"Provide the customer with positive experiences - as many as possible".

The obligatory selfie at the end of the interview: Johannes Hapig, Editor MK & Werbewoche, Liv Brahin, Head Group Marketing & Communication Services at UBS, and Paul Robson, President EMEA at Adobe (from left).

MK: UBS operates in a very competitive market in Switzerland - especially when it comes to customer experience. Up-and-coming competitors explicitly advertise that their applications are easy to use, clever, and absolutely transparent. How does UBS, as a rather traditional banking institution, deal with this? 

Liv Brahin: Switzerland is the only market where we are active in retail banking in addition to our other activities. Of course, this business is competitive - we see that, for example, when it comes to innovative payment options. Perhaps I can give an example from my everyday life: My son is fifteen years old and likes to buy clothes online. Two weeks ago, I was in my home office when suddenly the doorbell rang: the letter carrier with a package from the USA. I was supposed to pay a customs fee, but I didn't have any matching cash. Luckily, Swiss Post accepts Twint, our payment app. So I was able to handle it and had a very positive experience. It seems like a small thing, but I was honestly pleased. The more experiences like this we can offer along the customer journey, the more it sets us apart from the competition. 

The collaboration between UBS and Adobe has grown over the years - as has the importance of (digital) customer experience for your bank. How did it all begin? And where are you today? 

Brahin: We started working with Adobe and the now almost legendary David Nüscheler (VP Enterprise Technology at Adobe, ed.) in 2010. In the beginning, it was about rebuilding our website with analytics, embedded video, a mobile view, and a content delivery network. So the starting point was a relatively self-contained project. After that, we decided to apply the lessons learned from the website relaunch to our intranet as well, to make things easier for employees. Over the past five years, we have focused primarily on making our content more comprehensive and better delivered. For example, we can now deliver personalized support texts in a highly secure e-banking environment. And all our digital offerings are built on an extremely strong foundation: customers really only see the tip of what our systems can do.

I'd now like to shift the focus a bit to large enterprise organizational structures. Adobe wants to offer tools that greatly simplify cross-departmental collaboration - with the goal of providing a unified and "smooth" experience for end customers. But many companies are still struggling to think in terms of these new structures. Is technology ahead of the curve? 

Paul Robson: Our tools reflect the development within the economy and companies: There was a time when marketing and digital marketing were realized by two completely different departments in companies. Today, you can hardly imagine that. Everything is growing together. In addition, we are working on, let's say, the democratization of knowledge: If data-driven insights can be shared across departments, understood, and translated into practical action, then marketeers can sit down with IT and sales and communicate at eye level. Then it's no longer about who has the loudest voice or supposedly the most experience - everyone is on equal footing. No one has to listen to their gut anymore to make potentially momentous decisions. At Adobe, we're seeing how this is changing the way we work every day. And I'm convinced that most companies have already adapted their culture or will do so soon. But of course, it's a process that takes time. Digital transformation is not just about technology - it's also about the people who use that technology.

For many branders, working with external service providers, for example in creation or analysis, is ambivalent: There is enormous expertise available in agencies, but they are also a significant cost factor. Are Adobe tools also intended as a low-cost means of making branders "more independent"? And what does that mean for external service providers? 

Robson: We want our products to be very easy to use. That's why we invest heavily in usability and constantly ask our customers what their needs are. The consequence of this is, of course, that marketeers can do more and more themselves ...

Brahin: ...although I think that the reasons for working with agencies are manifold. You have to be more precise. It could be that you want to get information from external service providers - information that you don't have yourself. In that case, you are more dependent. Or you want to call on skills that you don't have internally. As far as the first point is concerned, I think it's good that analytics tools, for example, are helping us a lot these days to evaluate the success of campaigns internally. I think that those who design and play out a campaign should not be the ones to judge its success. Rather, we need to be able to objectively evaluate the performance of our service providers ourselves. However, when it comes to creativity and fresh ideas, it is sometimes important for someone from outside to take a look at us and our products. 

Robson: I'm of the opinion anyway that creativity is a genuinely human trait. Artificial intelligence can help relieve creatives of unloved tasks and gives them the freedom to devote themselves to the things that really inspire them - but it can't replace people.