With 6500 of the Adobe faithful in the seriously devout Salt Lake City, there’s bound to be passion in play.

But also, it seems confusion: Marketers who know they have to reinvent marketing and a one-time desktop graphics company which also knows it has to reinvent itself. The Adobe Digital Marketing Summit is delivering both.

Ignoring a seriously confused press handout – “Answering marketer’s call to reinvent themselves, Adobe unveiled the newest technology breakthroughs…” (sic) – there is inspiration here from master-marketer speakers and from the company itself, the latter in the form of new product developments.

Its Marketing Cloud product gets new core services including a dynamic master profile which simplifies the viewing view of customers and prospects. New facilities also allow users to sync, store and share digital assets.

Delegates were also shown a preview of ‘marketing mix planning’ technology which will help in assessment and optimisation of a marketing mix which can include TV, public relations, print and events, as well as paid search, display advertising, social and email. Algorithms provide descriptive and predictive analytics across all channels.

New mobile app development solutions will also aid creation and management of highly personalised mobile app experiences, a new release of Experience Manager simplifies website re-platforming and asset delivery, and another element automates content and offer targetting.

Digital marketing business general manager Brad Rencher spoke of a “weird” 18-24 months and said it was “the things that we loved” that were killing traditional marketing: Technologies which allowed him to check into his hotel from a taxi, receive his room number and then open his door with his phone was “wonderful but disrupting for industry”.

The burden of backward compatibility was holding marketing back: "If we were to start from scratch, where would marketing be today,” he says.

Earlier, chief executive Shantanu Narayen (pictured) made the case for creativity, adding that “without great thinking” there was no inspiration for a customer to engage.

Apart from the technology addresses, there are guests including Robert Redford, Eric Stonestreet, Richard Sherman and Yancey Strickler. And fun: A Summit bash promises Grammy-winning Vampire Weekend and others, and there’s the promise of travelling downhill fast… but on skis.