Setting marketers up for success.

From top global names including Nike and Adobe to non-profits changing the world, organizations of all sizes turn to agency Owen Jones to create compelling brand experiences. Owen Jones stands out for its commitment to developing strategies, campaigns, and visuals that sustain brands into the future.

“We focus on relationships at every level,” says Stacy Westbrook, Vice President of Strategy at Owen Jones. “We want to set everyone up for success, whether it’s improving our team members’ quality of life or making it easier for clients to provide their customers with outstanding brand experiences.”

Owen Jones’ clients require visually stimulating campaigns — supported by thoughtful brand guidelines — that reach audiences where they are. As a result, designers constantly develop, resize, review, and deliver content for a variety of channels and devices.

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“Changing content demands made us rethink how we work with clients,” says Hari Khalsa, Senior Producer at Owen Jones. “Rather than doing everything ourselves, it makes more sense to work alongside clients to help them reach the scale and speed they need. We can provide high-level creative strategy and design expertise, and then empower clients to create the specific messaging themselves.”

Owen Jones relies on Adobe Creative Cloud apps for its work, whether designing logos with Illustrator or editing background imagery with Photoshop. With Adobe Express, the agency sees potential to revolutionize content creation. It puts client teams in the driver’s seat for production, while maintaining high-quality branding with elements developed by the agency’s creative professionals.

“Adobe Express is fast, flexible, and easy to use. Clients’ marketing teams can handle edits and iterations on their own, giving them greater control,” says Grace Young, Director of Accounts at Owen Jones. “It also frees up time for our creative experts to focus more on addressing our clients’ big strategy and design questions.”

Adobe Express seasonal templates for Adobe Stock team.
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Self-service creative assets for marketing teams

Rather than handing off a list of static final files, the agency provides clients with editable assets, easy-to-use templates, and brand kits that include fonts, colors, logos, and approved imagery. When marketers need to make a last-minute adjustment to an asset — such as changing an announcement date or rewriting banner copy — they don’t have to go back to Owen Jones. They do it themselves, at any time, to keep their campaigns on schedule.

The Adobe Substance 3D social media team, an Owen Jones client, often works on tight timelines to keep audiences informed about new product features. The team no longer needs to start from scratch to create professional-looking, branded content. Instead they rearrange elements from the brand kit to meet deadlines and focus on creative messaging.

Adobe Express social media templates for Adobe Substance 3D team.
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Owen Jones regularly works on seasonal campaigns for Adobe Stock. Originally commissioned to create assets for the winter campaign, the agency realized it could instead develop more flexible kits with assets for every season. Marketers on the Adobe Stock team easily switch out images, change copy, and create designs used throughout the year, without needing to take up designers' time with slight variations on assets.

“The big potential time savings for clients comes through iteration with Adobe Express,” says Khalsa. “Marketers can adjust messages at any time — something that’s especially helpful for brands wanting to do a lot of testing. It’s reduced our involvement by half, which means clients can work faster and for less cost.”

Adobe Express templates.
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Putting localization in the hands of experts

Owen Jones sees the biggest benefits when dealing with localizations. Using Adobe Express, the agency puts localization teams directly in charge of creating each asset, improving accuracy and speeding up production.

Previously, when localizing a campaign, Owen Jones sent a copy of the asset to localization teams and created a spreadsheet to gather incoming translations. Designers like Senior Designer Carly Fister carefully copied and pasted the new text onto the asset. The tedious work frequently required revisions, such as adjusting a line break in an unfamiliar language.

“Now we upload an asset and localization teams change the text themselves,” says Fister. “With Adobe Express, clients put the people with the knowledge and skills in charge of making necessary changes to an asset. They get it right the first time, which is a huge boost to content velocity for their campaigns, and designers like myself can focus on more impactful creative jobs.”

Driving innovation and efficiency with generative AI

As content demand grows, Owen Jones designers are excited by features powered by the generative AI model Adobe Firefly to work faster. The Generative Expand feature in Photoshop uses generative AI to extend a background horizontally or vertically, allowing designers to use images for assets of any aspect ratio. Designers might also expand the background of an image to add more neutral space for copy, rather than simply fading to white. The agency also used Super Resolution for an Adobe event to increase resolution and make images appear crisp on seven-foot-tall banners.

“Generative AI saves designers time spent searching for image options or trying to find manual workarounds,” says David Feldkamp, Associate Creative Director at Owen Jones. “Generate Image in Adobe Firefly supports early ideation as we generate rough drafts in seconds to determine whether our ideas will work. We’re excited to explore how generative AI in Firefly can be a powerful tool in a creative agency's toolbox, driving innovation, increasing efficiency, and creating more room for strategic thinking.”

Speed and flexibility for clients

While Owen Jones first implemented the Adobe Express workflow with its Adobe client teams, the hope is to expand the workflow to more client projects. Small clients and non-profits can self-serve more easily and save time and costs. Larger clients dealing with high volumes, fast content velocity, and lots of testing can use Adobe Express to scale efficiently. And in all cases, organizations can get bigger returns from their creative budgets by asking Owen Jones to take on more strategic campaign initiatives rather than endless edits and iterations.

“Our goal is to deliver files about 15% faster and cut the total time to make revisions by about 40%,” says Westbrook. “Using Adobe Express to distribute work and empower marketers sets our clients up for long-term success as partners in creative production.”

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