 Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Magento Imagine 2019, brought to you by Adobe. Hi, welcome back to theCUBE. Lisa Martin with Jeff Frick at Imagine 2019 at the Win Las Vegas, talking all about e-commerce innovation and technology, consumer changes, all that good stuff. Joining us next is Adam Justice, the director of product marketing for the Adobe Experience Cloud. Adam, welcome to theCUBE. Thank you for having me. Thank you. This is a really high energy event. It is. All day. It's palpable. I think it might be partly because there's a lot of orange here. It's a pretty energizing color. People have had very interesting entrances and exits on stage coming from above and below. We've heard a lot of great testimonials from partners, customers, Adobe folks, Magento folks. Customer experience is critical to any product, any service, retailer, big or small. So true. Talk to us about, you've been with Adobe for a long time. Talk to us about, from your perspective, the essentials, really good customer experience management. Absolutely, thank you. Thanks for the question. It's great to be here. So, at Adobe, we've really evolved, I think, as sort of the needs and roles of our customers have. And I think the primary motivator for their evolution has been the customer, the customer itself. And whereas it used to be enough for us to think about, we're going to provide a winning product or a service. I think all of us can agree, and it's easy for us to agree now because we're all a focused group of one. We know what we like. We like an experience that actually feels like it's worth having. It's not enough to just put in a product or a service out there. It needs to feel like something that actually not only feels natural, but it feels additive to our lives in some way. And so, what was once sort of a relatively straightforward product development process or promotional process, now is very much about how are we addressing the needs of the consumer in a way that is holistic, that respects the channels that they want to interact with our brand on, that respects the devices through which they want to either consume our product or research our product. So Adobe is really trying to sort of understand the dynamics of the market today and bring solutions to the customers who now have this broader sort of stewardship. And I would say the things that we're seeing that are core to that are first, you're not going to deliver a meaningful experience to a customer unless you understand that customer. And understanding that customer largely now comes down to data. And a lot of folks will feel like, well, that certainly seems logical, but we're awash in data. How do we actually get to the point where the data is telling us the story so we can leverage that information and then tell a brand story, tell some kind of present a compelling experience? And then you add to that the dynamics, obviously right now about, and the entirely justifiable concerns about my privacy and the regulations there, and Adobe's going directly at that with the Adobe Experience Platform in order to effectively coalesce a meaningful point of view or sort of representation of the customer in a way that respects their privacy, that an experienced steward can then look at that and say, not only do I understand who this person is, but I have context and an understanding of what it is they're looking for, what is their intent, what is the context of this interaction now so that I can present a meaningful experience. That obviously gets you part of the way, but then knowing is only half the battle, right? Maybe not even half. Then you actually have to kind of rally around, well, what tools and content do we have at our disposal to ultimately present a compelling experience? You know at Adobe we like to say that emotion is the currency of experience and if you're not actually leveraging meaningful content and presenting it in context then you're not going to evoke an emotion that is worth evoking. So definitely you have the data piece then the content piece, but I would also add and you've probably had other people sitting in this seat talking about how the complexity of all that has certainly exceeded now the capacity of at least my brain to manage in a singular sort of engagement with a customer let alone at scale millions of times a day. So the role of artificial intelligence and machine learning now is so core. I would think that it's absolutely kind of, it's sort of the gearbox that's turning at the center of the data on one hand, the content and elements, the assets, the offers on the other that allows for ultimately the coalescing of those things and then the delivery of an experience worth having. So that may have been like a $2 answer to a two cent question but really I feel like that's sort of the component pieces that we're seeing at play and sort of Adobe's motivation in going into that space. That came out where we're at Adobe Summit a couple of weeks ago, I can't keep track, I think it was a couple of weeks ago and I found it really interesting especially with Adobe's roots really in the content generation side, right? All the way back to the creatives and the creators of that great content and now to be able to use the sophistication of the tools to A-B test, I think Best Buy was on stage and they did four million or 40 million customized emails. So now take this great creative A-B test it to the nth degree again using the data and the context and the knowledge of what those customers are all about and now it seems like the Magento piece is kind of the icing on the cake to actually have the ability to get the transaction associated with all this other process to bring the cash register if you will. You're absolutely right, Jeff, you're absolutely right. At Adobe when we executed sort of the, well we announced our intent to acquire, we were talking about how does Adobe facilitate or help every experience become shoppable and every moment personal and really that was a claim we couldn't make without the Magento piece. So it is absolutely, it's a hand in glove relationship and now especially as we've all evolved as consumers, I mean to imagine that we would be subscribing to SOCs or that we could one click purchase just about anything, you need the technology that can kind of keep pace with the expectations and that's what it's all about because so many of those experiences that Adobe's intent on enabling our customers to present, so many of them culminate in a transaction of some sort. So the Magento is absolutely, not only the icing on the cake, which I think it's a great metaphor but it's also so integral, right? Now it's becoming like a fundamental or elemental part of what we're trying to accomplish, right? So delivering this comprehensive customer experience managing analytics, advertising, marketing, commerce, the one thing that when you were kind of describing the core components of customer experience management I'm thinking is time, because as consumers we have so much choice and if we meet friction at any point along the way, we're going to churn and we're going to find somebody else who's going to be able to deliver this product or service, right, in a less, in a frictionless way. So when you were talking about AI, for example, I was thinking comment on how that can be leveraged to be able to facilitate that just-in-time shoppable experience that converts to a sale that is able to do so in a way that's personable or personalized to the customer experience and taking that insight to go, oh, right now there's an action that Lisa just took, we've got to offer this right now. Right. Well you know that's one of the things I absolutely love about customer experience management or CXM, you'll hear us use the acronym. In a way, I just, I kind of love the absurdity of it, right? I mean, when you think of the scale to say something like we're going to make every experience shoppable and every moment personal, it's just, the scope of that and to imagine that that's possible is almost absurd. But when you introduce the advancements that we're seeing in artificial intelligence and machine learning now, it's literally going from the absurd or from the realm of science fiction into very real. And that's what Adobe's looking at. Like how can we literally take some sort of statement, like we're going to personalize experiences across the customer journey and we're going to do it at scale and in real time. I think you brought up the component of real time. And really, unless you're considering how we're going to meet the needs of the customer in the moment that they're expressing that need, then it's really moot. And it is absolutely artificial intelligence and machine learning that we're seeing sort of expressed now across the Adobe experience cloud that are making that happen in multiple ways. One of the ways would be simply by shortening that span between sort of the latent genius that marketers are walking around in their heads and actual execution. So how can we kind of take some of the friction out of the workflows that allow them to translate their ideas into offers? And another place would be how do we shorten the space between a signal that we get, say in behavioral data that we see show up either in an app or on a website and then turn through all of the possibilities of what we could present, apply algorithms to kind of determine what is the next best offer, next best experience, and then present that in a way that actually feels, if not real time, pretty close to it. And that would not be possible without, without artificial intelligence at Adobe, our product in that space that we reference as Adobe Sensei. So you'll hear us talk about Adobe Sensei and that's kind of the umbrella that stretches around the different elements that I was talking about. So interesting how just how the expectation game has changed and actually now being enabled by the technology under the covers. Because it used to be right, we made decisions based on a sampling of the data after the fact, right? Now the expectation is I want to make a decision based on all the data or as close to all as I can get in near real time, real time defined as enough time to do something about it, which is a completely different way to attack that problem and has really changed the expectation game, but that is the expectation game now from the customers who are hoping that thing shows up that's supposed to show up because it's really what I'm interested in now and can't you figure that out based on all my activity? That's right. In fact, I was just having conversations with my children and it kind of blows my mind there. They literally wonder why when we order something on Amazon, it's not there like within an hour or two. Didn't we just buy that? And interestingly in some markets now you're almost at a point where that's actually reality. And so the fact that we've witnessed in such a short timeframe, this kind of realization and this new reality, it is absolutely fascinating to observe and we can only kind of blame and congratulate ourselves, as consumers for pushing these expectations that now brands are doing everything they can to keep up with. But I think one of the magical things is that we're still surprised and delighted on a regular basis. And that's one of the things that I love about Adobe and our ability to sort of, to activate the things that marketers and people who are responsible for customer experience know that they want to do. We're giving them tools now where it's actually not only a reality to respond in these incredibly short time frames, but do it in a way that can be super creative and breakthrough or differentiated. Which is a meaningful requirement for brands today to be able to do all of that stuff but do it in a way that is unlike their peers. Exactly, like we were talking about before, when you have so much choice as a consumer, especially for certain types of products that are commodities, if it's not in a way that's differentiated and unique, I'm going to go somewhere else where I can find that experience that really kind of connects with me on whatever level, whatever the product or service is. So being able to create that creative, unique experience. And we were talking with Jason about what was announced this morning with Adobe Sales Channel on the Adobe branded storefront and being able to give merchants, even within, sorry, not Adobe, Amazon been talking for hours, giving them the ability, say, within an Amazon marketplace to elevate their brand a little bit and make it a little bit more unique so they have a little bit of an edge and can maybe express some brand creativity within that platform. Right. I really do appreciate that element of what we're doing. Having come from kind of an advertising background myself where you know that the mental bandwidth you get with anyone is so limited and the opportunity to differentiate is, you have to grab it when it presents itself. And so in order to, we risk to become like overly scientific about this and definitely there's so much science involved with it now but we can't forget the art. We can't forget the opportunity to literally take that, even those minor elements. And sometimes it's the signals that we get that say someone is prepared or interested in this type of experience but then how do we make that experience not feel surgical but rather actually impressive and emotionally even. And so that's one of the things that I love about Adobe. We really do try and embrace, push forward on the science aspect but respect the fact that a lot of brand building and a lot of meaningful experiences that we have are absolutely also rooted in the art. So there you have it. That's a great point. It's really helping customers kind of fine tune and dial the art with the science. Your product marketing guy, what are maybe a favorite customer example that shows a customer that's really been able to leverage the data, the creativity to deliver differentiated brand value to their customers. Anything come to mind in particular? Well certainly there's so many. I feel like for me the opportunity, when I really feel impacted by a brand sometimes it's when I break out of sort of the mundane or I get to go on a, I get to go on vacation with my family and I feel like interestingly just going to a remote locale sometimes it can either be magical or it can be like a horror show, right? But the way brands like Marriott, Starwood, Marriott Bonvoy now the way that they're embracing the opportunity is sort of bring technology in a way that feels very additive but almost transparent to where now you're actually you can, if you're based on your loyalty program and you have the right app on your phone you can walk straight to the door and unlock the room. I mean that's huge. And it takes something that could have like that might have been one of the bigger friction points like standing in a line to check in and it just makes it fluid. It makes it feel like, you know this is the type of experience that I want to have that I'm just getting things done things feel good and the opportunity for a brand to go in and sort of think about where are those points where I might be introducing friction rather than feel good and being able to remove those and have technology do it in a transparent way I think it's really impressive. It can be absolutely transformational. It absolutely can. For sure. It's such a good example of just kind of twisting the lens you know the check in process who would ever think well we're not going to change a check in process it's a check in process but for someone to actually go wait a minute that is of their whole experience of their time with us your family for a couple of three, four days you know that is a major friction point you're tired you just got in from the airport you know the kids are hungry you just want to drop your bags and then to stand in line so to use technology to redefine that little piece of that whole week that you're spending in that property is really creative before you even get to the technology enablement to make it so. Or take for example one of the most painful things that can happen in travel when you're on a flight that's delayed or canceled and then not only are you dealing then with just kind of the emotional duress of having to recalculate everything but then you have to stand in line forever but now you can pull out your app and at your fingertips you have potential you have the opportunity to be recognized as I'm this passenger I have this sort of status here are alternatives and being able to sort of take control or engage in that way that leverages technology to again sort of remove friction and add solution. I just think we're really at the tip of the iceberg in the way that we're going to see this type of technology infusing into things that we feel are more pure experience than just marketing in campaigns. Exciting, exciting times Adam thank you so much for joining Jeff and me on theCUBE this afternoon. Look forward to hearing lots of great things to come and really helping to drive those experiences with the art and the science. Indeed. Thank you for your time. Thank you, thanks. For Jeff Frick, I'm Lisa Martin coming to you live from Imagine 2019 at the Wynn Las Vegas. Thanks for watching.