[Adobe Turns 30!] The Future of Content and Marketing

Today Adobe com­pletes 30 years! In human terms, that’s a big leap, often inter­preted as mov­ing “from the ter­rific twen­ties to the ter­ri­ble thir­ties”. Days like these are brought in with cham­pagne and cel­e­bra­tions – a moment to say good­bye to an era and also one to wel­come the next. A very big word of thanks to the mil­lions of peo­ple around the world who have cre­ated, used, enjoyed, and cri­tiqued our creations.

I would like to cel­e­brate this occa­sion with a look at con­tent and mar­ket­ing, the core of what Adobe’s present and future is based on. The source of this chain of thought was my recent keynote address at the Soci­ety of Tech­ni­cal Communication’s Annual Sum­mit in Ban­ga­lore. I focused on the key trends on the con­tent space from the per­spec­tive of a writer, a reader and a mar­keter of con­tent. I will use a sim­i­lar approach here to explain the way we’re headed in terms of mar­ket­ing in at least the next year (a safe bet, isn’t it?).

There have been sev­eral pre­dic­tions about the future of tech­nol­ogy that went hor­ri­bly bad (some worse than a botched up face-lift). So I will keep mine firmly rooted in trends that already have us by the scruff of the neck.

As a writer

• The world is expand­ing and mix­ing furi­ously: busi­nesses and peo­ple are spread­ing and mix­ing faster than we think
• Every­one has to con­tribute to an ROI: so the dev­il­ish ratio of returns to cost will haunt us all

As a result, the impli­ca­tions for the con­tent cre­ator and mar­keter are:

• We will pro­duce more con­tent and more types of con­tent (more rich media). Inte­grat­ing the author­ing and pub­lish­ing engines with the CMS will be a key challenge.
• The con­tent will have to be reusable. Writ­ers have to focus on cre­at­ing enter­prise struc­tures and guide­lines to make con­tent more reusable and searchable.
• We will work in groups spread across the earth. Col­lab­o­ra­tion will be a com­bi­na­tion of tech­nol­ogy (cloud), pat­terns (XML, per­haps?) and processes. Have you read about the ‘A Mil­lion Pen­guins’ study?

As a reader

• The dig­i­tal eye will read every­where: dig­i­tal immi­grants (like me) and natives (born after the iPhone) will notice and read con­tent all day, through dif­fer­ent means.
• Their atten­tion span is crash­ing: Would you still read David Cop­per­field for fun? Or would you do it Gang­nam style?

The impli­ca­tions? Here goes:

• Con­tent will be pub­lished to mul­ti­ple chan­nels and adap­tive design (as opposed to just respon­sive web design) will help the con­tent to respond to user inter­ac­tion, pref­er­ences, locations…..(list goes on and on)
• Con­tent will have to be user and con­text sen­si­tive. It will have to be pre­cise, related to the need of the audi­ence and it will have to be con­veyed fast!

• Mul­ti­me­dia will replace words in more places than ever, and even if it takes up more time, a major­ity of users will want to see a video (as a funny exam­ple here’s a video that trains you to increase your read­ing speed) as opposed to read­ing paragraphs.

And finally, as a marketer

• The mar­ket is grow­ing and diver­si­fy­ing: there are more places and ways to reach our audi­ence or for them to reach us
• Con­sumers love to inter­act: mar­ket­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion has become a 2-way process and what the con­sumer has to say is gain­ing more ground (Coca Cola intends to use consumer-generated con­tent till 2020!)

So the impli­ca­tions (and I promise this is the last time) are:

• Con­tent will be scru­ti­nized and enriched socially. So we will have to allow our con­tent to be com­mented on, shared and mod­i­fied. Else it will be deemed unin­ter­est­ing and too static!
• Con­tent will have a global pur­pose, so con­tent cre­ated in Eng­lish will have to be prepped to work in Ger­man and Japan­ese as well!
• We have to assess our impact. Con­tent mar­ket­ing will not be com­plete with­out con­tent ana­lyt­ics. Usage, expe­ri­ence and the effects of con­tent on cam­paign effec­tive­ness will have to be reported.

The over­all impact for con­tent cre­ators is that we will have to know and under­stand our audi­ence even bet­ter and cater to their needs in every pos­si­ble way. Design and media will be our tools and means but under­stand­ing and aid­ing the cor­rect con­sumer behav­ior will be most rewarded. From the per­spec­tive of the mar­keter, con­tent is going to be a key dif­fer­en­tia­tor and know­ing the con­sumer (who using social media is also a cre­ator) of the con­tent will make all the difference.