[Music] [Russ Nelson] Welcome. Hi, everyone.

My name is Russ. I run our Adobe Digital Experience business at CDW. CDW is one of Adobe's largest partners on both the digital media side and the digital experience side. So we're one of the few partners who does both, you know, Creative Cloud, Document Cloud, and Experience Cloud. So part of what we're going to talk about here today, you know, expands beyond everything that we're talking about here with Creative Cloud into, you know, a touch on Experience Cloud too.

So I'm also going to be joined in a couple of minutes by my colleague here, Peggy Waite Bradley. She's sitting right here in the front row. So Peggy is our Digital Experience Optimization Architect, running our, you know, experience optimization practice at CDW.

So people are still filing in, welcome. So...

I want everyone here today to think about something that that you did, either at work or for pleasure, you know, here recently, right, some task that that you had to do, fairly recent. Just go ahead. Think about something that your boss gave you, something that you had to get done at home, whatever it is.

Now think about how challenging that task was, right? You know, give it a score one to five on the how challenging that task was.

And then give yourself a score on it on how skillful, how adept you were to meet the challenges for that task, right? Where were you? So if you think about this and you put it on, you know, this chart right here, the skill versus challenge, you know, graph, where would that be? Think about it. How challenging was it? Was it easy? Was it very difficult? Did you struggle with it, or were you up to the task? I mean, I'll put one here for myself.

There we go. I had something that I had to get done pretty recently. You know, it wasn't all that, it wasn't all that challenging. I was, you know, pretty good at, you know, doing what I need to get done. And so that's where it is, kind of, right in the middle, not all that difficult. And I was, you know, pretty used to, you know, doing what I needed to get done.

So we're going to hold on that for just a second that, you know, remember, you know, what that task was and where in the chart, you had it. And we're here to talk about Generative AI, right? Who here has heard a lot about Generative AI this week? Everybody. Everybody's heard about Generative AI, right? It's a big topic, that's been all of the buzz over the last year, right? Well, we also want to talk about, you know, creative fulfillment, right, in those tasks, in those things that you're doing in your day-to-day, how fulfilling are those challenges, are those tasks, right? And I think everybody is starting to see a lot of the potential for Generative AI and taking on a lot of those, you know, tasks that, you know, you used to have to do so much work retouching and doing all of these things. And a lot of that work, you know, took up a lot of the, you know, your time where, you know, you would rather be focused on a lot, you know, higher productivity work, right? So we're going to talk about, you know, Generative AI and Creative fulfillment. And really, the idea that we want to have here is that Generative AI has the real potential to be one of the greatest advancements to creative fulfillment that we've seen in a very long time. And, you know, I think it's going to continue that way into the future.

So...

I want to introduce a guy, you know, one of my, you know, new heroes. This guy named, Dr. Mihaly C.

Dr. Mihaly, your last name is the stuff of nightmares for any presenter.

So we're going to just call him Dr. C and Dr. Mihaly. Now Dr. Mihaly was one of the real, you know, pioneers in the study of flow or flow state, right? So Dr. Mihaly, you know, recently passed away a couple of years ago, but he was really pioneering the study, the psychological study of flow, really back in the 1980s.

So flow has been, you know, a growing field in psychology for quite a while. And...

The idea of flow, and many people think of flow...

You've all heard of it before as being in the zone, right? Anyone here get in the zone? Yeah. During what? At work, at play? Anyone? Where do you get in the zone, right? All of the time, right, doing different things when you're just able to focus on something. You know, so you describe a, you know, flow or being in the zone or flow state as, you know, the state of experience, right, characterized by deep concentration and being totally absorbed in that activity that that you're engaged in, right? And it's very fulfilling, right? This is where we want to get to. We want to study flow and get to that sense of fulfillment in what we're doing in our day-to-day, you know, activities.

So one person who they were, you know, music composer who Dr. Mihaly in an interview described flow as you're in such an ecstatic state. It's such a point, you feel is almost as though you don't exist, right? I would love to be. Who gets that every day when they go to work? That level of ecstasy? Well, so, you know, their multi, you know, flows described as a multidimensional construct, you know, multidimensional, you know, area, characterized by concentration, deep concentration. I think everybody can understand that and get that.

Come on clicker. There we go. There's a merging of action and awareness. What does that mean? Well, it's-- Why am I doing what I'm doing right now, right? You know what you're doing and why you're doing it very deeply. There's a last, there's, you know, a loss of, you know, self-consciousness, right? When you're really in the zone, you're not thinking as much about what other people are thinking about you in that time.

Control over your actions. When you are in flow, when you're in the zone, you have very precise control over your actions. It's great. It's an intrinsically rewarding experience, right? When you're in flow, you're in the zone, there's a sense of reward when you're in that state or immediately after. There's unambiguous feedback from the activity.

Say you're, you know, playing basketball and you hit the shot, people are cheering for you, or they're booing, you know, either way, right, immediate feedback.

A couple more. I want a clicker. There we go. Oh, sorry. I went too ahead. There are clear goals in close proximity, right? Flow, you need to have, it can't be a very long extended state of flow. There are clear goals that you're getting to. Frequently there's a loss of time-awareness. Before you know it, six hours have gone by, and you're like, where did the time go? And last but not least, there's this dynamic balance between challenge and skill. And that's really what we want to focus on here, today, is that dynamic balance between challenge and skill. So this is a picture of me, you know, in...

You know, I used to be, you know, pretty big into rock climbing, so this is a picture of me up on Smith Rock in Oregon. And when you're on the wall, when you're, you know, on the rock, and you're just so totally focused, and you can see that move. And you know that if you make it, you're going to be great, you're going to top out, you're going to be very excited. And if you don't, you might fall 30 or 40 feet before the rope catches you. So, you know, in that state, in that time, that's when I've experienced flow the deepest, right? Very precise control over your actions and you're very, you know, concentrated on what you're doing.

So, you know, when I'm climbing or when you're doing different activities, you experience all of these, you know, attributes here. And the one that we want to focus on, like I said earlier, is that balance between challenge and skill.

So let's take a look here about that balance between challenge and skill. Now Dr. Mihaly, you know, gave us a construct, you know, view into this. You know, model to look at where that balance, when you have a highly challenging activity, climbing, you know, a wall that is, you know, very challenging for you, but it's at the top of your level, at the top of your skill level. That's when you get in the flow, right? When you have easy tasks, walking, unloading the dishwasher, you'll tend to get into flow when you're, you know, unloading the dishwasher. So that state of flow is in the top right there.

Clicker. And the idea that we want to get to with Generative AI, right? How does this tie back to the ideas for this conference? Is that Generative AI that what we want to get to here is that it can start to take over those tasks that you're, kind of, apathetic toward, right? They're, kind of, boring tasks for you, right? And I think we've all seen those possibilities here, you know, during this conference.

So the other thing that Generative AI, you know, allows us to do is it helps us to push our skill set to the right.

And for me, in my task, I was pretty good at it. You know, I'm not great at Adobe Express, but I'm not too bad. But a lot of the GenAI capabilities in Adobe Express help to take my skill level and push me to the right and, you know, increase my skill level there. The other thing that happened is I waited until the last minute. So...

What you get there is this procrastination move. And, you know, that now you're under schedule pressure, right? Any anyone procrastinate? No? I see a lot of heads nodding. Well, what were you getting there? You know, it's like, "Oh, man, I need to get this thing done." And you know what? By the time you get there, you crush it, right? You've get that schedule pressure. You've increased the level of challenge that you have for that task. And it puts you into flow. Now it's called the procrastinator's dilemma because, you know, you get that sense of reward that intrinsic reward.

But it's not really a great habit to get into. So anyway, that's the idea here. And what we're going to focus on here is that that sent the area of fulfillment for us is to the top and to the right, right, up and to the right. And AI helps us to push to the right, and helps us to, you know, get to the top here as well.

So Generative AI, again, it's the opportunity here is that it has the potential to be one of the greatest advancements for us in creative fulfillment. Now we've talked about a lot of that individually here. And I think everybody sees the opportunity for GenAI and their individual capabilities. You're enhancing your individual, you know, ability to get into flow state. But what we want to talk about here is group flow, right, getting beyond individuals and getting to AI and flow at scale. So to introduce us to this, you know, it doesn't make sense for me to talk about group flow solo. So I'm going to bring up Peggy. Everyone welcome Peggy.

[Peggy Waite Bradley] Hello! All right. Peggy, introduce yourself. Hi, everyone. Welcome to our wonderful session. All these beautiful people from MAX. I am-- Whoa! I'm going to hit my microphone. I talk a lot with my hands, so apologies for that. I'm Peggy Waite Bradley. I run the Optimization Practice at CDW, which is super fancy word for saying. I focus in on making a better user experience leveraging data. So I specialize in the Experience Cloud side of the house, Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target, Campaign, things like that.

I come from a background in the Enterprise. So I ran the Sales Side Optimization program at Sprint, and then went on and ran the Analytics and Optimization program at Bank of America Merchant Services, and then now been with CDW for about five years. - And you helped many, many clients-- - Yes. Since being with CDW for five years now. Yep. So that's a little bit of my story. - Okay. - Let's move. So, Peggy, tell us, you like to ride a bike? - I do. - Tell us about group flow riding. You know, tell us about, you know, your riding experience? So I'm an endurance cyclist, mostly gravel, but-- So I ride super long distances on gravel, mainly in search of tacos. Yep. But I'm also dabble in mountain biking. And I am a crappy mountain biker. So if you have any mountain bikers here, you'll identify with what I'm saying. So I am a scaredy-cat. I don't commit to things, been known to go over the bars a few times. So however, when it comes to group flow in my personal life, the times that I experience the most are on a bike. And one of-- A majority of those times have been on a mountain bike when I'm in flowy single track, and there's not a lot of technical things to consider. And all of a sudden, it's like, the difficulty, kind of, melts away, and you don't feel like you're working as hard. And you're still hyper-aware of your surroundings, like, I can see my best friend's wheel in front of me, and he's still calling out obstacles to me and helping me. And I can see a deer on my right, but it's almost like I'd become one with the trail and the bike, and it's just that, like, "Oh, this is awesome," right? And I'm sure anybody who's got a hobby that gets really into it has felt kind of this feeling, right? The other things like gravel cycling. If you're riding with a group, it can be very difficult. But if you're riding with a group that's making it fun, after, like, a couple hours, you're like, "Oh my gosh, we've ridden, like, 40 miles." And you don't even realize it, like, it's that group dynamic that doesn't necessarily take away the challenge or make you any more skillful, but by working together, you somehow reach that group flow. Yeah. - So-- - Yeah. That's awesome. I wish, I don't get to, you know, experience that, you know, quite as much 'cause, you know, whenever I'm climbing, I've able partner. But, you know, in a big group like this, it seems like, you know, the communication is very quick. It is. You know, you're able to just know what the other cyclists is thinking, especially if you've been riding with them for a while. - Yes. Yep. - Yeah. - Absolutely. - That's cool. Well, so what we want to talk to here is, really some of the constraints to getting into a group flow, right? You know, it's pretty easy to start to understand, you know, as you're here, as creatives, as content writers, as marketers, around how am I going to use the latest advancements in AI in my own day-to-day, right? But there are some challenges when you get to, doing this in a group, right? It's, you know, AI and, you know, working, you know, on something, you know, generative fill and these types of capabilities, you know, ends up being fairly individual, right? You're working on your own, you know, item there.

But what we want to get to is, that group, you know, flow state and, you know, being able to optimize our capabilities as a group. So we're going to outline three challenges, you know, here today and really how to start to overcome those challenges, you know, as a group, as an organization. And the first of these challenges is really around, you know, just capacity. And the other part, we already talked about it a little bit here, which is apathy, right? When you have some of those tasks that are, you know, repetitive or not incredibly interesting or, you know, retouching that thing is going to take, like, six hours. And I would much rather, you know, be doing something else with my time. That is, what we want to start to get past. So, Peggy, in your optimization, you know, career here. Give us an example. Give us an example as a marketer of one of those types of tasks that you gave to your creative team or was given to the creative team, that this-- So I can think of two things. So I know there's some marketers in the room, and I'm going to speak very real.

I don't filter a whole lot of stuff. So I'm not going to intentionally offend marketers 'cause I am one, but we're going to talk about...

Department dynamics as well. But...

It's really easy to get orders from higher up or as a marketer to think things like geotargeting for our audiences is a really good idea. So how about we tell the creatives that we need 50 different banners with 50 different cityscapes on them? And think that this is something worth their time. And then and this has happened in my career, right? This request didn't come from me, but I had to deliver it and I had to ride the creative sport. So based on where that person is coming in from? They see their cityscape, right? Turns out nobody cares, right? But...

For whatever reason, we thought this was very important, right? And the creatives immediately were like, "Yeah, okay, we'll get to that when we have time." And there was this immediate bottleneck, right? The other thing is, like, when we look at data and we decide, like, "Oh, this isn't working. We need to redesign." UX does a redesign, and we're like, "Oh, by the way, you guys have to resize 300 images because it was all in portrait mode, and now we need them in square." So, like, make this your number one priority, right? I'm seeing a lot of nodding heads, so I imagine that this crap has happened to a lot of you. Okay, so this is where we talk about the AI payoff, right? So this is work that I feel like some of these AI capabilities within Adobe can help in some of these tasks, right? This isn't groundbreaking work. This isn't, like, stuff you put on your resume. Like, oh my, I created 70 homepage hero banners with different landscapes, like, nobody gives a crap, right? - That's lower left. - Yeah. That's down into the left. But it's still work that has to be done. So maybe let a machine do it, right, or AI do it, or whatever the right word is, right? Yeah. Because immediately there that creates, and we'll talk about this in one of our...

Tension between departments and creates resentment between departments and can create bottlenecks between departments, right? And at that point, nobody is working together, right? - And the user now is forgotten, right? - Yeah. Yeah, so the opportunity here is that what the opportunity here is that AI enables us to, sort of, change the task, right? The task is no longer manually creating 70 cityscapes. The task is now getting the AI. And being skilled at using the AI to actually create those 70 cityscapes for you. And along with the machine learning within the Experience Cloud side to, you know, know which cityscape to align, you know, to which audience. Right. So we're going to talk about, you know, here, optimizing this content supply chain, right? You know, Shantanu talks about, you know, the content supply chain, and that doesn't end with Creative Cloud, right? On our side, you know, from my perspective, the full content supply chain goes from the very beginning, the photo shoot, you know, the idea, the creative brief, the whole way through delivering that experience and, you know, measuring that experience in the end. But where are we going to start here and what we've all, you know, been learning about here over, you know, the yesterday and today, has been on the creative side, right, around Firefly. But there's a lot more, you know, capability that Adobe has in addition to this, such as, you know, what comes on the Experience Cloud side, you know, say with Adobe's DAM, right, the auto-tagging assets. Does anyone have to do this, like, manually? Hey, I checked this in, into the DAM, and I have to tag it with this, and this, and this, and, you know, these other things. One of the capabilities that Adobe has had for a long time has really been on the machine learning side around auto tag.

If I have a picture of Peggy, I'm not going to describe everything. Please don't. Yep. - But allowing-- - Be careful. Allowing the machine to tag this picture of Peggy and then remove some of those tags. - It just works fabulous. - Yeah. Remove some of those tags that you don't want it to have, you know, on you. That's one of the advantages that Adobe has, you know, within their DAM. The other part you talked about was-- Auto cropping. - The resize. - Yeah. You know, the renditions, all of these types of capabilities where-- Does anyone ever created, you know, a piece of creative and then had to create 15 different renditions of it manually? Changing the focus, having, you know, I need a, you know, mobile versus landscape. Yeah. If you're still creating mobile and desktop, like, come on, right, like, and we are in a lot of clients. Like, we're still doing three different versions of imaging because we're not using their machine learning capabilities. And then getting feedback on 15 different renditions. Correct. Yep. Yep. So this is another area of optimization that Adobe can provide to us is not just, you know, on the creation of those assets, not, you know, just on the AI side, but the auto-tagging and on the, you know, the renditions, the auto-crop, and these types of capabilities. Adobe is also working on and, you know, coming, you know, soon here is on the copy side, right? So the marketing, you know, copy creation within the Experience Cloud side, right? So that's, you know, copy for your website, copy for your email campaigns, copy for these different activities. You know, Generative AI isn't, you know, just limited on the creative side. It's also very applicable to marketing copy as well, which as a marketer or as a content writer, it can get pretty frustrating sitting there and writing all of this copy. It's the copywriters equivalent of, you know, working within Photoshop and so on. So anyone write copy in this room for sites and everything? There's a lot of potential here for increasing our capability, increasing our, you know, supply chain, not just on the creative side, but also, once we get into experience.

And then, Peggy, tell us about this. Now we've optimized our creative side, right? We're getting into the experience side, being able to drive more experiences for our end customers through this. Now we have to measure it. Right. So show of hands, and I don't care if it's Adobe Analytics. I don't care what analytic system you have, but how many of you actually have access to your data? How many of you know how to use your data platforms? You may have access, but how many of you actually know how to use them? - So hands went... - That's a good shot. Hands went down, right? - I don't feel my boyfriend does. - Okay. - Doesn't know and everything like that. - Okay. - Yeah. - Yeah. So if somebody hands you a log into Adobe Analytics, it doesn't do you a whole lot of good.

There's not a whole lot of canned reporting, right? So you need somebody to help you.

But there's a huge gap. And if you guys are creating all of this dynamic and amazing content, you should know how it's performing, right? You should understand if it's the correct way to go, right? And especially if you're using it in multiple places, right? So there's a analytics assets integration where you can see if your assets that are being used in advertising, or in email campaigns, or in third party sites are being clicked on, like, they're even at that level, or just even your data on your site.

But it's been...

My experience that data gets hoarded in a lot of organizations, where the people that are doing the strategy and doing the... Well, we're going to change this on the site, and we're going to do this. And then we'll have the people make the pretty pictures. They're not telling you how things are performing or giving you access to how this performs so that you can bring what you need to the table. So there is a need to measure things properly with how your creative is doing, but also to give you access to that data so that you can also bring things to the table as far as changing things up in that world. Okay. So now... Okay, so we're optimizing our flow from beginning down here, we're starting with creative, we're driving a lot of additional experiences. Now we need to increase our capability to measure that. You know, using a report templates and, you know, expanding the number of people who have access to be able to measure that experience. And now the next piece is... Okay, we're able to drive a lot of additional, you know, experiences here. We're able to create a lot of additional copy, and content, creative. Now we're going to drive the optimal experience to these end users. And but... Now you may run into, you know, the area where the constraint is no longer on the creative. It's no longer on the copy. And now it's actually on the marketer. - Now Peggy is my constraint. - Right. You guys have made yourself incredibly efficient by using your AI capabilities. You know, we'll talk about this a little more, but, like, all of a sudden, you guys, like, say all of the problems go away, we're all working as well and LeShane, you guys are getting the content on time. You're doing all. And now I can't produce my side of, like, my end of the deal fast enough. So now I created this, Russ, the other day. It's like when you, it's, kind of, weird, but when you watch a snake like eat a thing, and you watch it move down. It's like, you watch the bottleneck move down the organization. Like, it's no longer here, but now it's here, you know, and so it's like crap. Now I have to deliver. I can no longer sit in a meeting and go, we can't do that 'cause the creatives won't give me the stuff, right? Like, you guys are no longer the problem, I'm the problem. That's right. So now I have to leverage the capabilities on the Experience Cloud side of the house in Target or in Campaign, like the Marketo chatbot, the auto-targeting, the auto-personalization, whatever it is, with your creative in order to create a more automated world where things move faster. The whole point is better user experience faster time to market, right? So we all have to use what's the tools available to us in order to work faster or more efficient and focus on what really matters, right, not 70 different landscapes. But, like, real work that's going to drive real conversion or deflect costs or whatever it is.

So, you know, sort of, getting to the wrapping up, you know, the first point here, the first challenge, right? The first challenge that we had was really around, you know, the capacity, right? We need to be able to have more throughput. And AI naturally helps us out with that.

You know, and also it can take off a lot of the less interesting, less engaging in activities for us. So what we're doing is essentially increasing that balance between challenge and skill for us. The other part is that, it's a more rewarding experience. Nobody likes to create 70 cityscapes, but people might, you know, actually enjoy using AI to create those cityscapes for us. And then, you know, automatically, you know, use the auto-targeting capabilities, you know, from Adobe to apply those cityscapes to, you know, our audiences. That's a much more engaging task and much more intrinsically rewarding task than, you know, that manual work, right? So that's the first, you know, challenge that we want to resolve and, you know, get to group flow.

Now, Peggy, there's another piece here. It's not just capacity, right? The other... The next challenge here is a really around, well, now we're working as a group. What if you, you know, you don't have the same vision. What if you're riding together as a group and you're not all heading in the same direction, has that ever happened? Yeah. Navigation can go bad. - Yeah. - Yeah. - You lose people on the course? - Sure. - Sure. - Yeah. That happens. And I'm sure it happens, you know, in, you know, for us and our teams too. What about professionally? It's also an experience where, you know, the creative team and the marketing team or, you know, any anyone else, you know, you're working with didn't necessarily see eye to eye.

At a previous employer, we'll just leave it there.

We had done a very extensive site redesign, like, from the ground up. And because I'm running Target, and we start wanting to A/B test. The creative director and I had some...

We had some interesting moments. Let's just put it that way. - Difference of opinion. - Yes. It was always that I was calling her baby ugly when we wanted to test something, right? - Not literally her baby? - Okay, yeah. And that wasn't what I was doing, but that's the way it was perceived, right? And so because I could not get past that because she was literally blocking, I started to go around her, which probably wasn't the best thing to do, but what comes to mind is the infamous purple ribbon. So this company, our primary color was yellow, and our secondary color was purple, which whoever came up with that, should literally, maybe rethink their career, but, you know, whatever.

So but we needed to buy online, pickup in-store message. So in Target, I can create this myself. I don't have to go to the creatives. And so I did, and I had a ribbon on the homepage that said buy online, pick up in-store, da, da, da. And it started World War III at this Fortune 100 company because it didn't go through creative, and it was using our secondary color, which was nowhere on our site. And it was not brand standards, all of these things.

And I walked into the room, and I said, but it's driving 8% more conversion in the cart.

And they were like, "Leave it." It stayed there for two years until creative finally owned it and designed it and made it meet our brand standards and all of those things. But it was uncomfortable, right? So you're going to have these moments where if you have someone... Who in this room has works at an organization where people are doing personalization, A/B testing, like, they have an optimization, whatever program, whatever it is? Do you have this? Not a lot, but enough, right? So it's either one of two things. The creatives are very involved and have a voice, most of the time, though, you're not. And it's... You are the pretty picture people that you just get told what to do and they come back and you don't have the seat at the table, right? And this was the problem at this organization was that, they didn't, the creatives didn't feel like they had a seat at the table. And so I was just telling them, we're going to A/B test this, and they were like, there's nothing wrong with it. And I'm like, but there is and, you know, it starts all that whole thing, right? So how do you fix that problem, right? It's not an easy fix. This is a cultural shift, right? This isn't a software integration fix. This isn't AI fix. This is a cultural shift, which is a lot more difficult and people don't want to talk about. But this is a lot on the marketers. A lot like, 90% on the marketers, right? And I say marketers as, like, who's ever running those systems, right? We have and, like, if anything, I'm self-aware, we have forever looked at developers and CND departments as the people that just give us what we need, right? And you are, like, our task people, right, which that is what has to go away, right? So as creative directors, I know I have some quite a few creative directors in the room. This is where the creative directors, like, have to be the bigger person than the marketer a lot of times, and be like, "Hey, I need access to my data on how my stuff is performing, and I need to come to... I would like to see that the table at the strategy meetings," right? And I'd like to be able to offer test ideas or personalization ideas based on the data I'm seeing and based on, you know, all of these other things that I hear 'cause the thing that we don't realize as marketers is, like, our stuff's most important, but you guys are getting requests from everyone else in the business. So you guys know more about the business than we do. We only know about our little world, and you guys can say, yeah, you want to test that, but that's a horrible idea because there's this campaign that's coming in two weeks, and you're never going to reach confidence on that. So good luck sucker. You know, it's, like, you have that vision that we just don't have, right? And so having you at the table, A, saves us a lot of headache in having to go track that down. And B, you have a perspective that is different than ours. It's what I say to Russ about the real blue hairs joining the new blue hairs because a lot of marketing departments are either really old white men or older blue haired women, right? And then your creatives, they're like, don't bring the weirdos into the rooms. You know, it's like, they have blue hair, and we can't, like, what is, you know, and so it's like we have to join the real blue hairs and the new blue hairs, and everybody has to work together, right? And so that cultural shift will not be overnight, but it's, like, kicking in the door and saying we have something valuable to bring to the table than to just, like, pump out image after image, right? But it starts with access to how your creative is performing, how your site is performing. You know, you guys may have ideas that we're just not seeing, right? So that's where that cultural shift starts to come into play, right? So we have a cultural shift, right? We need creative involved earlier in the design, in the ideation, in the campaign brief, working with, collaborating with the marketing team as early as possible. But, Peggy, what if that doesn't work, right? You know, they're in and, you know, we're working together, but we still, you know, butt heads. You know, you alluded to it a little bit earlier around having that visibility into the metrics. So anything that you do that's client, like, user-facing should be grounded in data, right? Unless you're the highest paid person in the room, and then they're going to tell you, I want to make this pink on the site and with no valid reason, and you're going to have to do it, right? Outside of that...

Most decisions, like 99% of your decisions should be grounded in data. Yeah. And that's the great equalizer. You can't fight with data.

And so if everyone has access to the same dataset in the same user journey, and I know that's not what you want to spend your days doing, is trying to learn Adobe Analytics 'cause that's a full-time job, right? So that's where the other part comes in it's, like, have your analytics people set you up dashboards and automate them to you, right? So they're in your inbox every other day or whatever it is, right? Like, I do content effectiveness dashboards for my AEM people and for my graphic design people. And it's like, okay, the homepage is performing like this. The CTA's got clicked on here. The navigation is performing like this. Like, my example for, I have a client right now. Creative department is a huge bottleneck because they do corporate communications, as well as the web. And corporate communications is always more important, right, like, it has their financial services.

They decided they wanted to redo the homepage. Well, the data on the homepage shows that they have, like, quick icons right below the hero banner that take you to the site sections.

Those icons perform, like, three times better than in flight navigation, but the marketing creative whomever it was, decided that those icons needed to come down another slot below, and they put the hero banner without a CTA, which takes up your whole screen.

That sink in for a minute.

We got them to go back and actually put a CTM hero banner, but the icons are still below. So we've got to rely on the data to be, like, that was a really bad decision, right? So you may not win on some of these things, but at least the dataset is there to make your case, right? And that you can always go back. This is, like, the party line that it gives people, like, okay, you don't want to do that. Fine, let's A/B test it. Like, A/B test it, right? We don't have to give it to everybody, but prove me wrong, right? Like, I want to wear one of those sites, like, prove me or fight me. You know, like, one of those, like, sites. - Come, fight me. - Yeah. It proved me wrong. And A/B test, there's automation in A/B tests that'll conclude an A/B test 50% faster than manual A/B tests called auto-allocating target. It'll get you there, like, within a few days. Great. Run that. And then you can come back and do, and I told you so dance. That's fine. You know, whatever. But having that data and having that information will make you just as powerful as anybody else in the room. But you don't need to learn the tool. Just make sure that it's readily accessible for you in a way that you can consume it.

Yeah, testing or having the data on the purple banner won the purple banner for two years? Yeah. And I didn't care. I didn't want it for two years. I just want it somebody to redesign it for me, but it just had created such a war that it was just God-awful, you know? And if you bought a phone from that company during that time on my banner, thank you.

You helped me.

So, you know, the idea here, you know, wrapping up the second challenge, right, you know, that that, you know, split vision, right, is, involving creative earlier in the process. It's, sort of, an organizational shift. Now the other part is a little bit more systemic around, giving creative access to the data, you know, using that data to make those decisions. Also having that data, having good, you know, analytics on your site, on your mobile app, through your experiences, and being able to actually use that data to make those decisions for you as a group as an organization is helping you to ride in the same direction and get to the same place.

So in, you know, group flow terminology, it's, you know, helping us to have those clear goals and measure it and get that unambiguous feedback. What Peggy described is unambiguous feedback about the performance of our creative.

The last challenge here, you know, to getting to group flow as an organization is really around systemic distraction. Anyone gets distracted during their... Anyone not gets distracted ever? If not, teach me how. You get to work, and you're just in the zone for nine hours and you... Twelve hours. - The 12 hours. - Wow! And then, yeah, see, we're going to learn from him.

Yeah. See? It's very easy to get distracted. And a lot of what we experience here on a regular basis is systemic distraction. Well, what I mean by that? Well, let's, you know, first focus on what we want to get to. We want to get to being able to concentrate on something. And here's another piece that's a little bit different for the group dynamic versus the individual flow state, right, the individual being in the zone. Is that you have to work together, right? There's communication, but as Peggy and the group are riding. I mean, when you're riding to a location, unless you're stopping and taking a rest break, do you need to pull off to the side of the road to have a confab, you know, with the group that you're riding with, or do you just know? I mean, sometimes you just know. Like, there's a little arm twitch, you know, like, you've been riding with that group for a while, and you just know. Well, and it goes back to, like, I'm on a board of directors for an cycling education group. And, like, the first thing we teach people is hand signals, like, slowing, like, left, you know, like, hand signals on a bike. Like, I don't have to yell, slowing! Or, like, we're clear! Like, there's hand signals for that where, like, it's obvious. Like, so if you have that quick communication that everybody understands the universal language, like, it doesn't have to be a big deal, right? For me climbing, it's, you know, let, you know, and I let out some rope for them. You know, take, you know, they're taking up all the slack. You know, like, you just start to know, or like some guys who have been climbing with for a while. I know they're about to fall before they fall. Like, you can just tell when you've been working with somebody for a while. But the point here is that, is that quick communication with minimal overhead, right? That's the key that we want to get to here. How many people have experienced when you... How do I put this? You have so many systems that you have to work in on a daily basis that it gets distracting. And there's a lot of overhead. How many people are being forced to use IT systems to put your work in, like, Jira, ServiceNow, things like that? - Yep. Okay. - Yeah. You wrap up your task. You got to go to Jira. Mark it as complete. Take your file. Upload it to the FTP it to the site. Share the link for where it's at with the person who you need feedback from. Get their feedback over email, go back, make your edits, like, all of these things... And update the ticket that you sent the email. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Don't forget to update your tickets. 'Cause the PM will yell at you. Yeah. Yep, fill out the spreadsheet for the project manager. All of these things that this is what we're talking about with systemic distraction, right? It's taking you out of the zone. It's taking you out of your flow state. And really what it's also doing is getting your group not flowing together, not riding, you know, well together. So the idea and what Adobe has really done. Now if you take a look at it from, let's just abstract, you know, from the products for just a second here. What Adobe has really done is to take all of those capabilities and build all of that from end-to-end into one ecosystem so that you don't have to take your file and then upload it, you know, to the FTP site and then, you know, mail somebody. And then, also, go into Jira, and update your ticket, and fill out the spreadsheet and all of these different things that take us out of the flow on a regular basis multiple times a day. Adobe has really taken all of these capabilities and built it into one ecosystem, which is the entire idea is what makes Adobe different. And it's why I've... As soon as I started to engage with Adobe seven years ago, I realized that difference, and that's why I continue to work with Adobe today, 'cause the vision is different. They may make an acquisition of Workfront or, you know, Magento, but they'll actually take it down, strip it down, build it into the overall platform and actually remove those systemic distractions that many of us experience on a day-to-day process, and it helps us to just group flow better. Well, and it's not to make it a big, like, sales pitch. So I'm not an Adobe salesperson, right? I don't have a dog in a fight, but I... The only other certification that I've received out of Target or Analytics is Workfront. And there was a reason because I've been forced to use Jira my entire life about with my process. It doesn't make any sense. Workfront does though, and it makes sense with the creatives that I use too. So I can now watch things go from beginning to end very quickly and not have to send multiple emails. I can watch the approval process. I can do all of that. That system excites me for lack of a better word, you know, project management system should excite anyone, but it does excite because it makes things simple.

And it cuts out a lot of the BS of, like, literally spending 20 hours a week updating tickets or sending follow-up emails or whatever it is, right? And then the integrations with the Experience Cloud just from the DAM and AEM into Target and all of those things where I'm not having to have my teams email me, URLs of stuff on FTP servers. They can just port over or stuff like that. Those are the efficiencies where time savings is enormous, right? So if you take a look at it and you, sort of... Oh, for all of those capabilities, you know, there are solutions that Adobe has that, you know, provide all of those things. And, you know, like, I said earlier, Adobe's really done a great job of actually integrating all of them into one seamless system. For many of us here, we're mostly focused on that that top right area there, the creative side. But there's so much more as an organization that we don't just get to work in a silo. We have to work with our marketing teams and our product teams, and corporate communications and so on, that it's important to us in our ability to have, you know, fulfilling engagements, you know, in our day-to-day work to be able to work with everyone well together here. So to wrap us up here 'cause I know we're, you know, two minutes over time here. We are actually, you know, as CDW, shameless plug, having a demo of, and this is what, you know, Shantanu was, you know, describing as the, you know, GenStudio. Adobe GenStudio is really all of these capabilities tied in together into one seamless flow. So we're having an open demo. Anybody can register and, you know, join it here in just three weeks. You can join. You don't have to, you know, commit to buying anything. No hard sell or anything. It's just awareness, you know, for you and anyone who you work with around how to actually see these tools work with them together, how they work together, and how you as an organization can flow together. It's what makes Adobe different, and it's why we're all here to, you know, learn more about Adobe. So that in the last slide here, Peggy, wrap us up. Whenever I'm at Summit, I always am angry about partner sessions because I'm like, "Great, you talk for an hour, and I came away with nothing." So I want to do last slide of, like, "Okay, what can you guys do when you go home? Or when you go back to work on Monday?" So if you're creative in the room, which I think majority of you are...

Quit waiting for an invitation to the table.

Like, nobody's going to send you an embossed invitation. It's not going to happen. So ask for a seat. Like, and not all the ICs are going to get invited. So if it's the team lead, if it's the creative director, but somebody should be a representative from the creative department at strategy meetings, at optimization meetings, your stuff for A/B testing and personalization should get prioritized on the list with everybody else's, ask for a seat at that table. And if they tell you no, ask why, right? There should be a valid reason why. And if you don't already have access to your analytics, get access. And don't just have them give you a username and password.

Have them set you up dashboards, have them automate.

If you want to learn, have them give you links to learn some of that, but get access to your data first and foremost so that you can, when you come to the table, have some things to talk about, or know what they're talking about, all of those things, right, so that you're informed. If you're a marketing person in the room...

Expand your thought process. Some of the best tests I've ever run came from creatives.

Some of the best content tests I've ever run came from creatives. They have a different outlook on things than just the same old marketing. So suck it up, like, swallow some pride because at the end of the day, it's all about the user. It's not about you or anything else. It's all about the user. And be a data evangelist. Share your data with everybody in the organization. Not just the creatives, but everybody.

And then both, if you have an optimization tool, Adobe Target, Optimizely, I don't care what it is, and nobody's using it, go claim it.

Do you have a question? - Yes. - Yeah. - Share it with everybody. - Yeah. Do you think always share with some employees, do you share it with everybody? It can be, but don't share it with everybody, but it can be rolled up. So everybody should have some, sort of, access to it. So if there's weekly reports, we used to put it on a big screen where everybody could see it, and it likes paged through stuff like that. Not everybody needs, like, access to the system, like, what I mean, but, like, make data reporting more available. Yes. Yep. So Target, a lot of time, the least used platform easiest to monetize within the Adobe Stack. If it's sitting there and you have an AEM contract, it's probably sitting there not being used. If you're a creative department, go claim it.

Start A/B testing your creative. Start A/B testing your content, like, make it yours. - That's a tool for you guys. - Yeah. It's not a tool to call your baby's ugly. It's a tool to learn, right? Automate the reporting and then find opportunities to use AI to stop making yourselves the excuse on why marketing can get shipped on.

- Peggy, we've one more question here. - Yeah. How do you do that when you're using, like, pretty, like, I do direct mail. - Yeah. - But we don't get any analytics there.

Let's talk. Yep. Yeah, how do we do that when we're doing Premiere? - That's a great question. - Yeah. Great question. Yeah. Let's wrap up. Thank you everyone for joining us here, and have a great rest of your day.

- Thanks, everyone. - Thanks, everyone.

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