I'm Fred Faulkner, a husband and father with a passion for marketing and technology. I work at a top 50 consulting agency where I lead alliances and marketing for the digital experience and technology team. On this podcast, I share my thoughts, opinions, and experiences in business and in life.
This is my view of the world according to Fred.
Hey everyone, and welcome back to According to Fred, the podcast. I am your host, Fred Faulkner, and in. Thank you for joining me on this next episode. Today is Adobe Summit Day. Uh, Adobe Summit was, is one of the premier digital marketing conferences that goes on every year in March. Happens to always be around spring break time for many families, including myself.
But this year, there's Things are a little bit different, and we're going to talk a little about how Adobe Summit, which launched its online virtual experience today, got a lot of things right, got a lot of things, um, some things I would say, you know, it was okay. And, um, kind of what's going on with the whole conference industry as a, as a whole.
So let's dive in. So it's no secret that we're in trying times when it comes to the conference industry. Ever since COVID 19 and the coronavirus started to hit, take the world over, we've seen an unprecedented amount of conferences just flat out cancel their conferences. They've been postponed or some have decided to move to an online experience.
I think the real proverbial, you know, thoughts of wow, this is real is when you had mobile world Congress cancel 100, 000 Um, attendees cancel their conferences usually happens every year in Barcelona in February. And that's what I think a lot of eyes got opened up going, okay. Maybe this isn't just a joke.
Um, and we saw a lot of conferences start to really take suit. We had the Geneva auto show, um, a lot of regional conferences, a lot of user conferences from technology organizations. Um, you know, auto shows are, you know, across the nation started to have, you know, challenges and decided to stop. It was no, you know, it didn't really matter what the size was.
No one wanted to be the headline. Um, and I think appropriately so, but no one wanted to be the headline of we were the conference that continued to spread the pandemic across the world. Um, and when you have a conference like Adobe summit does, uh, and a lot of other conferences that are in Vegas, that was one of those things where, you know, it really came as no surprise that they decided to actually do something about their conference as well.
So at this, the recording of this podcast. Um, the number of conferences in 2020 that were either postponed, canceled or have gone online that that number sits at 394, not an insignificant amount of conferences. Now for me, conferences is actually part of the business plan. It's part of the marketing plan that we as an organization do.
And we're not the only ones. There's a lot of companies that spend a tremendous amount of money every year going to conferences as sponsors, exhibits, um, doing speaking for some people speaking as their industry is their job. And so a lot of these conferences that are canceling, it's actually affecting a lot of livelihoods that, that are, are.
part of that game as well. But as me as a marketer, I use conferences to get in front of my target audiences, position our products and services in front of those audiences and essentially build pipeline. So when a conference decides to do something different, that investment that we have made is causes a lot of other ripple effects.
And we're getting, we're not the only one, everyone's dealing with this right now, but it affects pipeline and affects how we actually do our business. And I'm not just talking about conference sponsorship dollars. I mean, we're talking about travel, uh, whining and dining of prospects and clients, uh, making sure you do a lot of client service, you know, relationship building while you're there, uh, booth design and build and shipping and swag and, and private events.
I mean, there's a ton of money that goes into conferences and it affects a ton of different parts of the, of businesses whenever they go to a location to actually have a conference. So, you know, yeah, we may be saving some money because we weren't thinking about, you know, some of our conferences are in Q3, Q4, and we're not going to probably spend that same money we did before.
But um, those tactics all lead to business because they are a, they're a one of the ways that we as a tactic, we as a pipeline builder, that is to drive how we operate our business. So canceling a conference or moving something or changing something around is a big deal. So what happens when a conference actually moves, decides, and wants to move to an online experience?
For attendees, there's, there's ramifications for that, and there's ramifications for us as sponsors as well. For attendees, really the, the biggest change is maybe you're not going to get as much content as you would have before, depending on how content was created and who the presenters are, and how the conference organizers decide to actually present the content.
We'll talk about what Adobe Adid has done. Here in a second. Um, but you know, as an attendee, you're not traveling anymore. Um, you are dealing with this idea of, am I going to get dedicated time to actually spend and enjoy the online experience versus what you're basically doing is you're out of the office and you're physically in a place and how are you then absorbing that content and taking these ideas and, and bringing them back to the office.
So in some cases, an online experience is actually, it's okay. You're still going to get a lot of that content and you're how you manage that. Is, you know, very much between you and your employer, but I will say it isn't the same because we know, and it just was for me today, you're multitasking. As much as I was trying to absorb content today, I was getting Microsoft team messages and questions about this graphic were to use in a social media promotion or or something else was coming on, and it wasn't really dedicated unless I decided to take myself completely offline from work, you know, connections and work connectivity to enjoy the experience and be able to absorb that content.
I appreciate it. So for attendees, that's I think the biggest challenge is when it becomes now I'm not physically going to a place, you're not going to have the same experience, not only because you're not going to physically be there, but because you're always going to have this constant reminder of, well, you know, I can answer that email between listening to this session, or I can answer this.
I am because someone needs to get this answer. And that is not what you would have done if you were actually at a conference or in a much different dynamic and environment. Also, you're missing out on the physical human interaction. And I think one of the best parts of conferences as an attendee, when you're not being a sponsor, what managing a booth and talking to people.
But I think, you know, one of the best parts of being an attendee going to a conference is, is that impromptu interaction, it's the connections you make, it is the networking. It combined that with the content that you're going to learn from the The presenters, that is what actually makes conferences worthwhile because one, you're never the only one that has a problem you're trying to solve.
And two, if you can find that other set of companies or people that have dealt with the problem, that isn't a vendor that's trying to maybe sell you services or isn't trying to sell you consulting components, that is actually really valuable. And especially in the technology world, when you are actually trying to evaluate Software before you buy it, going to user group conferences or just industry conferences in general, and being able to talk to others that are in your, your predicament, or have used the software that you're looking to buy, you get some real honest feedback from that ecosystem and those customers before you decide to make a decision.
So you're not getting that by going into an online virtual conference because you just don't get those interactions. And yes, there's things like Twitter and social media that you can start to make connections. And I certainly did my fair share of. Being online today and and tweeting up a storm and sharing my thoughts and opinions what happened with Adobe summit Still it is about you know Getting 26, 000 people together in huge Expo halls and big Presentations and big screens and the energy that goes with that you really can't replicate online Period.
Full stop. You just can't. So, you know, organizers and companies who are transitioning from a physical experience to a digital experience can only ever go so far, but they're going to do their best. Now, from a sponsor perspective, you know, again, I mentioned it's, it's a big lifeblood of our business. You know, we're missing out on also those impromptu conversations like, so what do you do?
What does your company do to help you solve these problems? And you get to have that personal interaction that goes back and forth. And that is. That's a bummer. You know, we, I enjoy sitting in a booth and talking to people about their challenges and how, you know, not only do products and serve products that we have solutions and softwares that we partner with, but also how we as, as a agency and a consulting can figure out these challenges through some of our experience we've had at the same time, too.
So it is a bummer, um, that you don't have those experiences, but then how do you try and replicate that in the best way possible? Um, virtual experiences are only going to go so far. Um, yeah. But it's never going to be a full replication of what you can do as a physical in person experience. So as an industry, it's tough right now, plain and simple.
So it was a little bit of a surprise when we found out, you know, conferences were starting to make decisions, you know, what was going to happen, who was going to kind of bail, what was going to move to an online, what was going to get postponed. And. Our biggest, you know, I'll call our Super Bowl is our biggest spend and our biggest conferences we conference we do in any given year is Adobe Summit.
And so we've been watching it. You know, I think we all a lot of us internally thought maybe this will be done by March. We didn't know that much at the time. And we certainly had our hopes that the conference would still go on. But when Adobe decided to pull the plug on the physical experience, I mean, they didn't wait too much longer after conferences started to cancel to make the decision to move to an online experience.
It was a little surprising that they pulled it so early. Um, but I got to give them a lot of credit because they did. They made the decision knowing that they were going to try and do something being one of the bigger conferences, the first ones out of the gate to try and do a, what a virtual online experience should actually be.
So I got to give him my hat and tip it to him because they pulled it off. Um, today's experience was, was certainly, um, one that kind of, I think set the bar at, and we're going to talk a little about what they did right and what they What they did okay at. Um, I really don't think there's a lot of things that they probably can claim did not go well for them.
I would say, you know, having attended enough of today's virtual event. Um, it was impressive. It was impressive to the point where we're going to talk about it. So it has sparked me to kind of want to do a specific adobe podcast, um, about adobe summit. So, um, when you're one of the biggest companies, Out there, software companies period, but when you're also one of the biggest companies that's best known for having suites of solutions that is in the content creation, the content management and the content marketing game, um, maybe there's some high expectations for you when, how you're going to actually pull off a virtual experience, but, um, but I don't think anyone really knew now I got to do the disclaimer.
just because. So yes, I work for a company that is a platinum regional partner. Yes, I was planning on attending summit. And yes, my company has an investment in this overall Adobe partnership, but the following statements are all my own opinion, not influenced by any of that type of stuff. Um, I've bought Adobe products in the past at other companies.
I've implemented them. I've been on the consulting side. I've been on the agency side. I've been on the client side. So all of my opinions here, first and foremost, all of them are my own. So let's jump in. So Adobe summit has been being promoted for the last three, four weeks, online experience, and. Even in the sensitivity of everything else, you know, Adobe's been playing it pretty low key until about the last week where they really started to ramp up the Yes.
We want you to attend online. Yes, please register. It's free. Yes. You're gonna get access to our keynotes. We're gonna do this kind of live, I'm gonna call it live event, but it wasn't, wasn't live at all. But this event on Tuesday, um, which would've been the first day of the conference anyways, uh, here on March 31st, and you're gonna get access to a hundred plus.
On demand sessions for, um, for other breakout sessions that you can watch. I don't even know what the time limit is, but it's not just today. I mean, you're going to have access to these things for a while. So yeah, it was, you know, as a tall order ended. And I think that was one of the things when they made it, whoever the brainstorm session was around who's in that group that said, look, we're going to go virtual.
What's going to be. I'm going to do a hundred pre recorded sessions. We're going to do these breakouts. We're going to do these keynotes we're going to do. And this was all before the whole stay at home mandates started to come out for States and the federal kind of local, you know, government legislations and stuff where no one knew when they decided to move it to online, it was just, we're just not going to bring everyone to the same spot.
There was not this whole stay at home mandates going on. So that was, you know, for them even to pivot. Again, after those mandates came through, how are they actually going to produce something that was, you know, of good enough quality was, it was really impressive here. So here are the kind of the things that I think they got right first, while it wasn't live, it would have been great if they could have done live keynotes where they actually had a little more scripted, um, live setting.
I mean, if you've ever been to any one of these big major, uh, So software conferences, I mean, when you get all these people in a room and there's just just, you know, hundreds of feet of screens and the production value and the music they license and that the graphics and stuff, it's very impressive to be in these experiences live and, you know, to try and replicate that online.
It's just Damn near impossible. Unless you basically put four people in a big studio and just try and do the same type of stuff. Clearly not possible here. So the fact that they had all these recorded sessions with high enough quality, um, I don't know how they did it. I don't know if they decided they're going to take small teams to certain executives off, you know, homes.
Um, I don't think all these things are recorded on webcams. They certainly weren't recorded on iPhones. Um, but they were definitely recorded with high enough quality that they, you know, it was, it was good. So, you know, having, um, Sean knew the CEO of Adobe doing his intro keynote from his home office. Um, the new leader of the experience practice, he's had, you know, his pretty, you know, two keynotes from his, you know, home.
Everyone kind of did it from their home, which was actually added a little more of a personal feel to it because you, you know, You got high enough quality video and audio, but you also got to kind of see like, you know, a little bit more. It wasn't just a stage. It was actually, you know, this whole now in room, in home experience.
So it did bring a personable side to the whole world. Um, the second thing I think they got right, and I don't know how they, again, the infrastructure. The technology and the infrastructure to actually pull off all the live streaming that needs to happen, not even live streaming, just streaming in general, right?
So pre recorded session, how do you make sure that doesn't crash? I had a little bit of hiccup right when we got in. Um, but for the most part, I had zero streaming problems at all and, um, with any of the sessions that, you know, whether it was the keynotes, I think you could have just started to watch the, you know, one by one by one, uh, left to right.
I think that's what a lot of people did. I think some people just jumped straight to specific sessions they wanted to get into once they unlocked the doors and lifted the veil. I really am impressed with the infrastructure for the mass streaming effect that had to take place. And, um, yeah. I mean, it really didn't have any lag.
It really didn't fail and pulled off really well. And again, I don't know who they were using from an infrastructure perspective. If they were using a proprietary vendor, if they were just everything was YouTube. I don't know. I think actually a lot of the breakout sessions are all on YouTube. They're just private links.
So clearly an infrastructure there could handle a lot of streaming from that standpoint. But I don't know if their keynotes were set up the same way. Um, but that was really impressive. And the fact that they got that all pulled off. Um, the third thing that I think they got really right is that the fact that they actually then also had a hundred plus prerecorded breakout sessions.
You know, my company actually was participated in one. It was recorded last Monday, about a week before. But every one of those sessions had a, you know, standard bumper intro, had the graphics and the outro. Um, now while they were all the same, you know, for the most part, um, it's still, you know, there are graphics that were put in this and people recording these things from their homes and, and having, you know, decent of audio and all the kind of coordination that goes around that.
It's not easy to pull off and they do it for a hundred sessions. Now the majority of the sessions were all Adobe employees. And that I think is one of the things we'll talk about. It's kind of like a bummer that they didn't have more of them because Adobe has, there'll be someone's like 400, 450 plus sessions, especially when they are now integrating a Magento imagines conference.
When they bought the commerce, they had their own, uh, the commerce company, they had their own conference. They, they integrated that this year. Last year they integrated the Marketo, um, marketing nation conference. So they've just continued to grow the session base out. So, you know, having a hundred prerecorded really good quality sessions, What was it again?
An impressive, impressive feat. I really do. You know, my next point is I really did enjoy the fact that like the web experience while you had to kind of pre registered, it's probably more like a reminder. I think you can get access to most of the stuff without actually going through too many hoops. And The fact that they weren't going through some third party platform that, you know, had to install something and there was like a virtual lobby and, you know, trade show floor and things of that, you know, can, you've seen those vendors that kind of do it, um, that they really just baked this whole thing into their website.
Um, adobe. com again, I made the experience really, really good and it didn't make it challenging to navigate. And again, for a company that's all about creating experiences, they, they got it right. In my opinion, uh, for that standpoint now. The last thing I'll talk about that I think that got really good was that they also had a really good social presence.
So I had my laptop up watching sessions and then I had a second tablet up on my desk with just like tweet deck up and just having the hashtag Adobe Summit as a column and just watching it flow through. And I mean, it, it was, I've been to Adobe Summit six years in a row. I've done live tweeting. I did it today, but I did a lot of live tweeting in the past too.
And, and I will say. Having this, the thread of just adobe content flow through an adobe summit for those two hours, they did the live session or, you know, opened up and said adobe summits from a starting at 10 30 central, you know, uh, just eight 30 pacific just to kind of get it going. Like there's, I mean, I'm still looking at this right now and there's still people posting content about adobe summit now, nowhere near that the volume and velocity that was going on earlier, but, but certainly people jumped in.
Yeah. And not only did people jump in, but they also had all their employees jump in too. So not only was their employees retweeting and liking content that was going on, but they also had this whole hashtag for at least one of their products for, um, ask me anything for AEM. So they, one of the announcements they made today was about, uh, their Adobe experience manager product.
And they had their product people, um, On Twitter saying like, Hey, here's an ask if you tag the hashtag, ask me anything, you know, and tag me in and I'll answer your question for you. So they're also trying to do social engagement as well. And I thought that was also impressive, which means they're the product people, they're the marketers, they're product marketers, people are working on the platform, they ask them to get engaged online as well.
And that, I think, also very much worked. Now, no conference is going to go seamless, and no conference is going to be foolproof, and I don't care if it's physical or digital. Like, nothing ever goes 100 percent right. Now, that doesn't mean it was necessarily bad, but it wasn't probably the most impressive things.
Um, again, I'll kind of just, you know, take my other hat on of being a consumer of the content and saying, as a sponsor, I really didn't get an opportunity to kind of participate. You know, yes, we had our logo on the sponsors page, and yes, you can click through to my website, but there is really no other way.
That they, that Adobe got us as sponsors involved in the experience as well. Kind of a bummer, not gonna lie, kind of a bummer, right? Other ways we could have made the value proposition better for us. Now, maybe there just wasn't time. Maybe there just wasn't enough bandwidth to kind of make that all happen.
I understand this is their show, they're gonna put their, their customer, you know, their efforts and their priorities first, but there just wasn't a way for us to get involved in. And that was a bummer, for sure. Not insignificant, not, you know, insignificant, because we certainly had an opportunity to take To participate and we did, my company certainly did.
We had an opportunity to participate with Adobe and one of the breakout sessions with some stuff we're doing with them. And we all were riding the hashtag too. And they gave us graphics, they gave us things that kind of, you know, show that we were sponsors of Adobe summit and we want to be part of those ecosystems.
And we did, you know, but it is not going to be the same because we're just not as involved. And I think the biggest thing we weren't involved in is that. We just didn't have a chance to be part of the breakout sessions, you know, so how do you, you know, streamline 450 plus content sessions down to the 100?
Yes, logical choice. All your employees for your software company who's hosting the conference, you're the ones we're going to focus on first. But how do you know? Was there an opportunity to get some sponsors involved with some of their sessions? Still to make them possible and get that stuff distributed.
I think it was a missed opportunity. I think there's some great case studies that we're not hearing about directly. Um, from the conference that we're missing out on now, we're probably all going to hear about them in other ways. I'm sure all of our inboxes have been flooded. Like mine has been since the day conference has been canceled, everyone's shifting their budgets to digital marketing and everyone's doing webinars.
So. I'm sure I can find out all the different great case studies that are out there. It's just now I'm going to get it from a different channel and, and it's kind of annoying, but it's still, there's still opportunities to be there and I get it. So I think those are really the things that I think did okay, right?
Again, not super annoying things, no real digs here. Um, opportunities, missed opportunities, but not necessarily detrimental opportunities that were missed either. But, you know, if with any conference, there's also some things that I really did enjoy about, you know, what did they try to replicate and what they try to do?
We talked about some of that stuff. But, um, let's talk a little about some of the actual things that I got excited about from the content perspective. I think Adobe did a good job with the content that they did decide to produce, right? They, you know, segmented things by verticals. They segmented things by products that they have.
They segmented things by specific use cases. And, and I think when you look at the content, the, you know, a hundred plus sessions, and you want to do some filters, you're going to find enough content there to really support, um, and learn a lot from it. So as a marketer, uh, I actually tweeted this out to my alma mater, uh, Bradley university, the school of business, the foster school of management.
And I said, Hey, marketing students, if you want to get access to great content and learn about some leading platforms that are out there that you're to deal with in some way, shape or form when you graduate, here's a perfect opportunity, free content, go absorb this stuff as you know, as much as you can.
So and here's some of the things you're gonna need to know about. So great opportunities from, from this perspective as well. Um, some of the product announcements that I think, you know, Adobe did today that I I actually, uh, and they had plenty of them that I think were impressive. So, um, they had really four of two of which I'm really excited about, two of which are, they're okay.
And then I think they, they have their place. So Adobe, um, the first one is the Adobe, their enhancements to the Adobe experience platform. Um, That is their CDP layer customer data platform layer. So they have all their products and they're moving more and more things into the cloud and the CDP is really here to help enhance a visitor profile and what that really means at the end of the day is it is the gateway connectivity.
To making personalized experiences more relevant and more hyper personalized to you using data and interactions, um, and aggregating all that information from what Adobe already knows about you from those interactions that you do with them, as well as a bunch of third party data that you've given consent to.
Let me just say that because you probably don't realize it, but you're consenting all the time to data being shared. So, but when using all the data in the right way and building the right profile out, you can actually have some really amazing experiences. And I think that's where the value proposition comes in.
Adobe is not the only one doing this. Salesforce has theirs. SAP has theirs. Everyone's got a CDP. Everyone's trying to pull off the same stuff. Um, Adobe just has their version of it. They call it the experience platform. Which has a number of other things that go with it, including artificial intelligence and machine learning and lots of other things that go into play.
Basically, hey, it's one of the components of the creepy shit on the internet. Um, that's a whole other topic for a whole other day. Um, but it is one of the vehicles to make valuable experiences happen. So it makes some enhancements to that. And they talked about some of the new enhancements with Adobe sensei, which is their machine learning and AI platform on top of it.
And it's a really cool, interesting stuff. So it is, um, as a marketer, I'm super excited about it just because it does give me more tools in my toolbox to do more with the thing that I, uh, so that was the W experience platform or AP as we talk about it. The next one is called the Adobe digital index. And this is where, when you are a software company that has all your applications in the cloud and you work with a lot of big brands, um, you can That are willing to share some of the data anonymously, you know, so it's not Fred Faulkner shopping behavior, but you know, some shopping behavior gets pulled in this Adobe digital index specifically on what's going on in the economy today is amazing.
So they showed some quick stats on what's happening just over the last two weeks with COVID kind of impacting the way the world works and stay at home and. You know, how much e commerce has grown in certain ways, how much grocery has grown in certain ways from a commerce perspective, it's some interesting times where they are able to pull out some real time data and start to give statistics out around what's happening in the economy.
And they've been doing it for years and other facets with Adobe's index content and stuff they've been doing. But now they have this kind of whole like platform to work with now that they've just partnered with a number of other organizations to make this happen. It's impressive. It's actually just one of the powerful things where you get like just looking at trends and looking at what's happening.
It's very interesting data. It's just if you're a statistics person, you'll love it as a marketer. It's really interesting for others. You might wonder how does how do they know all this stuff? Just know that, um, This new product they put out is pretty impressive from that perspective. One of the other products they talked about, um, was this AEM as a cloud service.
So AEM, Adobe Experience Manager, is their content management, it's actually much more than that, but it's their content management solution. Um, they moved it into a cloud service. We actually did a really great podcast at work around that, um, last week, and talked with a couple of our, uh, architects around infrastructure and how they're moving this whole service into the cloud.
Great new solution going to do amazing things, really put them on some parody with some of their other competitors, but at the same time, more data, more cloud scaling, lots of cool stuff won't get into more details around that. But it's one of the new things are really pushing this year. The last thing that they talked about, which I'm also excited to kind of see, dig into more.
And specifically when we talk to our customers and just marketers in general is if you're a marketer or if you're a company and you want to know about customer experience management or CXM. Adobe put out the CXM playbook, which is an interactive website that lets you kind of almost look at your maturity models and where you are in certain areas and help you develop a playbook to help you target your audiences better and understand where you sit in your maturity.
They've done versions of this in the past, but now they've kind of made it into the CXM playbook. I haven't messed around with it too much yet. Um, but it is something that's really impressive. So as a, just benchmarking you against others in your industry, um, benchmarking you against just kind of other companies of various sizes.
It's just a great tool that you can work with partners, take to your internal teams like, Hey, if we want to get better, here's some areas where we can focus on improvement. The CXN playbook is there to help you figure out how to connect with your customers and build experiences better and connect with your customers better.
So highly recommend you go check that out as well. At the end of the day, Adobe did what they do best, which is talk about experiences and how do you build and continue to build in this experience world that we live in today. They said it for years and years and Sean, you said it again today. It's like people buy experiences.
They don't buy products. That's a shift in mindset, I think over the last four or five years, but it is true. I think as we look at all the different things that we're purchasing in today's world, you It's either support in support of an experience or is an experience in general. Think about the vacations you take today.
Are you going to just, you know, even if you just go and sit on a beach, it's an experience that you want to have. Um, we want to have great airplane rides. We want to have an experience when we travel, we want to have an experience, you know, going through airports, everything is an experience that goes through.
So as an experienced business, how are you actually doing what you can do best? And Adobe has their sweetest solutions that solves for that. So again, they just, you know, Adobe summit is you're drinking the Kool Aid you're drinking from a fire hose, you know, probably half the stuff is a little more vaporware than it is real, but.
They do talk up a really good game and they produce solutions and products that help you support building experiences that actually matter. Now, this is just for one day. They truncated Adobe summit from a four day conference into one essentially with an open end on demand session for all these hundreds of, you know, a hundred sessions that you can watch and listen to.
And the real kind of like core experience of the content really sufficed into like two hours. Um, two and a half, maybe three. So it definitely did not replace the [conference and it certainly doesn't mean that there won't be another conferences out there. Martech is coming up. They're going to approach conference, a virtual conference very differently probably than what Adobe did.
And it was, I'm not saying that someone won't actually meet or beat the experience that I experienced today with Adobe summit. But. The first one out of the gate, the first real big one out of the gate. I think Adobe did a great job in setting the bar on what it's going to take for people to have conferences.
If you have to move to a virtual environment, the content creation that goes behind it and the support that it needs to actually make that work and it's easy way as possible for their customers. And they did a great job. You know, also doesn't hurt that. I think when everyone was kind of looking at the celebrities, they always bring on day two and they still recorded Tom Brady.
Um, and even though he was talking about, you know, how in football, you know, you really have to, everyone knows their job and that's how you win. And we have this huge playbook and you'd think we were building rockets, you know, from a rocket being rocket scientists. You know, at the end of the day, it was really there and support the CXM playbook launch, but, um, they still, they still got Tom Brady to record a 12 minute interview that would have normally been done by Aaron Andrews at the conference this year.
But, um, you know, it was a promo, but it was still fun to kind of see a celebrity actually get involved. So, you know, Adobe Summit in the books, um, certainly not the experience that we all would have enjoyed if we were physically in person in Vegas for, for four days. Um, it is one of those kind of, you know, I think it's one of the better conferences that are out there and every conference has their, their, um, their pros and cons, but it is one of the big ones that kind of starts off the year and it does get the, the, the, the vibe going for the year.
Unfortunately, yes, we're moved into a virtual world. I think Adobe did a great job. Um, I spent, I wish I could have spent more time today. engulfed in the sessions, taking more notes. Um, that will say that is actually a real big benefit of, of being online. Is that, and someone else tweeted this earlier today, which was like, Hey, instead of being in a session, I was like, what did that person say?
Like, what am I going to get the notes? And what am I going to get the deck that I can access? You know, I can actually just stop the video, go back 30 seconds, you know, rewatch it again, take that note down that I want to. So I will say that is actually a really big benefit of being stuff that's online, especially when it's prerecorded is that you do get that opportunity to take a note, take a screenshot.
Um, make an annotation and still then engage in that. So again, benefit and one of the benefits I forgot, you know, didn't mention earlier, but it is a true benefit to have the virtual kind of experience in that perspective. So um, you know, did you attend Adobe summit today? You know, what did your, what are your thoughts?
You can, you know, hit me up on, um, on Twitter. I'm at, according to Fred, you can reach out to me on LinkedIn if you want as well, but that is another episode. It's in the books. Um, but before you leave, if you liked what you heard today, I'd love it if you can subscribe if you haven't already, um, so you can stay up to date when I drop new episodes, which I'm hoping to do much more here coming in the near future.
Now that we're all kind of staying at home and I can just kind of crank some of these out without having to worry too much about other stuff. Um, but if you also, if you liked what you heard, you know, I would love if you can do, uh, give me a rating, um, um, either rating on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts and maybe drop a review.
It really would mean the world to me. Um, also, if you want to send me a note and you want to share some comments, and it's not through social media, you can send me some feedback at fred at, according to fred. com. And thank you for listening and I'll catch you on the next one.