If you’re the least bit familiar with The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins’ popular young adult book-turned-movie franchise, you know the plot follows a teenage girl sentenced to a fight to the death with 23 other teenagers.
It’s probably both remiss and irreverent to compare Adobe to a teenager, even one as fierce as the Hunger Games’ main character, Katniss Everdeen. But in a webinar on Thursday, analysts from Constellation Research Inc. and the 56 Group LLC compared Adobe Systems Inc., Salesforce.com Inc., IBM Corp., and Oracle Corp. to the contestants in the Hunger Games, clashing together in their bid to appeal to digital marketers with the budgets to buy new technology.
Fresh upon their return from the Adobe Digital Marketing Summit in Utah at the end of March, analysts agreed Adobe and Salesforce are staunch competitors, though they come from different corners of the tech space.
“Salesforce comes from that customer relationship management perspective, and they’re still working to integrate all those parts in what’s being called the ExactTarget Marketing Cloud right now,” said Peter Kim, Constellation’s chief strategy officer. “And Adobe is coming from that web analytics plus creatives, so different perspective. But they’re moving towards the exact same space on the board, so we’ll see who gets there first and boxes the other one out.”
For analyst Natalie Petouhoff, the answer is leadership – whichever company demonstrates the best leadership will win out, while Paul Greenberg, president of the 56 Group, said he’s looking to see which company does the best job integrating its latest acquisitions.
Greenberg said Adobe is missing its operational side, while Salesforce could improve its data analytics services. However, Salesforce has the edge in its acquisition of ExactTarget, he added.
But beyond picking the right horse in the race, whether that’s Adobe or Salesforce, today’s marketers should be focusing on delivering visual campaigns, Greenberg said.
“The best way to think about marketing is not the way you’ve always thought about it,” he said. “Start thinking visually. Start thinking about videos, start thinking about using humour. Start thinking about the things that actually capture attention, as opposed to what you think other people at your company might want you to do.”
To listen to a recording of the webinar, head on over to the “Original Article Source” link.