Bringing Generative AI and Automation to Marketing Workflows with Adobe Express and Creative Cloud
Ingo Eichel and Mike Zahorik
The evolving number of creating graphics for various touchpoints and creating personalized experiences is putting marketing and product management to the test. Mike Zahorik and Ingo Eichel discuss why Adobe is now bringing an AI solution to the table, a new tool and how companies are benefiting from the partnership between Adobe and the priint Group.
Adobe’s primary focus has always been to make great design tools. Adobe InDesign and Illustrator were built for creative pros to design and are today one of the most used tools by companies around the globe, and are integrated into the Adobe Creative Cloud. The idea for InDesign in particular has always been to create not only a tool, but a platform with extensibility. Extensibility enables design tools to integrate into a variety of workflows and vertical solutions through extensions, Plug-ins and Add-Ons. Whether by data merge or a larger scale like the InDesign server, it helps companies like priint to automate with scale.
This type of expandability in Adobe InDesign and Illustrator forms an important basis for the success of the products. Customer requirements are extremely high and diverse, which is why it is even more important to be able to extend functionality, while also increasing efficiency. Data connectivity is a key aspect when looking into the field of digital publishing and product data management. It is essential to have the correct data available at the right time at the right touchpoint in the customer journey. Conversely, this also means that creative pros need to access this data when working in Adobe applications and, ideally, across different products. The challenge can be to connect data and to find familiar functionalities in multiple applications. In this way, creative pros can save time in the creation process and significantly increase efficiency. For example, the Illustrator Plug-in by priint helps to have the same table functionality as in Adobe InDesign and could also expand to connect the data source to Illustrator.
The time has come to dive into a new era with generative AI
Some Creative Cloud products have already received their first AI features, such as the text to image function in InDesign or text to vector in Illustrator. Additionally, the first Plug-ins and Add-Ons are expanding the AI functionalities. Some Adobe partners are already offering AI solutions, such as writing a text to what Illustrator should do and design, or in Photoshop, writing a prompt saying what is desired in a picture. Clearly, these technologies will not replace a designer, but it shows that the handling and speed of creating different assets is becoming increasingly simplified. The approach by Adobe is simple and clear:
“AI is a tool for, not a replacement of human creativity. Generative AI can be developed responsibly, starting with respect for creators’ rights.”
Ingo Eichel
Because of that approach and the industry speed Adobe created Firefly- their very own generative AI model for all the different products to help people expand upon natural creativity.
“Firefly offers generative AI tools made specifically for creative needs, use cases, and workflows. We believe Adobe Firefly has the most creator-friendly approach in the industry. […] Our aim is to be clear about what we do and do not do, to differentiate our approach from much of the broader industry, and to provide an example that can hopefully guide the industry to a more responsible place.”
Ingo Eichel
Based on the history of the Creative Cloud products, developments by partners, and the implementation of AI, Adobe has a new product in the family that is now available for every Creative Cloud user as well as for private users.
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Adobe Express – State of the art with a lot of potential for the future
It all began a couple of years ago with the idea of having Adobe Express only for private usage. After a short period of time, Adobe decided to open the usage of Adobe Express and beginning 2024, they introduced Adobe Express for businesses. Adobe succeeds at staying in touch with current trends following a strong commitment to reimagining the way teams work and empowering them to create and deliver on-brand content.
It is not a whole new product, nor does it aim to replace the Creative Cloud. Adobe Express for business shows more features that are business-relevant and critical. It is an all-in-one content creation app for businesses with a lot of AI support where users can easily create PDFs, images, social posts and much more.
This is all based on the concept that everyone in the company is a creator. Each employee represents a company, a brand with its content; this makes it necessary to create more and more assets. Adobe Express offers the often-smaller teams of designers an opportunity to make on-brand templates in Photoshop, Illustrator or other Creative Cloud products and easily share them with others in their organization. It even enables non-graphic creators to make minor adjustments themselves and can also limit the adjustment range and selection of brand items for the assets.
Adobe Express helps to scale content creation with the confidence of brand consistency.
When it comes to the data designers and creators need, Adobe Express can be connected to different DAM systems, but about additional data? (For example, product data, ERP data or additional data sources.) Adobe Express offers the option for partners to expand these possibilities. For customers of priint Group it’s necessary to access their data in the content, data or CRM systems and connect them with the design tools to personalize and drive marketing campaigns. The new priint:comet Adobe Express Add-On brings data and images from the same backend systems that InDesign and Illustrator connect to. Product specs and images from a PIM system can be brought into Express, ensuring accuracy and eliminating copy and paste. Additionally, translated content can be pulled into Express to produce new assets at scale. In all, global marketing campaigns can be customized easily with Express and the priint:comet Add-On.
Learn more about the priint:comet Adobe Express Add-On!
An Express user can easily build a new piece on the fly, using the priint:comet Add-on to show the data elements and drag them into a new design and pull in text and images. The priint add-on enables content creation at scale once templates are built.
A powerful duo for the future of marketing and product data management
Looking to the future we can see clear trends: Marketing departments with designers and campaign managers will have a constantly increasing demand to create templates and collateral. The data required to create these assets will challenge product management and data managers. This makes it even more important to strengthen the connectivity of systems, enable teams to create assets based on existing templates, and use AI in the right places in products and processes to minimize the workload, increase efficiency and ultimately meet the speed of changing requirements.
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