Last night the great and the good of New York’s media, publishing and creative industries gathered, with Adobe, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.  The occasion, a reception to celebrate Adobe’s sponsorship of a unique exhibition – Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop.

Adobe’s chief marketing officer, Ann Lewnes, kicked things off before CEO Shantanu Narayen welcomed everyone and introduced Thomas Knoll, co-inventor of Photoshop and Adobe’s newest Digital Imaging Fellow.

Shantanu and Photoshop co-inventor Thomas Knoll

The exhibition is a reminder that the urge to manipulate photos – for good and for bad, for art and for propaganda – has been with us since the medium itself was invented. The exhibition also reminds us of the profound impact that Adobe Photoshop has made on our visual culture.  Creative people all over the world have pushed publishing, art, and visual media forward using techniques that were either too complex or simply not possible before Photoshop.  Because of this, controversy is never far away from Photoshop.

One of our core values at Adobe is to conduct ourselves in a responsible, socially conscious manner. As we continue to evolve the interaction of art and science within Photoshop, we look forward to the incredible visual content our customers will continue deliver and the positive influences it may have in our shared human experience.

“You can’t prove advertising really works.”  “Marketing is all gut, there’s no science to it.”  “The marketing department is a cost center, not a revenue driver.”  As marketers, we’ve been hearing this for decades.  And even as new marketing channels and technologies have arrived on the scene – including many that savvy digital marketers see as game-changers – new doubts and stigmas have arrived with them.

There’s never been a better time to be a marketer.  That’s how I see it.  The creative tools we have at our disposal make it easier than ever to turn a great idea into something real.  New technology has given us new ways to connect with customers and measure the impact of our work. Marketing matters more than ever.

But not everyone is convinced.  According to a recent study by The Fournaise Marketing Group, more than 70% of CEOs believe marketers are too disconnected from business results.  The view from consumers isn’t much better.  A new study just released by Adobe shows 68% of those surveyed find online ads “annoying.”  “Distracting,” “invasive” and “creepy” were not far behind.  What’s more, a recent article making the rounds in marketing circles calls for the death of the CMO position because, among other reasons, “Marketing impact is often hard to measure… …to know whether all those millions of dollars spent have led to an increase in real sales.”

This is nonsense. And Adobe is calling BS.

Today, we launched a brand new marketing campaign we’re calling “Metrics, not myths.” Our approach is to identify top myths about digital marketing that plague brands, agencies, chief marketing officers and CEOs and turn them on their head — with irony, humor, a provocative point of view and proof.

Our first myth, “Marketing is BS” runs in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and numerous online outlets today.  Other myths – like “Social Media is Worthless” and “Marketers Hate Big Data” – will roll out in the coming days and weeks. The whole campaign will be bolstered with a robust social campaign, some fun videos and more.

I hope you’ll pardon our French, but we want this campaign to be honest in capturing both the passion and genuine frustration marketers feel when their contributions are undervalued and they’re told the impact of their work isn’t measureable.  As a company that’s served marketers and designers for 30 years, Adobe feels their pain.  As a CMO who spends 74% of her own marketing budget on digital, I know better.  Marketing’s impact can be measured. Creativity and data can work beautifully together.  We’re willing to prove it.

Digital marketing can work.  More importantly – with so many eyeballs and so much opportunity moving online, to mobile, to social – digital marketing has to work.  As a career marketer, I feel strongly about this. If you agree, I hope you’ll join the conversation.  After all, there’s never been a better time to bust a few myths.  There’s never been a better time to be a marketer.

Ann Lewnes is Chief Marketing Officer at Adobe.  Follow her on Twitter at @alewnes

For More Information:

• See Adobe’s Click Here: The State of Online Advertising Survey
• Read about Adobe’s vision for Marketing & Creativity in the Cloud from Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch
• Learn more about Adobe’s Marketing Cloud and Digital Marketing Solutions from Brad Rencher
• See the “Metrics, not myths.” campaign in action.
• Join the conversation and help bust a few myths #MetricsNotMyths

Adobe is currently investigating what appears to be the inappropriate use of an Adobe code signing certificate for Windows. We plan to revoke the impacted certificate on October 4, 2012 for all software code signed after July 10, 2012. Customers should not notice anything out of the ordinary during the certificate revocation process. Our investigation to date has shown no evidence that any other sensitive information—including Adobe source code or customer, financial or employee data—was compromised.

What does this mean for you?

The revocation of the certificate affects the Windows platform and three Adobe AIR applications* that run on both Windows and Macintosh. The revocation does not impact any other Adobe software for Macintosh or other platforms. The vast majority of customers of Adobe software for Windows will also not be affected. A small number of customers, in particular administrators in managed Windows environments, may need to take certain action. To determine whether you or your organization are impacted, please refer to the support page on Adobe.com.

Is your Adobe software vulnerable because of this issue? No. This issue has no impact on the security of your genuine Adobe software. Are there other security risks to you? We have strong reason to believe that this issue does not present a general security risk. The evidence we have seen has been limited to a single isolated discovery of two malicious utilities signed using the certificate and indicates that the certificate was not used to sign widespread malware.

In addition to the revocation of the certificate, we have taken the following steps to protect all users and minimize the impact of the revocation of the certificate for our customers:

• We are working closely with the security community to allow security software providers, such as antivirus or intrusion detection and prevention vendors, to develop protections for customers to detect and protect from the inappropriately signed utilities.

• We are in the process of updating Adobe software by re-signing applications using a new code signing certificate to ensure existing product installations and new downloads continue to function without interruption.

• We are working diligently both internally and with external partners, including law enforcement, to gather data, examine our findings, and determine the appropriate course of action.

Adobe takes security very seriously, and we are committed to determining how the signatures misusing the Adobe code signing certificate were created given the stringent security measures in place to protect our certificate store and our infrastructure in general.

* Adobe Muse and Adobe Story AIR applications as well as Acrobat.com desktop services

Additional Resources:

• Adobe Customer Support
• Adobe Secure Software Engineering Team Blog Post: Inappropriate Use of Adobe Code Signing Certificate

Vegas? Photoshop?  What can possibly go wrong?   Twice a year the faithful gather at PhotoshopWorld, called together by Scott Kelby and The National Association of Photoshop Professionals.   This week, the West Coast edition is taking place in Las Vegas.

A record number of Photoshop pros, over 4000, have descended on Sin City for three days of presentations, in-depth training and inspiration — everyone from digital re-touchers, commercial, wedding and portrait photographers, videographers and graphic designers.

Kicking off proceedings was a typically funky keynote session.  Over the years NAPP’s keynote themes and presentations have become the stuff of geek legend, ranging from Star Trek, Hard Rock, Heavyweight Boxing, NBA, Project Runway and Olympic horse dressage.  One from that list might not be true.  This year (as if we haven’t already had enough of it) it’s the Presidential Election: In Photoshop We Trust.

At this morning’s keynote Adobe’s Grand Photoshop Poobah, Winston Hendrickson, kicked off our section with a State of The Union address on inspiration, creativity and how our engineers are working closely with Apple to ensure that Photoshop can take advantage the new Retina display on the latest MacBook Pros.  It’s coming soon!

Dr. Russell Brown then gave a quick demo of Photoshop Touch 1.3, announced and available today (with Retina display support).  Russell seemed most excited that he was finally able to say that we have now integrated “The Power of German Engineering” into the Photoshop product line – Touch is developed by our talented team in Hamburg, Germany.  Vorsprung Durch Technik, for all you old ad luvvies out there!

Adobe evangelist Julieanne Kost then toured us around Lightroom 4, Photoshop CS6 and sneaked Digital Publishing Suite (DPS), Single Edition – which will be added to Adobe Creative Cloud in the next few weeks.   It’s easy to see that DPS Single Edition could be a huge boon for photographers – imagine a wedding photographer now having an iPad App, available free from the Apple Store, that showcases their work in an interactive catalogue or brochure.  Single Edition allows you to publish an unlimited number of single, stand-alone iPad apps.  This is another example of how we’re adding new capabilities continually to Creative Cloud, at no extra cost to members.

The vibe at Photoshopworld was, as it always is, full of energy and boundless enthusiasm.  Not many companies are lucky enough to product that can inspire passionate zeal, like Photoshop does.   At Adobe, it’s not something we take for granted and the Photoshop team are hard at work delivering new features that will ensure…….another four years in digital imaging power.

The viewing figures for London Olympics on TV here in USA were bigger than ever for NBC.  Many pundits put this down to the enduring allure of Bob Costas but I think it was because the 2012 games were in a city familiar to so many people: dear olde London town.   I lived in London for 8 years before moving to California and the highlight of the games for me (apart from fellow Scot and fellow Edinburgh University alumni, cyclist Sir Chris Hoy, becoming the most successful British Olympian of all time) was seeing the city itself become an integral part of the games.  The best games are those where the city itself seems intertwined with the events – like Barcelona in 1992 or Sydney in 2000.

The BBC did a phenomenal job broadcasting the games in UK.   As a publicly funded network the BBC (or Auntie as Brits call it) had the luxury of 24 HD broadcast channels dedicated to the event, meaning virtually every minute of every event was broadcast on TV across UK.   You wanted to watch men’s handball, Iceland versus Argentina, you got it on your flat-screen in the living room (31-25 to the lads from the rapidly melting land in the north, BTW).  Interesting fun fact, the BBC’s mobile apps that complemented their outstanding TV-coverage were developed using Adobe PhoneGap.

The US broadcast market is a little bit different, to say the least, than its more homogeneous European counterparts.  The networks here are competing in a complex, competitive, highly fragmented and regionalized market. So, in short, no chance for 24 dedicated HD channels for the Olympics in USA!  NBC was faced with a much more difficult situation than their BBC colleagues and had to rely on streaming the events live to desktop and mobile devices to ensure every sport got its place in the sun (or this being London, a light drizzle).

And that’s where a technology like Adobe Pass can come into play.  Adobe Pass was the authentication glue that allowed cable and satellite subscribers to gain access to NBC’s comprehensive live steaming of events on their iPad, Android devices and desktop computers.  Folks just had to use their cable or satellite company billing email and password and log-in to NBC’s desktop web experience or dedicated mobile Olympic app.  Pass did the rest.  Not surprisingly NBC’s Olympic web site and apps became daily destinations for sports nuts, like me, to visit.

Our stream-meisters have an overview of all of this and of Adobe Pass 2.0, announced today, over at the Digital Media Blog.

It will be interesting to see how this will all play out for the Rio Olympics in 2016 (and more importantly the World Cup in Brazil in 2014).

On Saturday, May 19, Adobe’s CEO Shantanu Narayen delivered the commencement address at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.  MBA graduates, family, friends, faculty and staff gathered in the Greek Theatre for the event.  You can check out the video and text of his speech online.

As the core of his message, Shantanu shared three secrets to thriving in the midst of constant change:

1) The answer isn’t in a spreadsheet (rely on your gut)

2) Know your Zen (understand and stay true to yourself)

3) Surround yourself with people smarter than you (build a team that brings out your best)

Through the course of the address, Shantanu shared a number of personal and Adobe stories, from the downpour at his own Haas graduation through the advice that Adobe co-founder John Warnock gave him when he took the CEO job:  “If you don’t like your job, you have only one person to blame.”

Congratulations to all the Haas MBA graduates!

How we connect with you, our customers, sure has changed a lot over the years. Snail mail and phones led to emails and web forms – and now Twitter, Facebook, blogs and even Instagram are the social communications tools du jour. There are so many different places we can chat that we thought it would be good to gather a public list of our main social channels. These are the top “corporate” (for lack of a better term) accounts where you can learn what Adobe is doing, connect with others in the Adobe community, and ask us questions. Remember that you can also find your favorite products on social channels too – just do a quick search.

Let’s talk! (And share, and chat, and send images, and post videos…)

Adobe on Facebook

• We’ve rolled out the new Facebook timeline and have a couple of cool new apps to check out, including CS6 Sneak Peek videos. We’ve also enabled Direct Messaging on the Page so if you are on Facebook and have a question for us, send it to us directly for a quicker response.

Adobe on Twitter

• We are online and ready to chat from 9am – 6pm PT Monday-Friday.

Adobe on Linkedin

• Right now our LinkedIn presence focuses on job opportunities and life at Adobe from the perspective of employees, but we’re currently updating it to include a ‘Products and Services’ tab as well.

Google+

• Do you live in your gmail account? We’re starting to up our Google+ activity so be sure to add us to one of your circles.

YouTube

• Like to watch? We have videos of products and people and events. We’re also in the process of redesigning our channel, so stay tuned…

Pinterest

• We find all sorts of things pinteresting, with a focus on design, web, video, photography and more – it’s all the great things you’re creating. Check out our boards.

Instagram

• It isn’t just for iOS anymore. Now that Instagram is on Android, most of the world can share their real-time photos. We share photos that give an inside look at Adobe — backstage at events, Adobe staffers, even lovely pics of our cafe. Join our stream, yes? We’re easy to find – look for “Adobe”. :-]

Today we are announcing two remarkable offerings… Adobe Creative Suite 6 and the all new Adobe Creative Cloud.

Creative Suite 6 is a killer release with hundreds of new capabilities rolling up to four focus areas:

• Application Performance. The Mercury performance work we started a couple years ago has now made its way to our imaging, video and illustration tools.
• Enhanced User Interface. Our tools are increasingly enabling direct, on-canvas editing of your content.
• Efficient development for Multiple Devices. Our tools are taking a practical approach to creating responsive content, so your web sites or apps look great regardless of the device or orientation they’re viewed in.
• Adobe’s unique secret sauce. The stuff that make things previously impossible suddenly possible.

Our customers helped us shape Creative Suite 6 and with it now in their hands, we will all experience things on the web and with mobile apps that we could never have thought possible. We’re going to see some incredible things.

It’s also important to realize we’re in the middle of a transformation in how content is built and delivered. With over 500 million smartphones selling each year, 400 million tablets expected to sell by 2014, nearly 1 billion people on Facebook and over 40 billion apps expected to be downloaded this year – the creative process is undergoing a significant shift. And we believe the Creative Cloud will help our customers go from idea to finished work more efficiently and with better results.

Creative Cloud Members will get:

• Great Tools. Members can download and install all of our CS6 tools and can use them even when disconnected from the internet. Members also get access to Muse (our new HTML5 tool for designers) and Edge Preview (our new HTML5 tool for interaction designers). They also benefit from deep integration with our touch tools like Photoshop Touch and Adobe Ideas.
• Storage and Sharing. Members content can be automatically synchronized across of their PCs, mobile devices and the cloud. The files are accessible from anywhere, on any device and easily shared with colleagues or clients.
• Publishing Web Sites and Apps. Members are able to host up to five websites for free and will be able to create and deploy digital brochures and catalogues to the iPad and iPhone.
• Ongoing Innovation. We view the Creative Cloud as a journey and intend to update its services often. Members will be guaranteed to always have access to the most up-to-date products and services all included as part of their membership.

We hope you’ll join us Monday morning online as we unveil more details about these technologies.

We couldn’t be more excited about both these releases and can’t wait to see what you do with them.

-David

Henry Ford advocated his “one size fits all” strategy on Model T production when he said, “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.”*

Eighty-nine years later, companies are embracing the idea that each customer is unique and deserves relevant, personalized experiences and product options. What’s driving this? We are living in what Forrester Research calls the Age of the Customer, where consumers are empowered with technology to obsess over their desires, and the successful companies obsess over those too. In this recent webinar, Forrester pairs up with Adobe customer – leading U.K. automobile manufacturer – Renault to discuss embracing customer obsession with customization and vivid digital experiences.  Renault even shares successful tactics of its own using Adobe Scene7.

Product customization can be a powerful differentiator and represents an opportunity to deliver greater value, build loyalty and develop one-to-one customer relationships.

“Roll over, Henry Ford. Today, you can have any color you want, as long as it’s the one you want.” — James Gilmore and B. Joseph Pine II, 2000

*Source: Henry Ford and Samuel Crowther, My Life and Work, Garden City Publishing, 1922

According to the National Retail Federation (NRF), the average shopper plans to do 36% of his or her holiday shopping online this year – up 33% from last year! What are you doing to ensure that these purchase-minded shoppers are going to have the most relevant and efficient experience possible on your website and complete their business with you rather than your competitor? We’re now well into our second decade of selling and buying products online, it’s time that digital shopping experiences delivered more – both for the shopper and the retailer. It’s time for informed, intelligent targeted merchandizing.

Merchandising is a well-established, even fundamental aspect of retail marketing. It comprises the many activities surrounding the efforts to accelerate a potential buyer through the purchase funnel to the point where money is exchanged. In a recent white paper written by Sue Aldrich of the Patricia Seybold Group entitled “Success with Best Practices for Targeted Merchandising”, Sue sums it up by saying, “Merchandising is the practice of maximizing sales by leveraging product design, packaging, pricing, display, and most importantly, selection.” Corporations spend tremendous amounts of money and time working to put the right products, information or incentives in the right place at the right time to inspire a purchase – whether it be a large-ticket item or a spontaneous addition to a buyer’s shopping cart.

Although a fair amount of science has emerged from the collective experience of merchandisers, in the offline world, there is always an unavoidable element of inefficiency involved when merchandising strategies are deployed. Because few specifics are known about a customer, a merchandiser needs to cast a pretty wide net in hopes of attracting potential buyers who are prepared or interested in the products or offers presented them.

Targeted merchandising is a form of personalization – the creation of a unique sequence of relevant digital experiences, targeted to an individual or like-minded group of people to inspire them to progress towards a purchase or some similar success event. But whereas we think of personalization as being of primary benefit to the visitor or shopper, turn the tables and think of targeted merchandising as delivering personalized experiences in a way that not only satisfies customer goals, but optimizes the experience for the merchant as well.

In the digital world, the details and data available to a merchandiser open up several opportunities to remove or minimize the inefficiencies of merchandising to a largely generic audience. The data that an online retailer has access to from a digital analytics product such as Adobe SiteCatalyst or a multi-channel analytics product like Adobe Insight, can infuse online merchandising efforts with loads of intelligence regarding online customers’ and prospects’ interests and intentions.

Combining this intelligence with products like Adobe Test&Target, Adobe Recommendations, Adobe Scene7 and Adobe Search&Promote, merchandisers are now capable of delivering targeted content, messaging, cross-sells and offers to the anonymous, yet highly predictive profiles that analytics data provides. Targeted merchandising is all about leveraging these universal profiles – that signal implied and expressed interests and intentions – to present customers with timely and relevant content and offers. For example, with the latest release of Adobe Recommendations, merchandisers can arrange that a shopper who is viewing a specific brand of shoes will see targeted product recommendations for only shoes from that same brand. The product will even help you determine where on the page those recommendations perform the best.

So as shoppers start hitting your site in these crucial weeks to come, think “targeted merchandizing” and remember these three simple things:

• Don’t assume that what works for one shopper works for all
• Let your metrics guide the relevance (and flexibility) of your merchandising
• And, most importantly…pay attention to shopper intent and deliver personalized digital experiences that meet your merchandising objectives.

For an excellent overview of targeted merchandizing best practices, click here to download a copy of Sue Aldrich’s paper, “Success with Best Practices for Targeted Merchandising”.