• Situation

Adobe was losing footing with creatives and with creative companies. People were using Adobe’s tools, but they didn’t really care about the Adobe brand.

• Brief

We were tasked with creating a campaign to raise awareness for the impact the company has made in the creative community—a message aimed directly at the world’s creators and creatives.

• Objectives

Rebuild love and relevance around the Adobe brand. Get the attention of Adobe users and reenergize the creative community.

We reenergized love for Adobe by celebrating the world-changing work of Adobe users.

“Creativity for All” launched on Oscar night with a completely user-generated TV spot that artfully connected pieces of influential and award-winning work by real Adobe users. The placement celebrated the creativity of everyday people and influencers right alongside 100-million-dollar Hollywood productions.

As the commercial aired on TV, we also posted it on social, pledging to donate $5 to Teach For America for every share. This was followed up by a credit-list film, which recognized the thousands of individual contributors by name—directors, photographers, art directors and writers.

The next day, we partnered with influencers like Lin-Manuel Miranda, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Sienna Miller, Zazie Beetz and Sasheer Zamata to discuss what “Creativity for All” meant to them, posting their interviews online.

• Target audience (consumer demographic / individuals/ organisations)

The target audience was every single Adobe user—all 12 million creators and creatives across the world, an incredibly disparate and diverse group of people. The company’s internal data shows that Adobe users range in age from teens to elderly adults; they come from a variety of backgrounds, varying education levels and geographies; and they work in every field imaginable.

The target is broad, but one thing about them is universally true: Adobe users appreciate the power of creativity and support their fellow creators.

• Relevance to social platform

Our target uses social media to share their work and grow their following. We also found that they often share works from their peers as a way to promote their creative community.

• Approach

Rather than make a campaign about Adobe, we highlighted Adobe users: a user-generated campaign made to be shared by

• Implementation

We released the campaign on Oscar Sunday and followed it up with social posts, a charitable donation and celebrity interviews.

• Timeline

To maximize our media dollars and PR value, we went big on just two days: Oscar night and the following morning.

• Placement

Our films were released on Oscar night, right after Billie Eilish’s performance (our spot featured a portrait of her). This helped increase talk value on social, as mentions of Billie’s performance often included the commercial that aired right after it.

“Creativity for All” was a success on multiple levels. We more than doubled our video-view goals and to date have garnered over 2.1 million watches online. Our Teach For America partnership generated over 3,600 mentions of the #CreativityForAll hashtag and drove over 120,000 engagements.

But the campaign resonated most with our target: Adobe users. Influential executives from companies like Google, Twitter, Facebook, NBCUniversal, Nike, Square and Intel praised the campaign on social media. And “Creativity for All” quickly received accolades like being named Ad Age’s Editor’s Pick and Adweek’s Ad of the Day—stamps of approval from two of the publications read most by Adobe’s user base. The legendary art director behind Apple’s “1984” even gave us some love.