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OLIVER MALTBY, EXECUTIVE CREATIVE DIRECTOR, INTERBRAND NEW YORK

An employer brand that celebrates creativity, collaboration and transformation

Adobe

Adobe

Office: New York

Adobe’s mission of changing the world through digital experiences would never be possible without its 25,000+ employees around the globe, who are rallied around it.

While already a very creative brand in the ways Adobe engages employees, existing employer brand communications lacked cohesion across programs and the energy employees already feel for the brand. Adobe engaged Interbrand to extend the brand their customers have come to know and love to their employee base through a fresh, new employer brand identity.

The challenge was creating an employer brand that aligned with the new look and feel of Adobe that united its brand experiences across corporate, cloud and product communications, and matched the inspiring, progressive, creative experience of working for Adobe.

Adobe recently updated its brand identity strategy to unified all external communications through a flexible brand identity system. The new identity was designed to strengthen the way Adobe communicated the unique value it provides across a broad range of audiences and products in a way that was consistent and memorable. Interbrand understood that the new employer brand had to do the same to connect the employee experience and make it reflect the transformational magic of working at Adobe.

In addition to our existing knowledge of the Adobe brand, we worked with stakeholders across the globe, individually and as a group to learn about Adobe’s culture, understand what the new employer brand should express and develop the creative brief.

Adobe wanted to energize the way they communicated with and engaged both existing and potential employees. They wanted to reflect the positive brand they have built and wanted Interbrand’s help in taking the brand expressions to the next level.

The result is an energetic, differentiated and inclusive employer brand with a visual expression that aligns with Adobe’s commitment to creativity.

The new employer brand uses two core visual elements to define the new Adobe employer brand — photography of employees and a multi-colored gradient.

Integrating real-life images of employees* enables Adobe to showcase them at the center of the system, reinforcing the connection between the employees and the brand. And the gradient, multiple colors moving seamlessly from one to the next, visually represents creativity, collaboration and transformation all at the same time. The gradient always begins with red, the core color of the Adobe brand, and incorporates additional colors from Adobe’s secondary color palette. These gradients are fluid and flexible by design — representing the wide range of people and perspectives that distinguish Adobe from others.

The new messaging platform is helping Adobe in setting the right tone and focusing on the core messages when communicating to different audiences within and outside of the organization.

*The employee images used on this case study are stock images, not actual Adobe employees.