For internal distribution only
Last week, Adobe sponsored Europe’s largest creative community conference. Before we set off to Barcelona, we set ourselves these objectives:
- Reinforce Adobe’s leadership position in Design
- Engage & inspire the CC community and the next generation of designers across EMEA
- Boost Adobe Stock brand awareness amongst the CC ecosystem
For 3 days we saw creativity like never before. Here are some of the highlights:
- Over 5k attendees to Adobe’s Keynote session with Michael Chaize & the amazing type designer, illustrator and art director Marta Cerdà Alimbau. Michael unveiled two Adobe ‘Sneaks’ and exciting new features coming soon to Illustrator CC and Adobe XD which generated excitement and positive commentary from the community. OFFF 2018 trended on Twitter in the UK, France and Spain during Day 1 (May 24th)
- An incredible Adobe Live Streaming schedule featuring some top names including Malika Favre, Stefan Sagmeister, Patrick Clair, Will Paterson to name a few, generated a record 51K total viewership (34K live and 17K on-demand vs a total of 47K in 2017 for the same period)
- 16 key influencers from across Europe contributed to a 34% Adobe SOV of overall OFFF conversations (vs 25% last year), 35M Social reach/ impressions and 872K Social engagement
- A livestreamed Adobe Stock Visual Trends Panel featuring renowned artists, futurologists, sociologists and artists discussed the evolution of visual culture moderated by Brenda Milis. To date, the livestream has reached over 10k people and 4k video views.
- Top 30 Adobe Stock Challenge, where teams of our influencers were challenged to create an image based on the top searched Adobe Stock terms for Barcelona. The creations are currently up for public vote on Twitter here.
- Exciting Belgian artist Musketon announced as new stock contributor ambassador and an onsite live activation consisting of live mural illustration capturing the best quotes of the day and shared on social.
- Make it on Mobile & XD workshops with leading creatives including Robzilla and Kyle T. Webster & personal Behance Portfolio Reviews with top renowned artists.
- Inclusion of Project 1324 through the Adobe booth, where over 1300 creatives queued from opening hours to closure during the 3 days.
Read more about how we helped to push creative boundaries at OFFF.
Adobe Keynote
Michael Chaize was joined on stage by the amazing Amsterdam-based type designer, illustrator and former ADC Young Guns winner, Marta Cerdà Alimbau.
Michael spoke passionately to a packed hall of +5K attendees about how the CC community is vital to the ongoing development of next generation apps like Adobe XD. And he praised social networks such as Behance for encouraging a new generation of nomad designers. He also revealed details of two new innovations: Diffusion Curves in Illustrator (to be launched at MAX) and Overlays & Fixed Elements features in XD (to be launched in June 18). The audience were on the edge of their seats for Michael’s 2 WW Sneak peeks. The Sneaks generated a potential social reach of 3.4M and total social engagement of 409K. The Illustrator sneak video showcasing diffusion gradients generated 18.9k video views, 84.8k impressions (4x average), 5.4k engagements (5x average) and 6.4 percent engagement rate (2x average) on Twitter; 80.5k video views, 256.8k reach (5x average), 22.3k clicks (11x average) and 5.1k reactions (5x average) on Facebook; and 14.8k video views on YouTube. The Adobe XD sneak peek on Twitter featuring overlays and fixed elements received 62.4k impressions, 63x the engagements, and a 5 percent engagement rate.
Adobe Live on Behance.net/live
With an objective to engage our CC community and beyond across EMEA, we spread the OFFF love to the online community through 3 days of non-stop livestreaming.
Streaming sessions included interviews of leading creatives who also provided +30 Behance Portfolio reviews for in-person & online attendees. Leading creatives included Malika Favre, Stefan Sagmeister, Patrick Clair, Verena Michelitsch, Paloma Rincon, Tina Touli, Animade & Dogstudio – to name a few. During sessions we generated a really impressive 34.081 total views, of which 24.3K were unique live viewers with an average watch time of 47.2mins and 10.6K viewers watched more than 1 show (31% of the overall audience) indicating high engagement. Added to that we already have over 17K on-demand views (vs 12K in 2017 for the same period) – and growing. Germany led the top 10 countries for viewership with 14.6%, followed closely by UK 11.3%, Spain 9.4%, France 8.5%, Italy 8.1%, US 7.4% and Netherlands 5.1%.
Influencer Program and Social Coverage
Once again, a detailed Influencer Program and a strong communications strategy had a major role to play in OFFF’s success, trending on Twitter in UK, France and Spain on the first day and owning 34% of overall OFFF conversation (vs 25% KPI). The EMEA communications team brought together 16 key Tier 1 influencers from Germany, UK and France at the biggest EMEA creative conference with 5000 attendees, to share their experiences and drive conversation via social channels. Attending influencers represented a wide range of the creative sector from Futurists to Photographers, Illustrators to Experience Designers. Feedback received by the influencers has been overwhelmingly positive:
"It was nice to share these days with all these creatives, thanks again Adobe for all what you do for the community!" - @iammrcup Fabien Barral (FR)
"Thanks @ Adobe for inviting me to this magical trip! Barcelona was breathtaking, @OFFFest was full of inspiration and I met the loveliest and talented people! Gracias" - @laluisarivera - Luisa Rivierà (UK)
« The entire experience was unbelievable. The event was well organized so that we had to worry about nothing, but exploring the OFFF and challenging our art and mindset during the challenge and panel discussion. I loved talking to other artists, especially those with a completely different background and style. - @LauraHelena (Germany)
Key social results
- 34% Adobe SOV of overall OFFF conversations (KPI 25%)
- 35,698,051 Social reach / impressions (KPI 50M)
- 876,052 social engagement (KPI 100K)
During OFFF we earned 1.362 social mentions and 6.788 engagements, providing a total potential earned reach of 22.7M and representing 53% of the total OFFF event social reach. Visual Trends and challenge/contest conversations trended on Day 1, and carried on to the following day when the #top30challenge was launched. On our owned channels we delivered 12.9M impressions compared to 4M this time last year, and gained 846K engagements vs 16.7K in 2017. We genereted 61.4K link clicks vs 9.7K in 2017, 36K blog views and total video views reached almost 2M, including:
- Pre-OFFF incl. Project 1324 - 348,747
- Adobe Live - 592,383
- Visual Trends FB Live - 363,085
- Sneaks - 644,065
- On demand - 41,145
Visual Trends panel – ‘The evolution of visual culture’.
With travel and technology making the world ever-smaller, artists and brands are embracing a mosaic of cultural experiences in their imagery.
Before the OFFF opening, Adobe hosted a Facebook live-streamed panel discussion about Multilocalism. The guest panel included Tobi Shinobi, Mariana Rodrigues, Dr Nelly Ben Hayoun, Alek Szmytko, Rudy De Waele and was moderated by Brenda Milis, Principal Creative Services, Visual Trends, Adobe Stock.
Highlights included Dr Nelly Ben Hayoun lighting up the room with her inter-culture-interspace stream of consciousness, the beautiful illustrations of Perci Chen and Mariana Rodrigues’ and Alek’s Syzmytko’ personal touch, drawing from his relationship with, and perceptions of, his cross-national relationships. Rudy de Walae concluded the discussion with a view on AI, to a time when multilocalism may exist in cyberspace. The video recording of the Facebook Live discussion can be accessed on Facebook and Youtube.
- Current number of Facebook video views: 3300
- Current number of Youtube views: 1084
‘Top 30 challenge’
Think of Barcelona and what springs to mind? The famous Sagrada Familia? Or the Camp Nou? Adobe teams and Influencers took on the challenge to create an image based on the top 30 Adobe Stock search keyword terms for ‘Barcelona’.
After a comprehensive Adobe Stock briefing delivered by Dennis Radeke, Adobe Content Development manager, influencers participated in a challenge to create an image based on leading AdobeStock terms for Barcelona and multilocalism. Creations have been submitted to public vote on Twitter and on the Adobe blog. At the end of the challenge there had been 145 votes in total, with Team Street ranking first.
Musketon Magic…
Exciting young Belgian illustrator Musketon set up base in a specially designed Adobe Stock zone and was announced as our latest Stock contributor ambassador.
Exciting young Belgian illustrator Musketon set up base in a specially designed Adobe Stock zone live Mural and was announced as our latest Stock contributor ambassador. He mixed with attendees and passed on hot tips about becoming a Stock contributor. Musketon’s mind-blowing illustrations capturing the best quotes from the conference each day where captured with Adobe Capture CC mobile app and will soon be available in a public CC Library as vector files for the community. His work will also be featured on social with a unique animated piece summarizing the best from OFFF 2018 experience.
Project 1324 – helping the next generation of designers to thrive
Adobe has always been committed to helping emerging artists realize their creative potential.
That’s why we were so proud to introduce Project 1324 to the OFFF community, an Adobe initiative that supports a global community of young artists who use creativity to inspire, shift perspectives, and make an impact. The program aims to nurture and equip creatives ages 13 to 24 with resources and meaningful experiences such as fellowships, mentorships and scholarships.
In celebration of Project 1324’s new ‘Secret Sidekick’ character design challenge with Pictoplasma, attendees got to practice their skills in the Adobe Experience Lounge and learn more about Project 1324 from two of this year’s Pictoplasma Fellows, Alice Monvaillier and Helena Covell – who also participated in the Adobe Live streaming
Adobe Make It Experience Lounge
With more than 5K talented creatives attending this international meeting point, we couldn't miss the opportunity to get their creative juices flowing. So, Adobe hosted 21 free Make it on Mobile and XD workshops with leading artists such as Perci Chen, Kyle T. Webster, Robzilla, and Mariana Tomasselli along with our Adobe consultants Ana Mesas, Matthias Schulze and Sinja Mirel, with over 300 attendees joining. In the main booth area, attendees queued from openinig hours until late in the day to personalize over 1300 pairs of socks (which became the highlight at OFFF), +800 luggage tags, test drive Adobe XD and create their selfie with Project 1324.
THANK YOU!
A massive thank you to everybody who helped us put together this event and see creativity like never before, including:
Michael Chaize, Rufus Deuchler, Anja Paetzold, Stephanie Saissay, Leigh Cooper, Gus Martin, Kathleen Martin, Kristine Arth, Lilian Killmeyer, Anais Gragueb, Jayson Oertel, Denis Radeke, Brenda Milis, Simon Morris, Alex Amado, Ana Mesas, Antonio Lirio, Matthias Schulze, Sinja Mirel, Raul Ceron González, Kyle T. Webster, Pollyanna Macchiano, Natalia López, Daniel Vargas, Tien Nguyen, Gaelle Villier, Rod Luebbert, Pollyanna Macchiano, Roman Skuratovskiy, Simon Wakinshaw, our creative residents Isabel Lea, Nadine Kolodziey, Laura Zalenga, Franziska Parschau, from Project 1324 Michelle Posadas and Linda McNair, Golin and Contactlab teams. Special thank you to Maria José and Toni Rubio from our agency for helping us bring our strategy and vision to life another year!