Adobe's Make The Cut

How Adobe convinced 9k users to spend hundreds of hours of their free time.

The ask was to come up with something *fun* and social to celebrate Premiere Pro's 25th anniversary. At first glance we thought, perfect, that's one step up from celebrating national soup month. Why would anyone want to celebrate an editing software's anniversary.

And then it evolved.

We collaborated with the band Imagine Dragons to launch the first ever fan-edited music video contest. Fans were given hours of raw, uncut professional quality footage wrapped up with a terabyte bow and asked to use Premiere Pro to edit their own version of Imagine Dragon's Believer for a chance to win $25,000.

Happy anniversary. We know 25 is supposed to be silver, hope you're okay with gold.

There was Dolph Lundgren...

yes THAT Dolph

And these guys...

My neighbors hated me, my dog hated me, maybe I even hated myself a little (?) but after screening almost 9k video submissions day and night we finally found the winner.