The minute long ad started with Billie Eilish wandering into what appears to be a movie set. Here, the wide, empty space around her signifies the blank space – the starting point of every creative project. Billie, in this space, is free to “create” and “change” elements of her surroundings, including objects, color, motion, and time. The placement of the actor in the scene imitates the act of creating another world. By being able to change things to one’s own likings, they are creating their own space and environment, signifying the freedom of expression, and the artful spirit that Adobe is trying to communicate at a base level through this ad.
The commodity being explicitly sold here is the “Adobe’s Creative Cloud” service. Creative Cloud is a subscription service that allows access to virtually most of their multi-media production products. These products offer the ability to create photos, videos, sounds, graphics from scratch, or edit existing assets. There isn’t one specific, niche single software that they are trying to highlight, but instead, it’s the ability to do everything with one all-encompassing subscription. As a result, the ad focuses less on a single capability, but more on the capability to do all things.
However, the ad still shows several key features, or innovations that support the process of world creation. First is the use of object selection and layers: the selection of Billie against the screen; the ability to paint only the background to a different color; and the layers of clothes that she can add on top of another. Second is the on-screen visual effects with the creation of the fire. Third is the ability to edit 3D objects and explosive VFX (the rain).
An interesting thing about the ad, is that despite showing snippets of different product propositions, they all try to sell the overall capability to do things “with ease” and “in real-time” (immediate). This real-time aspect is one of the unique selling propositions of all its products. Previously, the processing of graphics, images, and especially 3D environments has been a heavy and intensive computer process. The process is done through the professionals and amateur designers with the machines that can handle it. Now, with the upcoming technologies, Adobe suggests that this process is of ease, or at one’s most convenience, and it is done in real-time – one can simply wish for it, and one will be able to make it come true.
Further, this aspect of ease-of-use and real-time connects to the reason they’re bringing Billie Eilish onboard as one of their partners – she represents the young, the new, the next generation of graphic designers and students who now have access to the latest machines. The new generation now has more access to computing capabilities than ever before, and instead of only targeting industry professionals, Adobe launches themselves as the go-to brand for the next generation. The power of the youth has been realized throughout history. In Thomas Frank’s Conquest for Cool, he discusses the economic potential of the youth: “Half of the nation’s population was, or would soon be, under the age of 25, and … Young people were widely regarded as economically powerful beyond their immediate means.” (P. 109) And as such, the strategy to capture an emerging youth population hopes to secure the future customer base and profit for the company, or as the good-old saying goes: “Get them while they’re young” (and maybe you’ll get them for life).
To elaborate more on Adobe’s choice of endorsement by Billie Eilish, it is important that we acknowledge her presence among the targeted audience. Billie is a Gen-Z herself and is well-known for her radical approach towards music and visual expressions. The target audience of this campaign is likely young artists, musicians, and creatives who are interested in the “art,” or the non-traditional ways of thinking, hearing, watching, and listening. A key scene that shows this is one where she is picking her outfit. On the layer panel on screen, the adjectives shown were “nah, meh, hmmm, scarf, and cool.” The word “cool” especially stands out as it is often a word that the younger generation, and the key to advertising towards this segment, is to show them that they are, in fact, cool.
According to Frank, this idea of coolness and creativity is essential to the marketing towards a younger audience. He wrote: “Like counterculture, creativity seemed to be the province of young people, rebels who were identified with non-conformity and innovative thinking.” He also introduces his own view of advertising towards this demographic as: “Think young, the advertising cliché of the day, did not simply mean to remember the youth market. It meant to think creatively, to embrace difference and nonconformity and, ultimately, to think like a consumer.” (P. 110) In essence, what I think he meant was that the emerging culture of the youth is a form of counterculture, and it has seen this pattern since the 1960s. Advertising agency knew of the power of hipness and that same hipness had taken over the industry in the mid-1960s. (P. 113) They present themselves as hip, as different, but corporates think of such tactics only to turn each young men and women into “consumers” that will hopefully consume their products because it aligns with their counterculture and values.
Regarding the video’s affective qualities, the formal elements such as lighting, color or non-colors, camera movement, sound, music, and pacing, work together to produce an intended effect of creativity – the ability to create, and innovation. The ad uses soft colors on top of the dark background, dynamic camera movements, and the increasingly energetic music to create a sense of vibrancy and inspiration, aiming to captivate the audience's attention, or slowly build it. Despite trying to communicate the creation of one’s entire imagination, the ad’s tone is casual, conversational, and relatable. It speaks to consumers in a friendly and approachable manner rather than the Hollywood blockbuster, extravagant style of world creation. Moreover, the ad tells the audience about the process that is personal to Billie Eilish, as if we’re alongside her, accompanying her in the creation of her next project. This aims to establish a personal connection with the audience, and to sell an idea of individuality – one that says Adobe and Billie personally cares about you. But more than that, the bright, motivational tone, and the sweet narration of “create what’s true to you” makes one feel invincible, that he/she can really create and accomplish anything and everything, a point that I would further elaborate on in my later discussion on feminism as part of a bigger strategy to target and empower women.
Beyond the specific commodity, they are not simply selling the Creative Cloud Product, they are selling the ideas that are associated with the brand Adobe and its values. In Marcel Danesi’s work “Brands,” he stresses that the creation of the brand, or the brand phenomenon is deeply rooted in the science of human psychology. The first identification act that is associated with the brand is through its’ image. The image is “defined as the opinion or concept of the product that is held by the public, especially as filtered through the mass media.” The selling of the brand through image is the selling of a mental and social construct. The consumer, through ads, consciously or unconsciously interpret signs and give the brand meanings.
In the case of Billie Eilish, her appearance in the ad, despite the name of endorsement, in my opinion can be like that of the character at the early age of TV. The appearance of the character humanizes the brand and gives it an increased persuasive power. Danesi wrote that the imagery and the appearance of multiple advertising tactics “taps into basic psychological needs to ensure that products are bought whether they are needed or not.” (P. 17). He used the logic of human needs and motives by Straubhaar and LaRose to further his point on psychological need. Billie Eilish, in this case, does better than the early age trade character in the sense that she provokes a better “achievement, popularity, or recognition” motive. These motives are pointed out as “the need to achieve meaningful objectives in life, the need to win the attention of others, and the need to be recognized” respectively. The appearance of Billie Eilish, her established fame as a female artist, and her actions in the ad suggests these motives. Another potential motive / need is the motive of “novelty,” where the consumer needs to “have new things,” or in this case, create new things. This motive is also suggested through the unique imagery and the creative process that Billie went through in the ad. Perhaps one of the reasons why the singer is featured in such a personal manner, or any other influencers in any other brand-sponsored ad, is because the brand realizes these motives do indeed have a strong emotional appeal and satisfy the social/ emotional need of the consumer. In addition, it has been proven to work so well in Television in the past, so it would only make sense to go the safe route and have an artist/ influencer endorse your already massively distributed product.
This social, mental, and commodity interplay can also be analyzed under Goldman and Papson’s framework to understand the commodity signs in Sign Wars Introduction Chapter. They wrote: “Stripped of its glamor, advertising is a kind of cultural mechanics for constructing commodity signs. Advertisements are structured to boost the value of commodity brand names by attaching them to images that possess social and cultural value: brand-name commodity + meaning of image = a commodity sign” (P. 2). In the ad, the Adobe brand name is enhanced by the Billie Eilish image and actions, and the signifiers that come with it. Billie is known for being different and innovative, in the ad she’s creating her own thing. This signifier signifies that Adobe is a brand that embraces creativity and innovation and such. Once this equation is repeated enough times, the brand name and its association are seen each time one sees its name, logo, slogans, or even affiliations.
In discussing the bigger context, the short ad is one of the main elements of a big campaign showing the collaboration, or partnership, between Adobe and the artist. The campaign centers around the release of her latest album “Happier Than Ever,” which, according to their website, featured the main track’s music video made by Adobe Creative Cloud. Their mission of “enabling creativity for all” is expanded through the campaign’s tagline – “Create what’s true to you.” (Adobe) By showing the artist making her own craft, Adobe, again, as discussed in the counterculture of the youth, evokes the importance of individuality, freedom of expression, and the ability to make people’s stories come true. The means to achieve these things are enabled through the commodity that are Adobe’s software.
The ideas of individualism are also further discussed in Goldman and Papson’s Sign Wars Chapter 5: Authenticity in The Age Of The Poseur. The most basic meaning that is associated with the advertisement is the sign – how people see and interpret the commodity being sold, and how they interpret themselves if they attach themselves to the commodity. In his book, they discuss extensively on “the quest for authenticity” of the consumer, who seem to seek in the brand the honest, pure, and a certain subjectivity that rings true to them. As such, in trying to sell the brand and their products, advertisers seek to make themselves identifiable to those consumers. The advertising of the brand then becomes a sort of “inflection.” Or as he wrote: “The bending and redirecting of social and cultural meaning to serve commodity brand name.” (P. 42)
The explicit meaning of the ad – the ability to create anything – and the implicit meaning – to be able to express oneself freely, makes Adobe seem like they’re promoting diversity and freedom, and people would associate the brand to such adjectives. Thus, people would see themselves using the brand because they are anti-conformation, anti-sameness. But that anti-sameness would be reflected in the sole use of their ecosystem of products, which strikes me as the incredible irony of advertising. I would argue that the mass-commodification of the Adobe brand takes advantage of the progressive ideals of individuality and freedom to benefit its own monopolistic behaviors. Adobe’s product is no stranger to the world of creative works, in fact, it boasted “Over 90% of the world’s creative professionals use Adobe Photoshop.” (Adobe) The social, and acceptable standard of the creative worker, implicitly spoken to them through the excessive advertisement of the brand, is the standard of Adobe.
However, we must also acknowledge that Adobe is not the only brand being advertised here. The other brand is that of Billie Eilish. The American pop star is one of Gen-Z’s biggest artists and singers, and is an outspoken feminist. Adobe, by associating themselves with the artist, also associate with her values and ideals. The feminist theme is shown through the array of her songs and music videos, with lyrics such as: “Abuse your power… Keep you in control/ For you to keep her in a cage?” The lyrics talk about the struggle of women in the modern age and the need to address and educate on these issues. Even though there isn't any direct mention of women or women empowerment in the ad, this is still done in another manner. Instead of “empowering women,” the ad “empower oneself.” In Banet Weiser’s Fun House Mirror, she describes this dynamic between “women” and “oneself” as the “crux of the current “confidence movement,” which aims to inspire self-confidence in girls and women.” (P. 48)
These messages are often tied to the consumption of the product, as if these ideas accompany the product as a cultural perk in the neoliberal age. The brand recognizes that the so-called empowered women have the power to consume, and that girls, when empowered or when they become confident, financially, will come back to cultivate their products. She wrote: “Girl power is not simply a commodity in its own right but also refers to girls as powerful consumers, who represent a primary market (where girls have their own income), a market of influencers (where girls influence their parents’ consumer choices), and a future market (where girls consumer loyalty is cultivated as future customers).” (P. 47) To the brand, by having campaigns that empower women, they are empowering their new valuable market, thus driving more profit while still riding on the culture/ counterculture wave at the time. However, the author still highlights that these campaigns are ultimately advertising campaigns, and that “these ads represent a fundamental shift in the neoliberal economy’s deployment of feminist politics and principles.” (P. 49) Meaning this shift, whether for economic gains, still represents a shift in how corporations perceive feminist politics in their image and culture.
In the case of Adobe’s ad, we can see this shift in the deployment of feminist politics in the fact that they are becoming less complex than just addressing the lack of confidence in girls and women, and that is to address the general audience to be oneself, to be confident. As Weiser also notes: “The message of these ads assumes that self-confidence is attainable for all women; it is within our grasp, we just need to reach for it.” (P. 54) In showing that girls and women like Billie Eilish can be confident enough to make their own world, it is also implicitly understood that every girl can be visible and acknowledged in society too. And also, by doing this, the brand benefits by avoiding being scrutinized, criticized by the male protectionists who desperately demand they get the same type of treatment, in and out of media and advertising.
To further look at this treatment towards feminism and counterculture, I’d like to borrow the concept of commodity fetishism by Karl Marx. In his essay The Fetishism Of The Commodity And Its Secrets, he defines the concept as commodities that bears meanings beyond their intended purpose, or “use-value” as he wrote it. By having meanings that transcends the ordinary purposes, the object therefore is mystified. He calls this the mysterious character of the commodity. This mysterious character, he noted, consists “simply in the fact that the commodity reflects the social characteristics of men’s own labor as objective characteristics of the product of labor themselves, as the socio-natural properties of these things.” Meaning, we determine objects that are glorified through the commodification process to have cultural meaning and social importance beyond the objective, or the very barebone, of their characteristics.
The Adobe brand and its line of product is therefore mystified. Through commodification, their characters are “fetishized” to the social circumstances under which they were produced and maintained. They transform from simple tools of editing images to become the representation of creativity, of individuality in self-expression, of the progressive politics and ideals that surround them. Their meanings and associations mutate to the likings of their producers, who answer to the constant stream of consumer culture. In the same logic, it would be sensible for Adobe’s product to re-establish themselves according to the next counterculture movement, in a less invasive way like they did with “empowering oneself” instead of women, and still maintain their “creativity for all” brand values.
Adobe’s ad featuring Billie Eilish deploys strategies that take advantage of the emerging culture (or the new culture that is counterculture) to sell their brand. With Billie Eilish as a partner, Adobe presents themselves as the go-to for any young and upcoming creative professionals. It’s interesting to analyze the underlying tactics as well as meanings behind their artist initiative, and it’s also exciting to see the direction the company is heading in terms of branding and marketing in the digital age.