Posts tagged "Twitter"

Voices from the floor: Day 1 of Adobe Summit

Posted on March 9, 2013 by adobeapac | Comments (0)

Michelle Gautrin, Social Media Specialist, Adobe APAC – @mgautrin LinkedIn

Summit 3

What an exciting first day at the Adobe Summit 2013 in chilly yet beautiful Salt Lake City. I was thrilled to attend the introductory keynote, led by Brad Rencher, Adobe’s Senior VP of Digital Marketing together with his core Product Team. Through great story-telling techniques, they explored the theme of “the last millisecond”. There were lots of engaging discussion today, but the overarching theme of the day was ‘integration’ – the need to stop working in silos and start working together and integrating all the different digital marketing technologies.

The morning’s keynote session was followed by numerous individual breakout sessions covering the range of Adobe Marketing Cloud solutions as well as innovative digital marketing trends covered by industry experts. In between the many sessions, I managed to sneak a peek at the exhibition hall and was blown away by the set up. Spacious, interactive and eye-catching would be the best words to describe the area. Beside the usual sponsor booths, there was the famous Adobe ampersand which stood over 8ft tall! Everyone was lining up to take photos with it and they even provided fun props! There was also an amazing visualization wall, where you could see a live mashup of activities surrounding summit on social media (tweets, instagram pics, facebook post, videos etc). The wall included trending hot topics that were being discussed on social media via the #AdobeSummit hashtag and even a live polling option. The setup was all so impressive; already can’t wait to see what they have planned for next year!

The latter half of the conference day ended with another general keynote session, this time with luminary speakers such as Adam Bain from Twitter, John Battelle from the Federated Media Publishing and Bill Briggs from Deloitte. Bill started the session by claiming that we are now living in a post-digital era where such things as mobile devices are becoming the main platforms consumers interact with. John then shared intriguing facts with us, such as this year alone every human will create 600 bytes of data! The highlight for the afternoon was the highly anticipated Adam Bain from Twitter who shared  the story of Twitter’s growth and  success; there are currently over 400 million tweets a day – in fact, this conference generated more than 30,000 tweets through its duration, more than double the number last year, reinforcing how this social networking is still in growth mode.

Summit 3

Day 1 of Adobe Summit ended with legendary Summit Bash where none other than the Grammy award winning band The Black Keys performed live! The concert was amazing and there were so many other fun activities set up for attendees to enjoy. A green screen photo opportunity gave us the chance to pose with amazing backgrounds such as King Kong, Time Magazine cover, the famous Beatles Abbey Road album cover. A remote control car racing track was very popular, and there was a wall were we could all put our own creative spin on with neon glow in-the-dark-paint! The night ended with an upbeat DJ and digital marketers dancing the night away.

Summit 4

See you tomorrow for a second day of exciting informative sessions!

THE Digital Marketing Conference of 2013!

Posted on March 7, 2013 by adobeapac | Comments (2)

Julie Cleeland Nicholls, Director, Communications -  APAC Adobe Systems- @jcnsingapore, LinkedIn

adobe-summit-2013

This week, the quiet streets of Salt Lake City in Utah will come to life, filled with the buzz and energy generated by the more than 5,000 marketers, advertising executives, digital communications and social media leaders. They’re converging to attend the annual Adobe Digital Marketing Summit, and among them will be more than 120 marketing leaders and strategists from across Asia Pacific, from Australia, New Zealand, Korea, Singapore, India, Hong Kong, China and Taiwan.

I’m excited to be attending. I’m especially looking forward to hearing from keynote speakers including Twitter’s President of Global Revenue Adam Bain and Felix Baumgartner, record-setting stratospheric daredevil. Our Adobe SVP of Digital Marketing Brad Rencher, will present his keynote speech in a few minutes, and that’s another highlight for me! But in addition to listening and learning myself, together with several of my colleagues from across APAC, I’ll also be posting and sharing updates from this leading-edge forum for our communities across the region.

You can follow what’s happening at Summit on these social media links:

Stay tuned – it’s going to be a big Digital Marketing Week!

The Digital Pulse at the Heart of Australian Marketing

Posted on October 4, 2012 by adobeapac | Comments (2)

Siva Ganeshanandan, Director, Digital Marketing Suite, Adobe APAC – LinkedIn, @sivagatwork

“Everything is digital now,” said the marketing executive I was sitting down to have a coffee with during a break in last week’s Marcus Evans Marketing Summit, held on Australia’s Gold Coast. For me, digital is so central to the marketing world I inhabit, that I take its ubiquity for granted. But I noticed that for many of the audience of more than 60 marketers attending the event, especially those from the B2B sector, the experience was a real eye-opener.

What really stood out for me was that for some of the leaders in their sectors – such as Virgin Mobile and Qantas, digital was not thought of as a separate channel that required a specific budget. Rather, it was an integral part of their overall marketing strategy. One senior marketer from an iconic Australian brand said he could see major campaigns in the future comprising purely digital – perhaps even leaving out free to air TV from the mix.

With digital marketing fully bedded down into the marketing mix, not surprisingly mobile and social were the areas of interest at the event.  Social played a role in every case study presentation  – but there was certainly a divide between the consumer marketers who were fully engaged  and the B2B marketers, for whom there was still clearly an air of cautiousness about ‘being on social’. But the ‘digital divide’ wasn’t as clear-cut as B2C versus B2B or large companies versus smaller organisations, or about the size of the budget

Marketing guru Iggy Pintado (@iggypintado) delivered a keynote on social, emphasizing that we need to be able to prove its business value beyond purely marketing KPIs – something that even the most sophisticated marketers are struggling with. Another interesting idea that was raised during the summit was from Justin Papps of Chandler Macleod, who has started using Facebook as a channel of payment to their employees.

I sat on a panel to talk about trends and directions in Mobile Marketing. An on-the-podium SWOT analysis done by the panel together with all the networking discussions confirmed in my mind what the reports say: there are more Strengths and Opportunities around digital marketing campaigns, including social, than there are Weaknesses and Threats. Indeed the biggest threat was simply being late to the party, and losing out to the competition.

Over coffee with my new marketing executive friend, we ran a simple search on Twitter. Sure enough, it proved his brand was in fact already ‘on social’. Just because his organization hadn’t started their social strategy, didn’t mean they were not already in the game. Digital marketing really is everywhere, the opportunities are terrific and the time to integrate is now.

Confessions of a once reluctant Digital Marketer

Posted on April 11, 2012 by adobeapac | Comments (0)

Priscilla Tan, Senior Marketing Manager (Greater China), Adobe APAC – LinkedIn

Priscilla Tan (That’s me!), second from the right at the Adobe Digital Marketing Summit 2012

Two years ago, if anyone had asked me, I would have proudly said that my only connection to social media was my Facebook account. I didn’t tweet, use LinkedIn, or blog. Like many of my friends (or at least my marketing friends) back then, I didn’t see the benefit of getting involved in lots of social media sites. Our jobs were already so busy, even without us getting onto the latest “social” bandwagon and there were very few companies out there who stood out as shining examples of “digital trendsetters”.

Fast forward two years to the Adobe Digital Marketing Summit 2012 in Salt Lake City, Utah, add 4,000 marketers, and I can tell you that my perspective has completely changed.

The two days that I spent at this year’s summit have opened my eyes to new developments in the digital space, and helped answer many of my personal and professional questions. One particularly eye opening moment came when Brad Rencher, Senior VP and General Manager of Digital Marketing, Adobe, emphasized in his keynote that “The power of digital self has gone from academic to action”. I think this is a perfect metaphor to describe the way my perspective has changed towards digital and social media in recent years.

Though there are now many answers to the questions I had several years ago, there are still more questions that I think we all wonder about today. Here are three of the biggest ones for me:

  • How should a marketer or company define social media?

The answer to this is surprisingly simple. As advocated at the summit by Arianna Huffington, President and Editor in Chief of The Huffington Post, social media is like telling your stories and having a conversation with friends. Social media, as a platform, is one of the best ways that companies can begin to tell their stories, in interesting ways that invite customers to have a conversation with them.

  • What is the “digital self” that a marketer or company should project in the digital world?

At the summit, Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, shared his own “digital self” is his actual self. At first, it came as a surprise to me that they were basically the same. I would think the real Biz Stone would be different from the digital Biz Stone. But on deeper thought, it all makes sense. Companies and/or marketers who hope to get customer attention should be ready to project a real and authentic voice or brand image in the digital platform. And it is perfectly OK to show one’s vulnerabilities because customers can see through anything that’s less than authentic.

  • How do we define success from social media?

Biz Stone also commented on how we often define success as having customers “glued” to our social media profiles 24×7 and never leaving it. However, he said that true success is better measured by how often the customers check out our social media profile a day.

After everything has been said and done, the best advice came from Ariana Huffington when she said that as digital marketers, we need to unplug in order to reconnect again. None of us wants to be “burnt out” from too much of digital and social media. And what better way to “unplug”, recharge and learn than to be part of this Summit community of digital marketers.

Now I am a “converted” digital marketer.

Things that made me go “hmmm…” – observations from Day 2 of the Adobe Digital Marketing Summit

Posted on March 23, 2012 by adobeapac | Comments (0)

Imogen Riley, Digital Marketing Senior Manager, Adobe APAC – LinkedIn @IERiley

9.00pm – I signed off last night to head out to the Adobe Bash with ‘Foster the People’ headlining.  Took Arianna Huffington’s advice and unplugged for a few hours to engage my ‘analogue’ self – face to face with our customers and partners.  What a great experience!  Channeling my youth with some likeminded souls, we were front and right of centre stage, any closer we would have been on stage.  This band has incredible energy, talent and a base that rocked the stadium, my teeth and maybe even Nevada.

Observation # 1 – must remember – unplug the earphones… live music recharges you

8.25am – I applaud all 4000 ‘analogue souls’ who showed up on time to hear Biz Stone – @biz, co-founder of Twitter and our own Ann Lewnes sharing their insights on the #digitalself.  @biz exemplified all aspects of social engagement – authenticity, opinion & humour.  He shared his “secret sauce” for success…

  • In order to succeed spectacularly you must be prepared to fail spectacularly.  I love this! We can’t change the world if we are too risk averse.
  • Great ideas are obvious in retrospect… a la twitter! @biz and team are working on the next big thing, too early to announce but stay tuned…
  • If you want to succeed engage folks outside your company and discipline, they will give you a view you haven’t thought of yet.

What’s your great idea? And was it the one you thought was the smartest and brightest?

Observation #2 – entrepreneurialism is a state of mind, not a PhD – it needs smarts, a network of amazing minds and passion

5.30pm – Sneak peaks from the amazing geeks…

Great ideas come from everywhere, but do they ever get the forum or funding to be successful?

Some of our best and brightest engineers and developers bared their souls and the efforts of their sleepless nights and lonely days, watch the recordings and tweet your thoughts – you can help shape the strategy and solutions for the 3.0 world.

I have been lucky to work in technology my entire career, I love it, but it can be exhausting.  But then I catch up with friends who are Doctors and Laywers and think- thank goodness I am not saving lives or worse – not, or putting them in gaol – I love my work in technology.  I think we are in the Renaissance 2.0 – Medici would be proud.

Observation # 3 – be bold, be inclusive, engage smart minds from outside your field

If you want to stay engaged & share your thoughts – join the dialogue in our LinkedIn group

Some parting comments – thanks to all our customers, partners and friends in the media who travelled so far to join us at Summit2012!

Thanks to the City of Salt Lake – you are an amazing hostess – incredible support to all 4000 digital selves – your ambassadors and businesses have made our stay! Don’t just take my word for it, check out what our APAC customers had to say about the Summit in the video below:


9.30pm Signing off now to head to the Summit after party – Karaoke @ The Depot, I am tone deaf & the only song I have is ‘Land Down Under’…

More from the ski slopes tomorrow.