Adobe Summit 2015: Scaling the Digital Wall

What lessons could digital marketers learn from Hollywood superstar Michael 'Birdman' Keaton, football quarterback Steve Young, professional rock climbers Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgensen, and Sarah Gormley, a delegate from the Girl Scouts of the USA?

These unlikely speakers at the Adobe Summit in Salt Lake City had loads of insights to offer- from re-invention to team work and investing in analysis-to marketers caught in the midst of a digital transformation.

Batman star Keaton talked about his acting journey and the way he constantly reinvented his image by pursuing interesting roles. It was not luck, he said, but "strategic moves, research, discipline, hard work, doggedly going after an opportunity till you get it" that shaped his career.

For Caldwell and Jorgensen, who scaled El Capitaine's Dawn Wall, one of the most challenging climbs in the world, the key to scaling the summit was spending a lot of time analysing the wall, studying each crack on it, after which it was all about resolve, commitment and laser focus.

The analogy for marketers looking to scale the digital barrier was hard to miss. As John Mellor, Vice-President for strategy and business development of Adobe System's digital marketing business, pointed out, "The natural progression when a company is seeking to digitally transform itself is to start with analytics."

Significantly, sports teams in the NBA league have transformed themselves through analytics. Basketball today in the US is more and more about number crunching to cut out weaknesses. As data geek Nate Silver, who analyses basketball and elections, said, "We can now measure how lazy Carmelo Anthony is in defence!" The number crunching editor of FiveThirtyEight pointed out how all major sporting outfits from Bayern Munich to Chicago Bulls used analytics.

Even the Girl Scouts of the USA, a 103-year-old non-profit body, is disrupting itself through digital marketing. Sarah Gormley, CMO of the Girl Scouts, described how when its much-loved cookie sale programme went digital, it took America by storm leading to an unbelievable level of engagement. "Within three days of being launched, digital cookie got 3.5 million media impressions," said Gormley, adding that digital was all about building connections. Thanks to digital, she said, marketing has gone from being a cost centre to being a revenue generator.

But the final word on reinvention came from quarterback Steve Young, who described how he managed to fit into the harsh tumble of American football despite not being tall enough by simply kicking off disbelief and taking chances. "You just have to figure out different ways of doing things and you need to be ingenious," he said.

Words that could well apply to an organisation trying to reinvent itself to fit into the digital world!

(The author travelled to Salt Lake City as a guest of Adobe.)