Adobe Boss Dodges ‘Price Gouging’ Bullet

PR spin-tastic: Adobe global boss faced Aussie media to quell the ‘price gouging’ storm surrounding his company, by feeding them a load of PR slush.

Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen opened the new Adobe offices and ‘demo centre’ in Sydney CBD today, in what appears to be a well timed PR move, but faced a flurry of media questions over alleged ‘price gouging’ of consumers here.

Just yesterday, Adobe swiftly dropped the price of Creative Cloud by 20% to $50, after it was thisweek summoned by a parliamentary IT pricing enquiry to explain the massive price disparities between US and Aussie pricing on Adobe products.

Narayen, however, said the move was a bid to “get people to the [Adobe] platform” as opposed to a cynical PR reflex.

“When we look at what happens with Creative Cloud the goal, is rapid adoption and we’ve seen that” Adobe global boss told Aussie media at the event today.

“We grew units over 10 per cent and the barrier to entry to allow next generation of creative professionals to the platform is a key part of our strategy, it’s one of an ongoing and continuous ways to get people to the platform. We’ve used Australia in the first region in which we’ve done detailed pricing studies.”

Narayen ranted on (and on) about Creative cloud being “creative” (wow) and how the pricing is moving with the “future.”

(The cloud suite was launched just last month).

“The Creative Cloud is really the future of the creative process. The benefits of the Creative Cloud and having that access to innovation and the ability to get new products in imaging and video [suites to customers faster]. The future of the creative [customer] is the Creative Cloud. It’s all about Creative Cloud in future. The pricing moves [with Creative Cloud] are where we set the future of the company.”

As one journalist who was at the event said: “I’m dizzy from the spin I just saw.”