, the number one question is how can I use technology? How can I use AI to drive a better experience for our customers and to drive better marketing outcomes? But that is a very, very big question, and I'm sure that's what we're going to talk about today. There is an awful lot of interest out there around the application of technology in partnership with marketing to drive this better outcome for businesses, for consumers, for marketers.
Mark Jones
One of the interesting trends that we've seen really time and time again with technology and marketing is that there's a set of expectations that quickly emerge around what it can or should do and what it can't, or maybe a different way of understanding how the tech. So, just to think about gen AI, and there's lots of search-related activity going on, but it's a big field. So, what's that disparity look like from your point of view? What sort of issues are being created by senior executives who want to solve the world's problems, and then the reality of what we can do day to day?
Jodie Sangster
there's a lot of hype around AI and what AI can and can't do. And I think that's not a bad thing. It gets people interested. It gets companies researching how they can use technology. So, I think you start with the hype. I think where this can go wrong is when then a company jumps into, "Right, we now need to be in AI. Everybody, quick, let's go and have a look how we can implement AI within our organisation to drive these outcomes that we've been told are possible," without really thinking about what is the problem that you're trying to solve.
Mark Jones
One of the themes that came out of the Digital Trends Report for Asia Pacific, it was produced by Adobe, is that we're seeing a really sharp focus around the need to move from third-party data to first-party data, and thinking about identities in our customers. How does that play into this broader gen AI topic from your point of view?
Jodie Sangster
I find this whole idea fascinating. And if you look back when I started in the marketing industry, we were in the world of first-party data. And you had to gather data from your customer, build trust with your customer, be valuable and relevant to your customer, so that they would provide you more data, so that you could improve your personalised approach to those customers. So, that always was the discipline of marketing. And then, we moved into this world of cookies, where we could gather the third-party data and really enhance our view of the customer. But it also did, in some instances, make us a little bit lazy.
So, this move back to first-party data I think is going to move us back into this idea of we've really got to value our customers, we've really got to be a trusted brand, we've really got to do the right thing with data, and all of those things are good things. What it does mean though is that we're going to move to a different approach of how we personalise on a third-party site or somewhere, so you're moving to more contextual targeting. So, you're needing content that it's not based specifically on an individual's cookies, it's based on where that customer is in a journey.
And so, you're going to need much more content to be able to really be relevant at that point in time for where that customer may be in the journey. And generative AI is really going to help us with this because it does allow us to produce a lot more content. And it'll be more valuable because if it's not content, it's specific content around a specific issue, around a specific customer touchpoint. And that's really where generative AI is going to play a big role for us.
Mark Jones
When we think about producing a lot of content for niche audiences, it's actually quite a challenge. What do you think CMOs should be thinking about in that context?
Jodie Sangster
So, it is a challenge, and the first part of that question is we are back in a volume game, and I think we've got to be very careful about this is that we're not just producing content for content's sake, because a lot of content is just noise, rather than it being valuable. So, I think the point is when we are looking at content and content strategy moving forward, it has to be a customer-first approach. What does the customer need from us? What do they need? What do they want?
And this is where I think AI and marketing comes together. You hear an awful lot about people going, "Well, actually, does that mean that people are out of jobs because AI can produce content on its own now?" Well, it can't on its own. You still have to have that marketing idea and the marketing skill to be able to look at something and go, "My customer needs this. Therefore, I've got to produce that." And does it actually meet that need to the highest degree possible? And that's where there's a beauty of marrying marketing with technology or with AI.
Mark Jones
How do you think this is going to unfold? Personalization at scale, will we have one idea that we tweak for lots of individual niche audiences or do we have lots of different ideas for niche audiences? Does that make sense?
Jodie Sangster
It does make sense, and I think it depends on the product, if I'm honest. If it's a a one set product, you probably might end up with one idea that is delivered differently for different audiences, but you're keeping your brand tight and keeping one idea. If it's a company that has a variety of products within the brand, you may well find that then they're targeting different aspects of the product to different audiences. Because as we said right at the start of this, you're really looking at what's important and valuable to the customer, and the data will show us that, the technology will surface that.
Mark Jones
I'll tell you what I love the most about these platforms and the creative dynamic we're speaking about. I love it when data tells me something I didn't know. Because I think particularly CMOs who've been around, we've seen a lot of the same trends, but what changes actually are these niche customer groups and how they're thinking and feeling? And you don't know. You know how to do marketing, but you don't know how they're changing. And I wonder if we think ahead about, going back to that trust and security and sort of the gen AI component, where we need to be thinking about upskilling CMOs and senior leaders. I mean, I'm seeing quite a few CMOs doing gen AI courses and AI more broadly, but how do you think we need to be thinking? Because there's a really interesting analytical idea. You can't have the great creative idea without that customer insight piece.
Jodie Sangster
That's right. So, skills is a really interesting question. It's like what are the skills of the future that are needed? Whether you're A CMO or whether it's the marketing team, what on Earth are we going to do? And I hear an awful lot of talk around, "Well, that means that marketers really need to become data specialists and they need to become technical specialists," et cetera. And look, I think there's a degree of that. So, if you split them up and go, "Okay. Well, what are the skills that somebody is going to need?" You are going to have to have some degree of data analysis, some sort of data interpretation skill. You have to because the tools are surfacing up the trends and you do need to be able to analyse that data, which, to your point, to be able to surface up something. You go, "Look at that. There's a trend in that data that I didn't know," or, "That is really interesting and I'm going to delve into a little bit deeper."
So, you do need to have a degree of analysis skills to be able to look at the dashboards and be able to pick out those trends. So, I think that's one new skill that's going to be required. And I think that goes from CMO through to everybody. So, I think that's one. You are going to need to know or understand the technology to an extent because you may have a great idea, but you need to have an understanding of how you could apply technology to marketing to drive an outcome. So, I mean, there are so many tools out there that you can use, could use, and having a view of that landscape and what's possible I think is going to be really important for CMOs so you don't get left behind. So, I think that technology piece is going to be important.
But I think the other thing is collaboration because you can't do this by yourself. And this is what's really become clear as we are going through the AI courses. You need really good collaboration with your data analyst and your data specialists, and you need very good collaboration with your technology specialists. And it's that brilliant triangle. If you've got those three people working together, that's going to be the holy grail, I believe, because they're the three skill sets that you need. And everyone needs a bit of the other ones. You need to be talking the same language. But it is that bringing together of the minds that's going to really change marketing for the future.
Mark Jones
It actually makes me think about the future of work in this context because we used to talk a lot about agile, which to me has always been code for pivot. We're going in one way and we've got to go over here now. But what you are talking about is actually faster. How can we get better insights, the right insights from these hyper-personalised groups, produce products and services and marketing content that is completely relevant, but we've got to do it faster because there's competitive advantage, there is the need to keep moving quickly with customer trends. That seems to me where this is going. Is that a fair call?
Jodie Sangster
I think it's a fair call, but there's one thing that I want to add to that because I think there's a lot of focus on doing things faster. I think we've got to do things faster and better, and that is what the tools will allow us to do if we use them properly. My fear is we are going to start just churning out, and that is what we've all got to avoid is just churning out marketing. We've got to produce marketing that is brilliant for the customer. So, we've got to use that data, use that technology, use the big marketing ideas, put those three together to deliver up something that makes the customer go, "Wow," not, "Oh, my God, there's just more to wade through."
Mark Jones
You've hit the nail on the head actually because we hit overwhelm. And if it's particularly relevant and compelling, you'll stop scrolling, for example, to use that analogy. And I think that's a key insight. Jodie, thank you for your time. Any closing thoughts on advice for CMOs in this context if they're on the journey and looking at how to move up the value chain towards these dynamic CDP environments?
Jodie Sangster
It sounds so much easier said than done, but we've all got to learn from each other on these ones because there's no one place you can go that is going to give you all of the information that you need to get on top of or stay ahead of the developments in AI and marketing. And I think the more that we can come together as peers and as a marketing community and be sharing our learnings, the trends, et cetera, the more the better, because that is going to be going to be the only way, really, that we can continually get better as an industry and get better as marketers.
Mark Jones
Jodie Sangster, thanks for your time today.
Jodie Sangster
Pleasure. Thank you.
Mark Jones
That was Jodie Sangster, Board Director and CMO.
It really goes to show that big data is an entire beast of its own. Data is everywhere, which is why the focus for marketers now should be on making the data accessible and easy to digest.
As Jodie herself said, making sense of your data is the foundation that will allow you to build a true 360 view of your customer.
Through Adobe’s Digital Trends Report, it’s great to see the encouraging signs that brands globally are poised to continue moving up the AI maturity curve. Those that do will be best placed to meet the exponential growth in content demand and scale up personalisation capabilities.
A huge thank you to both Emily and Jodie for joining me on this episode. You’ve been listening to The CMO Show, proudly produced by ImpactInstitute and in partnership with Adobe. We’ll catch you next time.