A proactive approach helps us deliver consistent quality at speed for Adobe

Client

Adobe

Project Type

Timeframe

3 months

Link

Website

Company Information

Adobe is a multinational software company, known for its industry-leading creative tools and enterprise solutions. For Adobe, creativity is in its DNA. Today it pioneers technologies that connect content and data, democratise creativity, and deliver world-changing digital experiences.

Challenge

In truth, Adobe needs no introduction. So instead, we thought it best to highlight this line of theirs as it neatly sums up why our work with Adobe was a success. Adobe asked Fifty Five and Five to produce creative toolkits containing a wide range of assets to support its marketing campaigns. A quick turnaround was required, and, of course, the work had to meet the high standard of quality consistent with the Adobe brand.

Each toolkit involved delivering a slightly different collection of assets—sometimes with a few surprises thrown in. What’s more, the brief was put together by multiple Adobe departments, all using different terminology to refer to the same assets. This proved a challenge each time we were confronted with a new toolkit. We needed to be able to flex to the demands of each, so that we could produce consistent, high-quality work, at speed, whatever was asked for in the brief.

Adobe images created for a Campaign.
IT/CIO Campaign Promo Kit

Solution

Our company name comes from an Albert Einstein quote about how he might approach a problem if he had an hour to solve it – spending fifty five minutes thinking about the challenge and five minutes executing the solution. For us, once the fifty five is in place, the five is setup to succeed. But we don’t think of the fifty five as an amount of time; it’s more about the quality of thought.

So, when we received our next brief from Adobe, rather than jumping straight in, our Creative team, led by Senior Designer, Charlie Colbourne, took a step back to look at the bigger picture—i.e. the fifty five. We decided that instead of taking every project in isolation, we would build a master toolkit. Not only would this make it easier for our teams to know exactly what was required but it would mean we could produce consistent quality at pace.

We created a file in Adobe XD with all the individual toolkits from the first few projects and merged them into one master template. Now if we receive a brief with a new asset or modified specification, we simply add it to the master template. We also created a spreadsheet to match the toolkit master. This keeps all our writers, project managers and accounts team on the same page.

Adobe’s UX/UI tool Adobe XD was used to create the templates that make up the promo kit. There are sixty templates in total although not all are used depending on the type of campaign.
The templates allow us to produce the image assets and also allow the client to see the image assets in context.

Adobe toolkit images

Outcome

By reviewing all the toolkits and understanding all the possible types of deliverables, we now have a master toolkit document that contains everything. We can take on these projects on an ad-hoc basis with consistency, meeting all the requirements. From our side of things, we have developed a process which helps us to deliver quality work, as everyone starts from the same place. This way, we can focus on producing great work for the client.  

With our approach to understanding what is required of each brief and goals Adobe have set, we were able to standardize our processes around costing and project management, turning the brief into instructions for the team. Today, we continue to respond quickly and consistently, with quality every time. Instead of reacting to the brief each time, our approach was proactive. It ensures that there is always control over the quality of the work.

Collage of images from Adobe campaign

60

Total number of graphical assets that are exported from the Adobe promo kit.

16.9

Total size of Adobe XD file used to create the promo kit templates.

40%

Reduction in production time by consolidating several promo kits into one master kit.

We were impressed with how Fifty Five and Five approached the work, meeting our requirements consistently. We have a high bar when it comes to the quality of our output, and Fifty Five and Five was able to meet our objectives time and time again.

Adobe

Get in touch

If you’d like to understand more about how our approach can transform your marketing results, get in touch with our marketing experts today.