Everyone’s getting engaged.
Not that it’s a problem, but my entire Instagram feed has been plastered with rings, champagne, and cute proposals. It’s an interesting phenomenon, similar to that of Pandemic Babies.
But alas, we are marketing people and that type of ‘engagement’ isn’t what we’re primarily concerned with. In fact, for us, engagement is a problem.
Great ads don’t have to fight for our attention — we just get swallowed up in the story, in the visuals, in the world that people like us have to create for the audience.
The Proposal
Regardless if you’re in content creation or not, one way or another software champion Adobe might have influenced your work. I use Lightroom, Photoshop, and Dreamweaver almost daily- and don’t get me started on Acrobat. They pioneered technical integration before it was cool! Here’s something that they did a while back that was pretty interesting.
While I can talk all day long about how much of an Adobe fanboy I am, I’d like to share with you one of their video ads that ran back in February 2020 on TV, and then onto display and social. It’s entitled “Creativity for All”, and do comment and let me know if you’ve seen it anywhere before!
Tying the knot
If it’s not the illustrious visuals of the user-generated content or the “Pure Imagination” soundtrack, then it has to be the inspiring and wholesome delivery of the campaign’s main message “Creativity for all” that should have you on the edge of your seat, with a grin on your face.
The campaign was launched with a 60-second spot during the Oscars and then went on to advertise simultaneously with Billie Eilish's campaign using her artwork across social media and on display networks for the remainder of the campaign.
Now Adobe’s brand story has been quite the rollercoaster. Filled with innovation and technological breakthroughs, they were one of the few companies to have any kind of standardization across the world wide web at an early stage with the introduction of the PDF.
With a brand value of $79bn USD, they have also cemented the ability to provide creators with the tools they need, but in addition to that, they also created something I like to call “Content Culture” whereby the access to these tools sprung a new era into how media is made and consumed. I talked about it a bit in my previous blog post.
Content culture is what drives Adobe’s brand story. This ad alone proves that. The use of user-generated content reinforces this idea like layers on a wedding cake (I’ll ease up the puns soon, but I kinda have a thing going).
This ad justs works so well and engages me because it does it in the most inspiring of ways: It pushes the needle on workplace diversity, inclusion and equality through the use of their tools-which, by the way, the ad never mentions or tries to sell- and tops it off with a release paired with a blog post from Adobe themselves.
The Honeymoon Phase
From a media standpoint, this spot was advertised on a 60-second slot during the 92nd Oscars. A viewership of roughly 23 million people. This alone sends a very expensive and truthful message and is one of the reasons I have gained even more loyalty for Adobe. They placed their trust and their brand in the hands of creators and their community while using it as a platform (A paradox?) to send their message. Statista reports that a 30-second spot costs roughly $2.15m- I’d like to think that it would be significantly more for a full minute.
Now, a feel-good campaign like this can’t get better right? It checks the lists for most companies. It includes and gives back to their audience (it celebrates them in fact!)It is captivating and goes out with a bang, it has legs, and it stands up for a cause. Well from their blog post on the launch day, Adobe promised to donate $5 (a total of $500,000) to Teach For America with every use of their hashtag #CreativityForAll. This donation is to forward access to technology and software education for underprivileged institutions. The last time I checked, on Twitter the hashtag received over 342,000 impressions and, 20,000 posts on Instagram. That’s the type of engagement I like to see on my feed.
Hot Take
Adobe understands the key to innovation. While I was an avid user of their products before, I had a renewed sense of brand connection when my advertising professor showed me that video later in the month. I was blown away. I never felt so ‘seen’ or included in a digital community more. I felt like I had a responsibility as a creator because of that ad.
We Gen-Z’ers have an intuition for when brands try to pull cop-outs, or talk the talk and skip the walk. But since before this spot aired, Adobe was actively ensuring that BIPOC communities had exposure and inclusion in the creative industry since before we started calling companies out for it and holding them accountable.
This campaign created a movement that transcended your normal day “Share This Post” ad. It created a unique sentiment that states “I can create for me, but I will create for everyone.” And I’ll always have great respect for Adobe, or any brand that steps up to the plate like this.
Do let me know what you think, or if you’ve had any other brand you’ve felt this way for before. I hope you’ve enjoyed this post- time to put a ring on it.
