It was AI that dominated conversations at the just concluded Adobe Summit in Las Vegas, which saw over 12,000 attendees, largely from the marketing community. The 23rd edition of the glitzy conference, which is all about digital experiences, saw Adobe talking about its vision and approach to agentic AI, and launching a whole new bunch of product offerings for an AI-first world. These included 10 purpose-built AI agents to cater to business needs ranging from content production to product discovery, and a ‘brand concierge’ to manage AI agents that engage with consumers, leading to purchase decisions. Adobe also announced expansions to its generative AI model Firefly and its Adobe GenStudio to help marketers tackle the skyrocketing content demand.
This time around, Adobe’s pitch was ‘Creativity + marketing + AI’. As Shantanu Narayen, Adobe’s CEO, said in his opening keynote, “With all this explosive growth of content, there is a greater focus on bringing creativity and marketing closer together. Our goal is to help you create personalised content at scale across channels for mobile apps, social media, e-mail, as well as advertising.”
He said every student, professional, and big and small businesses are looking for quick and easy AI-first applications. “Adobe’s differentiated approach to AI,” he said, “is rooted in the belief that creativity is a uniquely human trait. That AI has the power to assist and amplify human creativity and get ready to enhance productivity.”
Exploding use cases
We also got to hear a whole bunch of high-profile Adobe customers and partners, including the likes of Coca-Cola, JP Morgan Chase, Marriott Hotels, ServiceNow and Air India, revealing their AI strategy.
Jamie Dimon, the charismatic CEO of JP Morgan Chase, described how the company already has over 2,000 AI specialists and data scientists working on applications in the areas of risk, fraud detection, customer engagement and marketing. And the number of use cases of AI is growing day by day at the firm. “I would say it is nearly 700. Some are huge — how we do ads, how we run programmes... we have an LLM (large language model) inside the company now.”
Dimon stressed that AI now has to be a part of everyone’s DNA. “It is hard. A lot of people don’t want to do it. They think it is the job of tech. It’s not the job of tech, it’s the job of management,” he said.
Air India takes wing
One of the most stirring sessions was by Air India, which saw its chief digital and technology officer Satya Ramaswamy describing how the airline developed a generative AI chatbot called AI.g, which is transforming customer experiences as it helps the airline understand its passengers better. From not having any martech (marketing tech), to deploying an AI chatbot is huge progress. “We are the original AI,” he joked, tongue firmly in cheek, even as he said it was the first airline in the world to craft a generative AI chatbot.
The 18-month-long digital transformation exercise undertaken by the airline, with the help of Adobe tools, as also the AI chatbot introduction have resulted in a sizeable increase in orders for Air India, said Ramaswamy. Website visits have increased to 11 million per month. “Seventy per cent of our customers are coming through mobile, generating data for targeted marketing,” he said. Air India now makes 40 per cent more revenue per seat, post its takeover by Tata. “The goal is to take this to 50 per cent,” he said, describing an easy booking feature enabled by AI that allows passengers to key in a specific requirement (say, a window seat on a Delhi-New York flight) and get the best purchase option within seconds. “Booking a flight is now easier than a quick search,” he said.
Similarly, Hillary Cook, VP-global marketing operations, Marriott International, in her keynote address took attendees through the hotel chain’s AI-driven customer journey. Using data insights, AI identified business travellers with a high likelihood of extending their stay and then nudged them to do so with incentives like loyalty points and discounts. Cook described how this led to increased customer engagement and higher booking extensions.
B2B is not boring
At this year’s summit, a noticeable change was the increased focus on business-to-business (B2B) marketing, with Adobe putting its B2B customers up on the stage.
ServiceNow’s global CMO Colin Fleming strode up on stage and declared that B2B is not boring. He said 70 per cent of America’s GDP is powered by B2B. He described how ServiceNow has moved from being AI-curious to being AI-powered by AI agents, and how that has improved engagement.
Amit Ahuja, SVP of product management, product marketing and strategy for digital experience business at Adobe, described how B2B capabilities have been ramped up. “B2B is an area we have continued to invest very heavily in,” he said.
What the Adobe Summit showcased was how martech is speeding along. As ServiceNow’s Fleming put it, driving a race car at 230 miles an hour and marketing an organisation are not too different today. But as Marriot’s Cook queried, “Are we as marketers ready to take advantage of the tech available?”
(The writer was in Las Vegas at the invitation of Adobe)