How Adobe Helped FEED Projects Create Its Holiday Campaign in Just 7 Days

When Lauren Bush Lauren, founder and CEO of FEED Projects, attended the Adobe Summit last year on behalf of her brand, she met the Adobe team. They clicked instantly, and Adobe and FEED decided to embark on a creative journey with a competition unlike any other. The two companies came up with the "Adobe Make It Challenge" that would take six creatives from across the country and give them one week to create a holiday campaign for FEED, which is dedicated to fighting world hunger. "Creative and design is extremely important to Adobe, as is social good, and I think those two values are very important to FEED as well," Ann Lewnes, Adobe svp and CMO, told Adweek. Bush Lauren said, "When you are building a brand day in and day out, it's sometimes hard to see the light of day, so it's great to have outside expertise." She and the FEED team partnered with Adobe to select the six candidates—three copywriters and three art directors—to participate in a whirlwind creative experience. Bush Lauren and the Adobe team insist that the seven-day timeline was crucial for the competition for two reasons: The participants had real jobs to worry about and couldn't take a lot of time off, and the extreme time crunch, they believed, would breed equally extreme creativity. Contestants were paired up to work with someone they had never met before. Sub Rosa CEO Michael Ventura acted as a mentor and creative director (think Tim Gunn on Project Runway), checking in with the teams that had just two and a half days to get a pitch together. Adobe filmed the entire process, cutting the week into a seven-part minidocumentary series for its blog. "We knew if we documented it, a super compressed schedule, there would be a lot of drama and a lot of interesting stuff going on," Lewnes said. The episodes also offer a rare, behind-the-scenes look at the creative process. In the episode below, the creative team receives feedback from the client before making edits and presenting a final product. After three days of creative conception, the three teams pitched ideas to a panel of judges, which included Bush Lauren, Ventura, DDB Chicago executive creative director Jean Batthany, Ann Street Studio photographer and blogger Jamie Beck, InStyle editor in chief Ariel Foxman and Adobe director of advertising Joel Guillian. The judges selected copywriter Matt Walker and art director Alejandro Chavetta as the duo with the most promising idea. After working with Ventura and a three-member production team shooting models and influencers in locations across Manhattan, the winning duo landed on the print ads below, which debuted in Vanity Fair and will also run in a host of other publications including InStyle, Women's Health, Elle, Good Housekeeping and Town & Country Magazine. Walker and Chavetta also created a 30-second spot for the campaign, which will roll out over the next few weeks.

Brand Marketing

How Adobe Helped FEED Projects Create Its Holiday Campaign in Just 7 Days

Take a peek inside the competitive, creative process

Katie Richards

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Katie Richards