Articles by category: Opinion

Two years ago, on 25/05/2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) started to be applicable in the EU. Although this regulation entered into force 2 year earlier, in 2016, it caught many companies by surprise. Initially, there was panic around it. Some even thought that it would send ripples all along the Internet, which would change forever. Has this really happened?

A few years ago I wrote a post on business vs technology. Since in our world, 3 years is a very long time and now I have more experience on the matter, I decided to write about it again. It is not just an extension of the previous post, but a new angle to it. You probably have guessed that I am a bit (or more than a bit) tired of this confrontation.

Today I want to give an overview of the Adobe Experience Cloud. Now that I think about it, I should have done it a long time ago. I just got into the habit of explaining how to solve individual problems, that I never actually thought about the bigger picture. So, if you are familiar with the whole Adobe Experience Cloud or are looking for specific solutions to certain issues, you better skip this post. On the other hand, if you came here trying to understand what the Adobe suite of tools is about, this is for you.

I know that this is a moniker that has become very popular lately. You probably have heard it from Shantanu Narayen, but he is not the only one. Initially, I did not pay enough attention to this expression. But I guess something has clicked in my brain and I am finally processing it.

I am sure you have heard the saying May you live in interesting times. Well, in case you wanted to know how these “interesting times” look like, we are now all living one of those. If you have been following my blog, it is not about medicine, so I will not give you any advice on health. I am more interested in how this crisis will affect those of us living in the digital marketing world. My intention with this post is to be some sort of forum, where we can all share our ideas. I will start with my view and I would like to read yours.

In the past, in order to be a good marketer, it was expected that you had sixth sense. There was no obvious reason to predict who would rise to the Olympus of marketing. Now, with data driven marketing, we have moved from an art to a science.

Many years ago I read a story about the resignation of Google’s lead designer. He wrote a bitter post, where he explained why he did it. I recommend that you read it before you proceed with my post. Initially, it was just an curious story for me, but now I see profound implications.

Today I am going to diverge from the typical, more technically-oriented posts I have written in the last few months. Most of the companies I have worked with in the last 5+ years had the same issue: different Adobe tools where used by different and disconnected teams. Although this seems like an obvious issue, I wanted to put it in writing.

During the EMEA Summit 2019, one Adobe customer asked me about one detail of the Marketing Channels configuration. The conversation we then had around this question, reminded me of the confusions some managers tend to have about attribution. Let me clarify a few things about this topic.

In a recent project I worked on, the client set a team up to analyse the site speed of the website. This resulted in some clashes between them and the Adobe team. Both sides had their own arguments and it was difficult to progress. Today I want to give you my point of view and tips of what you can do if you find yourself in the same situation.

If you are in the digital marketing world, you should have heard about the Cambridge Analytica latests scandals. The first time I heard about it was how they harvested 50M profiles from Facebook, a few days ago. Today I read some allegations on their influence on Trump’s victory. This is not a blog about politics, so I am going to skip this part. Instead, I want to focus on the digital marketing side. Before progressing, I recommend you read the last link I have shared, which is what has inspired this post.

When I was in my last year of University, I had a project management subject. I was studying Electronic Engineering at the time. The teacher had a great deal of experience in projects and he also had a technical background. During one of the lessons, he made a statement that struck all of us in the classroom. He said that, in order to progress in our career, at some point in time we would have to give up technology and move to the business side. I still remember my internal reaction: I did not like it. I think my point of view was shared by many of my classmates by the rumours.

My job as an Adobe Analytics consultant has involved, very often, bridging the gap between these two worlds. I have seen myself many times as a translator: getting a message from the marketer, translate it into technical terms and communicating it to the developers; and vice-versa. My developer background has helped me a lot in this case. In quite a few cases, I have been requested to join meetings just to make sure that the IT team understood what the marketer wanted. It does not help either the fact that web analytics is not considered as important as it should be.