Building Adobe Brand Reach at Sundance Film Festival 2016
At the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, I was on hand helping out with two major Adobe initiatives being put on by Adobe’s Social Media Team at the event. Adobe was a leadership sponsor of the film festival this year, helped celebrate independent film, and storytelling, while helping to share stories about how Adobe’s industry leading video tools help bring new ideas to life.
We (Adobe) worked with the agency Young Jenkins who came up with the concepts, provided art and content direction, and was on hand to assist with the activations live at Sundance.
The A@A Video Production Team, led by Andrew Mikkelsen, provided their technical production skills to broadcast unique top down Airbnb Pillow Talk interviews over YouTube Live, reaching over 1.4 million viewers of these videos.
Between PillowTalk interviews, and in partnership with Airbnb, attendees were invited to jump into bed themselves, to take a photo memory of their Sundance experience, while getting the chance to bring their photos to life with Adobe Spark Post, Adobe’s newest mobile app that builds stunning graphics in seconds.
The Adobe@Adobe Video Team developed an efficient workflow where attendees could take a photo in bed, and then share that photo to an iPad. This allowed photo edits in Adobe Spark Post. Then the workflow automatically applied a branded Adobe & Airbnb border to the image, and shared the photo back to the user via Twitter, email, or iMessage. The activation was a huge success, with over 3000 people being photographed over the week.
The magic of Adobe Spark Post ensured that everyone’s photo turned out looking great, and we utilized the Creative Cloud for our photo gallery of final images! The impact of this social engagement was measured in Adobe Social, where Adobe was able to greatly exceed their 2015 numbers for brand reach.
#PillowTalk Interviews
The first initiative, PillowTalk, was a series of live-streamed, and on-demand interviews with a number of filmmakers, actors, and artists. The series was unique in that it invited the guests to be interviewed in bed, in a less formal setting to discuss their films, and what they see coming up next in the industry. The A@A Video Production Team provided their technical production skills to broadcast out these interviews over YouTube Live, reaching approximately 2 million viewers of these videos from all social media sources (Facebook and YouTube). Taken from an unusual top-down perspective, the interviews were extremely well received by both guests and fans alike, as the interviews took place on a bed right inside the extremely busy Airbnb Haus, allowing onlookers to watch the interviews live. It was a lot of fun, and provided a fresh, relaxed interview environment, that seemed in-tune with the atmosphere of the always amazing Airbnb Haus. The A@A Team continues to help with Adobe’s expansion into social live-stream experiences, as that medium continues to be a fun and interactive way to reach customers.
#MakeIt Experience Featuring Adobe Post
Between PillowTalk interviews, and in partnership with Airbnb, attendees were invited to jump into bed themselves, to take a photo memory of their Sundance experience, while getting the chance to bring their photos to life with Adobe Post, Adobe’s newest mobile app that builds stunning graphics in seconds. The Adobe@Adobe Video Team was able to develop an efficient workflow that allowed attendees to take a photo in bed, and then share that photo to an iPad, which allowed editing of the photo in Adobe Post. The workflow then automatically applied a branded Adobe & Airbnb border to the image, and shared the photo back to the user via Twitter, email, or iMessage. The activation was a huge success, with over 3000 people being photographed over the week. Despite the complexities of moving digital assets around so quickly, for so many people, the workflow was still able to easily able to handle the crowds, and help people get their shared photo in a timely manner. The solution utilized a couple of third party technologies such as a CamRanger wireless DSLR remote control that allowed camera control from an iPad (as the Canon 5D MkII we used was ceiling mounted), as well as a great iPad application called “Workflow” that allowed for easy automation for what would have been manual tasks, like adding a custom border to a photo, or sending a Tweet or email. The magic of Adobe Post ensured that everyone’s photo turned out looking great, and we utilized the Creative Cloud for our photo gallery of final images! Of course, the impact of this social engagement was measured in Adobe Social, where Adobe was able to greatly exceed their 2015 numbers for brand reach.
