The Big Marketing Risk That Paid Off

Typically as marketing executives, we try to mitigate risk, but this year we chose to gamble everything in front of 300 of our customers at the recent 2017 Adobe Canada Digital Symposium in Toronto.

Many companies talk of being "customer led" but what if your most important event of the year was actually led by customers?

Instead of some company drone on stage with slick slides beating their chest about the most recent awards won, we asked our actual (and unpaid) customers from a wide variety of Canadian companies to present their experiences in their own words.

We gave the stage to seventeen of our most prominent customers to speak freely at our Toronto Symposium. Some customer presenters chose to use a TedX style presentation, some spoke in panels, and two even used a “tag-team” approach. We only asked that they don't feel obligated to sing Adobe's praises or talk about our products but instead speak at a thought leadership level about some of the hottest martech topics such as analytics, personalisation, DMPs, AdTech, targeting and the cloud. If they were having issues with our products, challenged by the transformation or keeping up with technology, we encouraged them to mention it. We believed that this level of authenticity is what our audience of 300 marketing and tech professionals representing Canada's top brands wanted to hear.

"... hearing from clients is so valuable. In sum, I have come away inspired." -guest feedback

It's a "For Customers, By Customers" approach championed by Adobe Canada's President Salim Maherali who himself is a master at building deep relationships with clients and partners. These relationships lead to a trust which made using this approach possible and this trust led to something remarkable.

The feedback was overwhelmingly positive. We measured the audience response and averaged a 4.3 rating out of 5 (landing between v good and excellent) with 100% of the respondents indicating they found the event worth recommending.

In one case, a customer presenter spoke of problems implementing their new software, and how we worked together to resolve the issues. Today, they are reaping the rewards. That's real life.

"Great to hear from Canadian companies actually using the Adobe solutions." -guest feedback

We are indebted to great brands like CIBC, Red Tag, WestJet, Rogers, BMO, Transat, Microsoft, TD, Best Buy, National Bank, Deloitte, SapientRazorfish, ICF Olson and Forrester who were all represented on stage.

As a result of this success, we have adopted this "For Customers, By Customers" approach in many of our subsequent events including a recent WestJet lead Adobe user group held in Telus offices.

We found that there is no better way to listen to a client then by giving them a microphone and a stage.

We also learned that putting our customers up on a pedestal in the spotlight is a great way to make our customers feel valued and special. They taught us about the challenges they face while also sharing their best practices. Both are key to our ability to offer them continued value.

This approach certainly caused our team many “what if” sleepless nights leading up to the Symposium but in retrospect, it was a risk undoubtedly worth taking.

What has worked well for you? Please feel free to contact me via LinkedIn.

Mike Marks is unbelievably fortunate to be working with the great team at Adobe Canada. All comments are his own.

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