Does Adobe MAX Cost Too Much?

This week, Adobe MAX opened up registration for the 2022 conference. This year, they are doing a hybrid style event where you can choose to attend in-person or virtually. Because obviously—for 2020 and 2021—it was exclusively virtual and completely free.

Interestingly, registration for this year is a little different. You can still attend the conference virtually for free. However, there is not an option to attend in-person. Except it’s a whopping $1,900!

There is an early bird discount, but that’s still $1500. Keep in mind that this price is just the cost of the registration. If you’re not an LA local, you’ll need to factor in travel and hotel costs as well.

So, I have a theory. Ever since they changed the conference to be 100% virtual and free, I’ve been curious how they would go about selling this even post-pandemic. Doing it as a hybrid event does makes perfect sense as I don’t believe it was ever an option for them to drop the virtual aspect since it was so widely successful. The attendance numbers in the past two years was prosperous. It’s basically a massive international advertisement for Adobe.

The part that I find interesting is why the in-person registration is so incredibly expensive. It’s always been pricy, but this year the cost has nearly doubled.

So why would anyone attend in-person if they can attend virtually for free?

Here’s my theory, I think this is a really smart play by Adobe because for the most part, the only people that are going to be able to afford to attend in-person are the top creatives in the industry. You know, the ones that can either afford it and/or the ones that have a mass following online. Which Adobe will probably invite those people to attend for free anyways. During the event—we—the common folk within the industry can expect to see an influx of influencers posting online showing that they are better than us.

This accomplishes two things for Adobe:

1. It creates FOMO.

2. It adds value to that in-person registration because if you attend in-person, you’ll be able to be in a room with all those top creatives which is a major benefit for networking within the industry. I think that, in-turn, kinda justifies the price for a lot of people.

So ultimately what do you think? Is it a smart strategy on Adobe’s part? Or is it just perpetuating a divide in class among creatives and artists?