Bridget Perry is Vice President Marketing, Adobe EMEA.
In this ‘day in the life’ interview, Perry talks about the skills needed in her job, her view on creativity, and her favourite marketing campaigns.
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Please describe your job: What do you do?
I’ve recently moved over from Adobe in the US to take on the position as Vice President of Marketing in EMEA. I’m responsible for marketing the business’ consumer and enterprise offerings and am in the privileged position of being able to connect and market to my peers, using Adobe’s own marketing technologies – it doesn’t get better than that!
Whereabouts do you sit within the organisation? Who do you report to?
I sit in our Global Marketing Organisation, reporting directly into our CMO, Ann Lewnes. She’s one of the reasons I moved to Adobe – she’s considered an icon in the marketing discipline, holding not only a lot of influence in the business and but also in the industry.
What kind of skills do you need to be effective in your role?
The two most important skills for me are communication and influence. To deliver incredible work, I need to be able to clearly communicate my vision and strategy, and I need to get buy-in from the right people. This makes it a very relationship-driven role, and I’m always thinking about how I can get the best out of my team but also ensure we have the resources to continuously deliver breakthrough campaigns.
Being able to bring data and creativity together, to produce the best results, is also a crucial part of being a marketer. You really can’t survive in this industry today without an appreciation for the technology, and I’m committed to creating an environment where people feel inspired to create and innovate.
Tell us about a typical working day…
I try to break my day up into focusing on the here and now – what my immediate priorities are to run an effective business – and looking to the future. This means spending a lot of time working with my team on creating stories, content and campaigns, and providing them with the support they need to be creative and successful.
Another big priority is also building awareness of how Adobe can help companies become ‘experience businesses’, and that involves dedicating plenty of time to listening and building relationships with our partners and customers.
What do you love about your job? What sucks?
I love building things. For me, the fun comes from being set a challenge and then figuring out how we’re going to get there. The most rewarding part of this is doing it with people. One of my passions is being a coach, and helping my team develop their strengths and really flourish. This is how I like to create and be creative.
Not a lot sucks – but I sometimes think that marketing could be a great video game. You’re running and winning, and then you hit a roadblock which puts you a few steps back. But I guess it would be boring if everything went to plan!
What kind of goals do you have? What are the most useful metrics and KPIs for measuring success?
The overarching goal is to drive revenue for the business. Getting there means creating the best possible experience for our customers, and we rely on data to closely monitor our performance.
We look at the journey our customers have and how this impacts our metrics such as traffic, conversion and retention. These detailed insights keep us on track to deliver exceptional experiences and continue our fast-growth trajectory.
What are your favourite tools to help you to get the job done?
Well, this is where I’m totally spoilt working at Adobe! I get my hands on everything from our Creative Cloud Suite, which includes everything from image to video editing, as well as our Experience Cloud Suite, which gives us insights into our own campaign performance and website analytics.
How did you end up at Adobe and where might you go from here?
I first joined Adobe in the US seven years ago and I was excited to work for a company that really understood marketing and one that I could grow with. It was a perfect point in my career as Adobe was undergoing its own transformation by moving its traditional software model to the cloud, a market changing decision that I wanted to be a part of. We’re now moving into a new era where artificial intelligence is the future. There’s still so much to explore with this technology and I’ve always loved working in areas which aren’t totally figured out yet – it keeps the mind challenged.
There will be so many new opportunities to take something which can feel quite complicated and find new ways to communicate it simply and inspire our customers and partners to innovate.
Which marketing campaigns have you admired lately?
When I joined the team in EMEA, there was a marketing campaign underway that I was really pleased to be a part of, so that immediately springs to mind. Hidden Treasures: Lost Fonts of the Bauhaus brought together five design students, under the mentorship of renowned typographer Erik Spiekermann to create digital typefaces based on sketches and hand drawn fragments from the iconic Staatliches Bauhaus.
We brought these to Adobe Typekit (now Adobe Fonts), which I felt was a fantastic way to bring iconic creativity of the past into the present. Outside of our work at Adobe, Nike’s Colin Kaepernick ad was a fantastic example of an iconic brand engaging with its audience and its brand values on an issue, even if controversial. Seeing an iconic brand stake a stand really resonates with people.
Do you have any advice for anyone who wants to work in marketing for a big martech company?
My biggest advice for anyone who wants to work in tech is to have a growth mindset. The world is changing so quickly and whatever you learn today, will be different tomorrow. You need to go with an open mind and be willing to adapt. Get comfortable with data and with learning new things, and you’ll get to work in an industry where you’ll always be challenged and continuously innovating.