• by Alan Hart , April 9, 2019

Clockwise from top left: David Cancel, Bill Connolly, Alan Schulman, Kelly O’Neill 

The 2019 Adobe Summit took place March 26–28 in Las Vegas, gathering everyone from advertisers, content managers, and analysts to marketers of all stripes: digital, social, ecommerce -- you name it. 

Marketing Today was there for all three days of the conference, taking the opportunity to speak with attendees who discussed the companies they’ve created, led, or worked for, their takeaways and perspective on what they saw and heard at the conference, as well as more universal aspects of their life and career. They shared some of the best advice they’ve received and discussed things they love and hate.

David Cancel’s passion fuels Drift, where he's CEO and founder

David Cancel is the epitome of entrepreneurship. He has created companies like HubSpot, Performable, Ghostery, and Compete to bring hypergrowth products to market. He's also the entrepreneur in residence at Harvard Business School and has been featured in The New York Times, Fortune, Wired, and Fast Company. 

He is presently the founder and CEO of Drift, reportedly the world’s first conversational marketing and sales platform. During our discussion, Cancel provides details on the Drift story -- what it does, and what it provides. He adds perspective on Drift’s latest integration with Marketo, which was announced during the conference. To that end, he describes the use of conversational ABM (account-based marketing), what the new level of partnership with Marketo will look and feel like, and how users will experience it. 

During the podcast, Cancel also touches on how Drift, like Cancel himself, embraces the unconventional. He also discusses his meta way of thinking, why he believes the best advice resides within ourselves, and his passion for seeking out people who are — you guessed it — passionate.

 Kelly O’Neill and Bill Connolly at Monotype: From historic font foundry to creating modern brands

I had the opportunity to talk with Kelly O’Neill and Bill Connolly of Monotype, a technology company that's home to some of the most-recognized fonts in the world. Among them are Arial, Gill Sans, and New Times Roman. At Monotype, O’Neill is senior director of product management and Connolly is director of content.

During this conversation, O’Neill and Connolly discuss Monotype’s heritage, its evolution into a brand company, and the challenges and opportunities emerging technologies -- VR and AR in particular -- have provided. They also discuss their company's acquisition of Olapic and how that company aligns with Monotype strategically.

Deloitte Digital U.S: Alan Schulman’s jazz sensibility and creative vision

 I sat down with  Alan Schulman, managing director and chief creative officer at Deloitte Digital U.S.. Schulman discusses Deloitte Digital’s scope of capabilities and offerings: everything from a customer strategy and applied design capability to help clients imagine products and services they don’t have but might need to designing and prototype building to its advertising and e-commerce offerings.

In the course of our conversation, Schulman talked about the modern relationship between CMOs and CIOs (“The way you run marketing versus the way you engage the customer is really a team sport”); the dawning of the age of AI; how being a jazz musician has informed his career as a creative leader; and the velocity of technological change and its impact on culture, content, and creativity.