THE 14TH ANNUAL SHORTY AWARDS

The Shorty Awards honor the best of social media and digital. View this season's finalists!
From the 9th Annual Shorty Awards

Adobe Photoshop "There's Magic Inside"

Winner in Gamification

Objectives

Adobe challenged us to drive deeper Photoshop engagement to help support a wider business goal of increasing and retaining creative cloud subscribers. We believe that people who are more highly skilled in a creative product's advanced functionality are more likely to continue subscribing because of their ever-growing ability to bring their creative visions to life.

Strategy and Execution

Millions of images are created every day with Photoshop. They tweak, toggle, transform, and even transmogrify. Spare tires become six packs. Six packs become ten packs. Moments become memes.

But Photoshop is so much more than manipulation. You can create almost anything. From art to animation, it's practically magic.

So how do you unlock the power of Photoshop. How do you unleash the creative potential in our users? How do you turn Photoshop manipulators into Photoshop Magicians?

We created a game INSIDE PHOTOSHOP.

Seven custom images from artist Matteo Basini. Over a thousand layers of interactivity. And one incredible story of a magical kingdom filled with riddles, puzzles, and mystery.

Launched on Facebook, the files were downloaded directly into Photoshop. Players had to use all their Photoshop skills to unravel the mystery. Or learn new ones, including 3D modeling and Action Scripting. They collaborated on Facebook, sharing tips, tricks, and even their original artwork as they pieced together clues and unlocked new parts of the story.

Players were also able to interact with the characters directly in the comments. And on the final day, they were even able to speak to the Mad King live via a theatrical Facebook Live performance.

Results

In the end, over 5,000 players discovered the mystery of a kingdom divided and a king gone mad. And resulted in over 800k engagements, 25 millions impressions, and over 2 million views of our teaser video and Facebook Live performance.

But most importantly, Photoshop magic became core skills that our players could now use every day. Thousands of Photoshop manipulators became Photoshop magicians.

Media

Video for Adobe Photoshop "There's Magic Inside"

Entrant Company / Organization Name

Edelman, Adobe

Entry Credits