Spark of the Week 5: Adobe’s Click Baby Click Ad

Today we are going to break down a cool ad by Adobe! Now, I happen to love Adobe as a company. I first interacted with their products when I was in high school (back in 2004), which ultimately influenced the career im in today, so… I love you Adobe!

THE STORY

The Click Baby Click ad was a commercial that ran during Advertising Week in 2013. It was produced by Goodby Silverstien and Partners and the ad was to promote Adobe’s Marketing Cloud, a product that was released in 2012 for digital marketers to get insights on their campaigns. The story was very simple. An encyclopedia company thinks they are killing it with digital advertising so they go all out on printing surplus and then the punchline comes in… it's a baby clicking. Boom.

The video ends with, “Do you know what your marketing is doing? We can help.” 
The message was clear. Without true insights into your campaign, you will make rookie mistakes. So, use Adobe. This ad prompted many more in Adobe’s suite of “Do you know what your marketing is doing?” campaign, other stories included The Psychologist, Are You on WooWoo, The Launch,The Gambler and Mean Streets, showcasing different scenarios of the dangers of not having proper insights in place and the big mistakes you’ll make as a result.

THE IMPACT

This was a big deal for Adobe since it was their first TV spot purchased in 10 years!  Adobe said the campaign drove a 25% increase to their Marketing Cloud suite. The video also made Adweek’s Ad of the Day- which is nice.

There’s not a ton of stats available to glean through on this one, which was a little disappointing but I did manage to comb through the other commercials that spawned as a result of the success of the Click Baby Click commercial and they all have large view counts. In general, B2B case studies won’t compare to their B2C rivals in numbers, but Adobe clearly saw enough value in this genre of commercials that they made a whole bunch more with the same theme.

THE TAKEAWAYS

Adobe used emotion and humor here to engage their audience. 

The emotion? Anxiety. What marketer doesn’t feel the anxiety of a campaign running, learning from the results, and then taking actions? By building up that tension, the viewer wants to know the results! 

I like the build up so that by the time we get to the punchline, we are so thrown off by the humor that we kinda do a double take and chuckle under our breath “Clever… very clever Adobe.

Another important element here is that while the scenarios are over the top, they are also very human. They are hyperbolized versions of everyday experiences marketers go through and this is the kind of language B2B advertising should be doing. Relatable human experiences for human buyers. They are selling a scenario that is extremely relatable, showing the viewer that Adobe “gets them.”
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Good job Adobe, keep it up.