>> Live, from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE,
covering Magento Imagine 2019,
brought to you Adobe.
>> Welcome back to theCUBE, Lisa Martin with Jeff Frick.
We have been covering Imagine 2019 in Vegas, all day today,
talking all things eCommerce, innovation, technology,
the customer experience.
Jeff, one of the biggest themes, I think,
that we've heard today, from all of our guests,
is how strong this community is,
how naturally it was developed in the last ten years,
and how influential it is
to delivering exceptional customer experience technology.
>> In fact, Jason said without the community,
there would be no Magento.
So it's,
it's ingrained in the culture.
It's ingrained in the DNA.
I think, you know, doing some of the research,
you know, there was people talking about
the dark days of Magento, as it went into eBay,
and apparently whatever that plan was, that didn't work.
And then out of eBay into private equity.
Out of private equity into, now, Adobe.
And it sounds like
the community's kind of been following along,
and maybe they were holding their breath a little bit,
a year ago, but it sounds like they kind of got through that,
that kind of concern knothole, if you will,
and kind of popped out the other side,
and realized there's a whole lot of opportunity
that comes to Magento, via being part of Adobe now
that they didn't have before.
So I think, it sounds like they're good with it,
and they're ready to go, and nothing but opportunity ahead.
>> Yeah, you know, I think with any acquisition,
and, you know, we cover so many technology shows,
and we've been part of acquisitions before
at different companies.
They're challenging.
There's always, I think, natural trepidation.
I think it's just a natural response that anybody, probably,
from an executive to an individual contributor level,
is going to have.
But one of the things that came up so resolutely,
was how organic the Magento community
has been developed over time.
That, like you said, as Jason was saying,
without it, there is no Magento.
Not only are they influential.
It's very much a symbiotic relationship,
that pleasantly, surprisingly,
sounds like it's been integrated very nicely, into Adobe.
And to your point, they now are seeing, wow,
there's a tremendous amount of technology
and resources that we didn't have the opportunity
to leverage before.
Talking about the experience,
the digital experience business of Adobe's,
which is growing.
Grew 20% year over year, 2017 to 2018.
On a very strong trajectory this year.
A lot of opportunity to enable merchants of any size
to have this really 360 degree of the customer experience,
and manage it with analytics, and advertising,
and marketing, and add the commerce piece,
so that they can take that marketing interaction
and actually convert it to revenue.
>> Right, right.
I mean, look at Adobe.
I mean, they brought in Magento,
which we know, late last year.
They also brought in Marketo
at almost about the same time, $4.7 billion.
So they're making huge moves.
And I think it's a pretty unique situation, where,
again, they come from the creative,
and now, with the data, and a sophisticated platform,
and you talk about the AB testing, again.
It used to be just AB, now it's AB times
literally millions and millions of customized experiences
delivered to the client.
And then now, again,
I think really an interesting point of view is
where then you bring the commerce
to the point of engagement
rather than trying to use the engagement
as a way to drive people to commerce.
I mean, they seem really well positioned,
I think they're going to really enjoy people like Accenture,
and some of the of the other big system integrators
that now are going to be, you know, behind this platform.
So it seems to be a fit, a marriage made in heaven.
It almost makes you wonder why Adobe was so late
to have an eCommerce platform,
which is the thing that kind of surprises me,
I think, the most.
>> Yeah, well, it also gives them the opportunity
to compete with Shopify and with Salesforce Commerce,
and kind of harness this brand power.
But you talked about something
that we've talked about all day,
and that's bringing the transaction
and the commerce experience to me as a consumer
wherever I am, whether it's in app shopping
through Instagram.
Rather than, you know,
delivering me a personalized experience,
leveraging the power of these technologies,
to understand the right things about me as a consumer,
to deliver me an experience that is frictionless.
It's going to allow me to have a seamless experience.
We talked about that with progressive web apps,
and how that's going to enable next generation shopping
for merchants of all sizes to enable.
Don't just engage me on my mobile,
if that's where I want to be.
If you don't have the opportunity to convert me seamlessly
to actually transact, there's a huge adjustable market
or gap in converting that to revenue,
which Jason Woolsey also talked about.
Kind of thinking about next steps for Adobe
and what they're going to be able to do
to help those merchants capture in real time,
leveraging the power of technology,
emerging technologies like AI,
in real-time to make that shoppable moment
turn into dollars for the merchant.
>> Right, lot of great things.
I thought it was interesting having TJ Gamble on,
and talked about coopetition.
Right?
Coopetition is such a fundamental part of Silicon Valley
and the world in which we live in.
And he said, you know, if you're making fat margin,
as Jeff Bezos loves to say, your margin is my opportunity.
You're going to compete with Amazon,
but in the meantime, you got to compete with them.
So to enable integration into the Amazon platform
with your Magento store,
the integration into Google Shopping,
integration into Instagram purchases, in app purchases,
I mean, these really opening up the opportunities
for these smaller retailers, mid-sized retailers,
to compete in a really complicated
and super hyper-competitive world.
But now they can, again, focus on their brand,
which we hear over and over and over,
focus on their experience, focus on their community,
and leverage some of this special breed technology
under the covers across platform,
across different modes of buying.
Because the other thing we hear over and over and over
is you got to give people choice.
You can't say no.
So if they want to buy it through Amazon,
let 'em buy it through Amazon.
If they want to buy it through Instagram,
let 'em buy it through Instagram.
If they want to come to you eCommerce site,
let 'em come to your eCommerce site
But, you know, in opening up all those channels
for the merchant to be able to execute their transactions
regardless of how the customer got to them,
or how, more importantly, they got to the customer.
>> And, you know, the SMB front
is really key that you brought up,
because, in the last year,
since the acquisition was announced, about a year ago,
and completed, I think in September of 2018,
there was not just concern from the community,
that we talked about at the beginning of this segment,
but also the small and the medium business.
Like, well, Adobe has a really big presence in enterprise.
Is that going to be cannibalized
with this acquisition of Magento,
who had such a strong presence with those smaller merchants?
And you mentioned some of thee things
with Amazon and Google that we heard yesterday and today.
I think really assuaging some of those concerns
that the smaller businesses had,
but also, allowing these smaller merchants
to sort of level the playing field,
and have access to the power of a branded Amazon storefront
that allows a smaller business to get some differentiation,
whereas before they didn't have that.
So I think we heard a lot about that today,
and how, I think, those smaller brands are probably,
maybe breathing a sign of relief,
that this acquisition is really going to enable them,
with a lot more tools, but not at the, you know,
cannibalizing what they have been doing
with Magento for so long.
>> Right, right.
And some other fun discussions.
I really enjoyed the time with Tina,
talking about influencer marketing.
It's amazing how that continues to evolve
at a really fast pace.
Right?
A derivation of professional endorsement,
which is something we've known
ever since Joe Namath put on stockings many moons ago.
But to see it go from big influencers,
to micro-influencers, you know.
How do you sponsor people, give them money,
engage as a brand, and still maintain
that they legitimately like your product, use your product.
I think it's a really fascinating space to, again,
to be able to purchase within that Instagram application,
I think, is really interesting.
And then a lot of conversations
about the post transaction engagement.
You know, send them not one email confirmation
that your items are coming, but send them two.
And really to think about lifetime value of the customer,
and engaging the customer via content, and, oh, by the way,
there'll be some transactions in commerce as well.
I think it's really forward-looking,
and really enjoyed that conversation as well.
>> I did too.
I didn't know the difference between an influencer
and a micro-influencer,
and you kind of infer based on just the name alone.
But also how brands have the opportunity to leverage data,
to evaluate maybe we should actually
make more investments in somebody with a thousand followers,
for example, than somebody with a hundred thousand.
Because the revenue attribution,
or the website traffic lift that they're going to get
from a micro-influencer could far outweigh the benefits,
financially, than going with somebody,
a celebrity or what not, that, as you said,
back to, you know, Joe Namath, many decades ago.
So that was interesting,
but it's also a good use of using data
to build brand reputation, build,
increase customer lifetime value,
but also get so much more targeted,
and really understand how to operationalize
the commerce portion of your business,
and through whom, through which channels you're going to see
the biggest bang for your buck.
>> Yeah, it's really interesting times,
you know, this idea that the apps follow you.
I mean, my favorite example is Spotify.
Super sophisticated app.
Right?
I can be listening to my phone.
I get into my car.
It follows me.
I go into my office.
It follows me on my computer.
I go out on my bike.
It follows me.
It stays the same state.
And so, for the commerce and the community
to be able to follow you around
is a really interesting idea.
And again, it was Hillary Mason,
actually, that first came up with the term
that, you know, AI,
and good recommendations done well are magic,
and done poorly, are creepy.
I think it's always going to be this interesting fine line.
Again, I think the whole concept of, you know,
using old data and how fast do you update it,
and that's kind of the example.
I've been looking at tents.
I bought a tent.
I don't want to see ads for tents anymore.
Right?
It's time to see an ad for a sleeping bag, or a camp stove.
And these are really happening in real-time.
You know, we've heard about Omnichannel.
We've heard about 360 view of the customer, ad nauseam.
You've been in this business for a long time.
But it sounds like it's finally coming together,
and it's finally where we have the data,
we have the access to the data, the speed of the analytics,
and just the raw horsepower in modeling
that we can now start to apply this real-time,
ML, to data, in-flight,
to be able to serve up the not creepy
but correct recommendations,
at the right time to the right person.
It's getting closer and closer to reality.
>> It is getting closer, and as you were talking about that,
one of the things that popped into my head is
going from the creepy to the magic that is, you think,
wow, is really leveraging this data
and using the power of machine learning and AI,
a great facilitator.
Or is the bottom foundation order management?
If you don't have the, or inventory management.
If you don't have the inventory,
it's great to have all these capabilities
to transact in real time, but if you can't fulfill it,
you're going to sink.
>> Yeah.
>> So Magento, with, you know,
some of their core technology enabling this.
Really enabling,
not just enabling the 360 degree customer view,
but being able to fulfill it.
Those are table stakes, and game changers.
>> Right. >> For merchants of any size.
>> Right, and I think they do have to engage.
I mean, they have to be brands.
Right?
Because a commodity item I can go get anywhere.
There's got to be a reason to come.
Lot of conversations,
not so much here, but at the Adobe summit,
in terms of the content piece,
and having an ongoing dialog
and an ongoing content relationship, with your client.
Now you can slice and dice and serve that up
lots of different ways
based on who they are and the context.
But if you don't have that,
you can't just compete on price.
You just can't compete on inventory,
'cause Amazon is going to win.
Right?
You can't stock, my favorite thing is,
is shirt, shirt little pins in here.
How do you stock those?
You can't.
They don't cost any money, and you don't sell that many.
Amazon can.
So, find you niche, you know.
Engage your customers.
Engage your community,
and there'll be some transactions that come along with this.
And I think it's really reinforced that,
I think, its probably really timely
for Magento to be part of Adobe,
because eCommerce, just purely by itself,
is going to be tougher and tougher to do
unless you've got this deeper relationship
with your customers, beyond simply transacting something.
>> Exactly.
So I enjoyed hosting, as I always do with you, Jeff.
Learned a lot today,
and excited to hear about what's next for this event,
now that Adobe is leveraging the power of Magento.
>> Well, we heard the announcements,
Gary's going to make the announcement tomorrow.
So hang out for the keynote tomorrow
to find out more about Imagine 2020.
We'll be there. >> 2020, yes.
>> 2020, because we'll know everything in 2020.
>> We will know.
That's right.
I can't wait. >> 2020 hindsight.
>> I'm waiting for that.
Well, Jeff, as I said, always a pleasure hosting with you.
>> You too, Lisa.
>> I brought the sea urchin necklace out.
>> I like it.
I like it. >> This is just for Jeff.
It's making it's appearance on theCUBE.
We want to thank you for watching, for Jeff Frick,
I'm Lisa Martin, and you've been watching theCUBE
live from Imagine 19 at The Wynn Las Vegas.
Thanks for watching.
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