Adobe ethos can be summarized with “creativity for all” That is why Adobe takes part in collaborations with artists from different disciplines and makes their tools available to everybody. This time, Adobe wanted to expand the approach from professional to aspiring hobbyists & next gen artists while maintaining credibility with our core creative Pro audience.

We were asked to find the right superstar to collaborate with, a unique, well known and aspirational character that could enhance the reputation of Adobe; somebody with a backstory and a mission socially relevant today. And once we have the perfect partnership, we should launch its tools with an exciting idea – but also low barrier enough for a community of next gen creators to start creating great work with those new tools right away.

Bowie also expressed himself through hair, make-up, and costumes. To encourage our community to play with their identity the same way, we digitized David’s brushes and outfits and made a tool pack in Photoshop and Substance.

We also recreated David’s dressing room as an immersive 3D piece of entertainment: A place to investigate the process that created Ziggy, meticulously modeled after Bowie’s archives.

In this game, while Bowie is on stage performing the encore, players can sneak into the backstage to search for items including his famous red platform boots, the Hagstrom guitar, bracelets inspired by the ones that designer Kansai Yamamoto designed for Bowie, or a leopard-print accessory said to be a gift from Cyrinda Foxe. Once you find them, you would receive privileged information on the design and importance of the objects for David. But you need to hurry and enjoy everything before Bowie’s back!

To be social relevant today and stay true to it’s core users while widening Adobe’s audience towards the next generation, we had to partner with a cross-sectional artist: someone relevant enough to be respected by professionals and famous enough to be influential to everybody else.

To find the cultural tension, Adobe commissioned a study on self-expression amongst 18-25 years-old. We found out that +50% don’t like to expose their true personality, with some being more self-expressive online as opposed to offline. 34% feel more comfortable when taking on a persona or online alter ego.

Also, 2/3 have been positively influenced by a public figure, with David Bowie featuring in the top 20 list. For half of Gen Z, people like him inspired them to be more creative.

Bowie transformative power of creativity, represented by his use of personas became, then, Adobe’s choice to tap into the issue with authenticity.

The recreation of Bowie's tools and his dressing room started with a series of interviews with people who shared the stage and the road with David. Through representatives of Bowie Estate, we had access to photos, audio files, and first-person stories that were used as the source materials to recreate the exact atmosphere of Bowie’s dressing room during the Stardust Tour. Many disciplines – from sound design to 3D and storytelling – were combined to deliver the roughness and artisanal aura of Bowie’s backstage during the 70s. The attention to detail can be noticed in the similarities between Mick Rock’s photos and Adobe’s playable environment, as both share the same patterns, textures, and lighting. Another reference to Bowie’s era was the addition of voiceovers inspired by - Top of The Pops, a British music chart television program, made by the BBC - in which Bowie's music videos were always broadcasted.

In the first month, Adobe pointed more than 9000 unique access to CC Library to download and use the new tools.

The campaign obtained 60 dedicated earned media articles in media outlets like Vice, Dazed, Page, Wonderland, Newsweek, and many more, and +8M social interactions, exceeding in 3 times Adobe’s expectations. “From David to Ziggy” also drove traffic of more than 600k views to Adobe's website so far. The gaming experience has an average of 4m 39s of engagement time per user, with players coming back more than 6 times to replay the experience. The whole project trended twice on RollingStone.com and David’s wife Iman shared the project with her more than 840 thousand followers.