Adobe Update Experience Manager
Adobe announced the new release of their Experience Manager suite today. There are updates across Sites, Assets, Apps, Communities and Forms elements. For assets, they offer the following in their press release:
“Dynamic, interactive media experiences, including video, can now be authored and delivered across devices. Advanced video features now include the ability to add annotations and measure engagement. New workflows help streamline tasks such as photo shoots for campaign launches. Experience Manager Assets provides deeper integration with Adobe Creative Cloud, enabling Adobe’s leading digital media tools to store, sync and share assets with Adobe Marketing Cloud. Marketers can then use assets across Adobe’s digital marketing solutions, including Adobe Target, Adobe Campaign and Adobe Social, supporting the delivery of a consistent brand experience across all channels.” [Read More]
There are multiple quotes, including the other PR tactic of delegating the task of delivering the gushing praise off to the customers and/or partners as a ‘co-branding’ opportunity. So, there’s a bunch of stuff from various people who want to get in the plug for their own firm. I’ve trimmed out the advert at the beginning of this one by Ryan Bonifacino of online retailer, Alex and Ani:
“Adobe Experience Manager offers strong integration with Adobe Marketing Cloud and Creative Cloud, which empowers teams to develop and deliver insight-driven digital experiences across devices with the same personalized mindset as our products themselves. This enables companies like ours to align traditional and digital marketing strategies across sales channels to support accelerated business growth”. [Read More]
Also, the boss quote from Adobe’s Experience Manager VP, Aseem Chandra, provides some clues about their market strategy:
“Digital experiences have extended well beyond the PC to tablets, mobile devices, social channels, digital glass, and even wearables. Whether searching a mobile site, diving into a favorite tablet app, or participating in an online community, consumers expect brands to provide a consistent, personal experience every time. Adobe Experience Manager, as part of the industry’s most complete set of marketing solutions, is uniquely positioned to continue defining the future and helping marketers succeed every step of the way.” [Read More]
We haven’t been bowled over by Experience Manager here at DAM News. A lot of it is about aggregation of functionality and relies on ‘one stop shop’ marketing rather than the best of breed approach which we believe is more flexible and effective at solving real world DAM implementation problems. One massive point in Adobe’s favour from a purely commercial perspective, however, is alluded to in the above quotes: Creative Cloud gives them a ready-made channel to pitch this product to prospective buyers and propose it as a ready-integrated option that you’re going to need to do work to re-create with other (arguably superior, but less cohesive) digital media tools.
Although they have managed to alienate large sections of their long-term user base by coercing them into using Creative Cloud, right now, there isn’t a lot of other competition and those who don’t like their tactics have limited alternative options. That means if they wait long enough, the existing customers will either have to switch over to it or will gradually get replaced by new colleagues who don’t know any different. Positioning themselves at the next node on the digital supply chain gives Experience Manager a ready-made source of upstream leads. We saw earlier this month how Shutterstock are going at it from the other direction (downstream digital media supply). It will be interesting to see if the entrance of these elephants in the room results in a big shake-up of the DAM market or if they just make a lot of noise and then leave. Given the amount of money now being spent, I cannot imagine DAM remaining the same pseudo-cottage industry it has been historically for very much longer.
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