As a Diamond Partner at the 2019 Adobe Experience Summit in Las Vegas, Cognizant Interactive had a 40X40 ft booth to tell its story. We wanted to differentiate Cognizant Interactive in the field of experience agencies by conveying that content is at the core of the experience, and creating it at quality, speed and scale, requires the marriage of creativity and technology – ie. Adobe’s Experience Cloud. The idea was to “win” the conference with a standout, innovative experience that brought this message to life for the attendees, with the ultimate objective of getting people to want to do business with Cognizant Interactive.

We created the “Me! The Movie” experience – turning our booth into a mini-movie studio where attendees got to star in their own customized movie trailers -- written, shot, produced and delivered in about an hour. No, not cheesy green-screen trailers. Epic, high-end, bespoke trailers that gave attendees the choice to become the hero in an apocalyptic action movie, a quirky protagonist in an arthouse film, an evil robot in a sci-fi horror, or a mysterious suspect in a crime thriller. The trailers showed the attendees in the middle of these larger-than-life cinematic scenes, with a voice-over describing a storyline specific to them. Attendees then got a personal, shareable video, and a memorable on-set experience that elevated their perception of Cognizant Interactive.

In the programming for Summit, everyone was talking about the importance of technology, data, manpower, and cost to deliver a compelling experience. But no one was talking about the importance of content in making an experience unforgettable. In fact, content is a big challenge for our audience – C Suite marketers and their direct reports – who struggle with quality, volume, personalization, and speed, especially with video content. Solving their problem requires a combination of creativity and technology that challenges the way things are typically done. We wanted to differentiate ourselves by showing that we could solve the need for personalized, high-quality content at speed and scale with our creative chops, and Adobe’s suite of technologies.

We created an innovative workflow to maximize the budget, quality, and quantity of our trailers. We pre-edited four epic trailers, planning out greenscreen scenes, as well as moments to incorporate bespoke stock footage and titles/graphics. At the conference, attendees signed up by filling out a short questionnaire. They moved to hair and makeup while our copywriter created a script based on their answers. Once camera-ready, attendees stepped on set. A charismatic director led them through shots in front of the camera while a professional artist recorded the voiceover. Our on-site post-production team then cut together all the elements using Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe After Effects and Adobe Stock for footage sourcing, complete with a dramatic score. The trailer was sent as a shareable link within an hour. In the 20 hours the booth was open, we created over 100 feature-film worthy trailers.

“Me! The Movie” was nothing short of a wild success for Cognizant Interactive. One press article gushed, “For sheer daring, you couldn’t beat what Cognizant Interactive was doing in its booth on the exhibition floor.” Lines formed within the first 20 minutes, and we were booked solid with VIP clients throughout the event. We drew a lot of attention and crowds — reaching 79% of Adobe Summit participants and engaging 58% of participants. Experience participants gushed about how much they loved their videos. Even the CEO of Adobe stopped by for a photo op. On social, coverage and content from the experience performed 20% above average in posts and shares for Cognizant Interactive with all organic earned media –15.9M social media impressions & 4.1M organic impressions. And as a true mark of success – the experience opened $25M+ of the business pipeline for Cognizant Interactive in just 20 hours of