Challenge:

• Every year, Adobe holds its digital experience conference called Adobe Summit in Las Vegas. The massive corporate event is designed to communicate the company’s vision, showcase new products, and bring the Adobe community together. For 2020, the company was preparing for 23,000 attendees to arrive in a massive expo hall. But as the spring event date neared, it became clear that Adobe Summit could not go forward in a physical capacity.
• “We spent all year planning and exactly one month before the live event in Las Vegas, we made the decision to cancel,” says Alex Amado, Adobe’s Vice President of Experience Marketing. The team quickly pivoted to presenting Adobe Summit as an online experience.
• “Because we recreated this whole experience and had to rethink it on the fly multiple times, we ended up needing to do really different marketing,” Amado explains. “The marketing that you do for a live event is not at all the same as the marketing that you do for an online event.”

Solution:

• “We immediately knew that we needed to expand our digital marketing efforts to focus on a much larger global audience,” says Brittany Mosquera, Adobe’s Director of Event Marketing.
• Acting quickly, the Adobe team increased both organic and paid social efforts on multiple channels including LinkedIn, to create and showcase content leading up to the launch of Adobe Summit online.
• The company’s first-ever LinkedIn Live stream on the main Adobe page gave an overview of the online experience, as well as the new products and innovations to be presented at Adobe Summit. Live events were also offered in French, German, and Japanese to appeal to potential attendees in Europe and Asia.
• “We got really good comments and interactions with that content,” says Amado of their first LinkedIn Live stream.

Results:

• “We were initially conservative in our goals,” Mosquera shares. “However, our results kept growing every day. Our pre-event registrations were three times higher than our initial goal. To date, we have had over 700,000 online views and over 40 million social impressions.”
• Within 24 hours, the LinkedIn Live stream had 28,400 views and more than 2,000 reactions and comments.

Leading the shift from in-person to virtual events:

• As one of the first major technology events to move online as a result of the pandemic, Adobe Summit launched a conversation around how to plan, promote, and execute virtual events within the industry. Thanks to its pioneering approach and outstanding results, the Adobe team received many requests for guidance and best practice sharing from other companies.
• “Our key sets and venues became the home offices and living rooms of our executives. We found ourselves shipping cameras and lights out to all of our speakers,” says Amado of the shift required in their creative process. “We were recording and uploading files and downloading them and editing them. Everything was done at a distance and it was a really different event.”
• “The authentic nature of our speakers in their homes with relatable content has been extremely well-received, and our customers and partners are asking for our support and best practices on virtual events,” said Mosquera. Which is exactly what Adobe has been doing, including when they shared their virtual event tips on Live with Marketers.”

Key learnings for future virtual events:

• Audience feedback gathered on LinkedIn during and after Summit is helping guide the Adobe team as they plan future live streams and virtual events.
• “Our biggest learnings were
  1) the need for live content in much shorter consumable videos online
  2) allowing attendees to personalize their journey with content recommendations
  3) having them engage in live interaction with other attendees,” says Mosquera.

About Adobe

Adobe is the global leader in digital media and digital marketing solutions. Our creative, marketing and document solutions empower everyone – from emerging artists to global brands – to bring digital creations to life and deliver immersive, compelling experiences to the right person at the right moment for the best results. In short, Adobe is everywhere, and we’re changing the world through digital experiences.