New Frontiers


(A creative viewpoint from the Adobe Digital Marketing Summit)

Last week I was fortunate to attend the Adobe Digital Marketing Summit at Battersea Evolution in London. This is mainly because I have spent the past nine months developing magazines for tablet devices using the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite (DPS).

The day featured two main sessions from Adobe, which focused heavily on the Digital Marketing Suite, new developments in tracking data and current market trends. What really interested me were the breakout sessions throughout the day, focusing on social media and digital publishing.

The stand out session for me was titled “Publishing’s New Frontier”. Condé Nast International were on hand to talk about how they have remained at the forefront of digital technologies, were one of the first to embrace tablets for publishing and are, in my opinion, developing the most creative digital publications available. These include Wired, GQ, Vanity Fair and Vogue.

One of the key points highlighted was how digital publications will not be replacing printed media anytime soon – instead print media will be complemented by digital. Tablet devices are on a rapid incline with ownership of iPads at 8% in 2010, then leaping to 28% in 2011. It took over a decade for households to own more than one laptop, while statistics are suggesting that tablets will achieve this within five years.

Moving forward in time to perhaps the final frontier, Nils Müller gave a presentation about which technologies we may be using by 2021. One highlight was the contact lens that features a monitor, giving the user an augmented reality view throughout their day (similar to Google’s recent AR video, but a little more advanced). This was used to change wallpaper in your home to suit your mood, tell you how many calories your consuming from the food you’re eating and also face detection that lists statistics such as how happy the person is you’re talking to.

Bruce Daisley, Director of Twitter UK was also on hand to speak about their recent growth. It took Twitter over three years to achieve one billion tweets. It now reaches this every three days. That’s pretty impressive, but what really surprised me was the statistic that two in three people say Twitter influences their purchases, from a retail perspective that’s very exciting!

With social media’s impact on our lives ever increasing and technologies evolving at quite the pace, effecting how we interact with media and content, there’s no question that creatives will have to adapt their skill sets to new digital mediums and keep track of technological advancements in this quickly evolving landscape.