Ellie Caldwell

Client
Adobe Lightroom CC

Agency & Role
Edelman, Brand Planner

Goal
Launch Adobe Lightroom's first-ever Instagram channel, complete with influencer and content strategies, to reach photography enthusiasts and inspire them to pursue their passion with Adobe Lightroom CC.

Challenge
Launching a new channel, aimed at a new audience, is replete with hurdles. In this case, our most significant challenge was to craft a channel identity and plan that inspired beginner photographers without alienating pro photographers sensitive to change in Adobe Creative Cloud products.

Strategy
We began with a deep understanding of Lightroom's two primary audiences - photography enthusiasts (beginners) and professionals. From our analysis of their similarities, differences and preferences, we tailored our influencer and content plans to be accessible and inpsirational to the beginner, while still meeting the high standards of the professional.

Adobe was passionate about creating a platform where they should showcase the work of talented photographers, so that sentiment was instrumental in our content strategy. We designed monthly topics meant to evoke emotion and inspire visual storytelling, which gave followers easy ways to interact with the channel while building their own skills. The channel also regularly features short, task-based tutorials in posts and stories, providing people with quick editing guides for the Lightroom CC mobile app.

Last but certainly not least, we developed the launch campaign Be Boundless.. Be Boundless is the rallying cry we created to inspire amatuer and pro photographers to pursue their photography passion - to "leap into the boundless and make it your home" (Chuang Tzu).

Results

• 540k @Lightroom followers (as of 8/2018, launched 6/2017)
  
• Two Adobe-hosted influencer trips - Cuba and US Virgin Islands
  
• Two Fireside chats - White House Photography with Pete Souza and a panel discussion on the Ethics of Travel Photography
• Influencer partnerships with talented photographers including Renan Ozturk, Hiroaki Fukuda, Max Muench and many others.