Unleashing creativity in all employees.

Combining Japanese innovation with a multinational presence, dentsu has become one of the world’s top marketing and advertising agencies known for its ability to disrupt the status quo and find creative new ways for brands to connect with their clients. With more than 72,000 employees in 145 markets, dentsu has the diversity, scale and expertise to handle demands from even the world’s biggest brands.

The company has grown significantly through acquisitions, bringing some of the world’s top agencies under the dentsu umbrella. It is the job of Sakura Martin, Global Brand and Design Lead at dentsu, to make sure that people working in every location feel a part of the dentsu family and deliver communications that adhere to driving consistency in the way dentsu shows up, regardless of location.

“The scale of the company is one of the most exciting parts of working at dentsu,” says Martin. “We get an opportunity to work on really unique challenges for clients, from global campaigns to niche requests. We want employees to be proud of the distinct value that they bring to clients.”

Dentsu recently reinforced its brand by consolidating and reorganising agencies into six main brands across international markets. As part of this initiative, Martin and her team took a closer look at how they could strengthen branding standards and encourage greater consistency across the agency. Through use of Adobe Creative Cloud Libraries and templates across Creative Cloud apps, designers can quickly find the right colours, fonts, layouts, stock images and other assets to create on-brand content.

But with a growing demand for dentsu to deliver marketing, news and thought leadership content across social media, newsletters, websites and other digital channels, designers couldn’t handle the workload alone. The company wanted to empower employees in non-design roles, such as marketers, to produce their own content without relying solely on designers.

“With the introduction of Adobe Express, people in all roles gain access to an all-in-one editor that allows them to deliver consistent, on-brand messaging easier and faster,” says Martin.

Unleashing creativity from all employees

Adobe Express makes it easy for anyone at dentsu to create their own visual assets, from static graphics to animations and video. Designers create branded templates for different types of content that marketers may need, from YouTube video thumbnails to profiles introducing new hires. Marketers can then use the online app to pull up the template and change out images and text as needed. The templates are stored in libraries along with other branded content, including thousands of approved images pulled from Adobe Stock, allowing marketers to deliver the same consistent, branded content as designers.

“Adobe Express handles creative details that a non-designer may not be familiar with, such as exporting graphics in various sizes and aspect ratios for different types of social media,” says Martin. “We can get things right the first time and spend less time in reviews. By empowering marketers to handle edits or even end-to-end content creation on their own, we accelerate time to market by 70%.”

Marketers can also collaborate with designers through the app. Designers can make a banner, infographic or other creative asset using Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator as normal. Then they can upload it to Adobe Express, where marketers can edit the work to make changes such as correcting dates or updating sales metrics. Marketers don’t need full access to Adobe Creative Cloud to make the edits by themselves and designers don’t need to spend time trying to fit in last- minute changes.

Danika Gregg, dentsu’s Global Social Impact Communications Director, finds that the ability to create her own content for social media or internal newsletters is a big time-saver. “I no longer need to schedule meetings with a designer or wait for changes,” says Gregg. “That frees up my time to focus on more strategic brand building initiatives that elevates dentsu’s reputation as a sustainability leader.”

Bringing value to clients

Now that marketers can handle creative work by themselves, designers can focus their energy on more complex design work. They spend less time keeping on top of emails for minor feedback or making simple videos for social media.

“In total, marketers now take on about 20% of the content previously handed over to designers,” says Martin. “That’s hours of time that designers can reclaim to keep focused on work that delivers real business impact.”

Based on feedback from marketers, they are also eager to learn new creative skills. Adobe Express gives guidelines that help them to create something that not only meets brand standards, but looks beautiful and engaging. This makes it easier for marketers to expand their expertise as they learn how to create a video, incorporate animations into a presentation or take on more creative projects by themselves.

“I find that I’m growing my creative skills. I can add animations to a social post, remove background from headshots and edit together short video clips,” adds Gregg. “Since I can do it myself, I’m adding more creative content to communications, which can help to translate dense ideas and hopefully increase engagement over written statement.”

Freedom to experiment with generative AI

While Adobe Express is easy enough for non-designers, designers also use the app to create graphics quickly. In particular, features powered by Adobe Firefly generative AI such as Generate Image and Generate Text Effect can help them to iterate, mock up content and deliver something impactful on a tight schedule.

Before big events such as the Cannes Lions Awards Festival, Martin typically spends time creating numerous mockups for posts related to the event. Normally, these mockups involve simple sketches and diagrams. But with Firefly, she can quickly play with designs, adding or changing elements in minutes to create multiple versions of posts.

“Adobe Firefly gives me a whole new way of working,” says Martin. “I can try out new ideas very quickly and they look much closer to the final results compared to my quick sketches. I get more meaningful feedback because everyone can see what I’m imagining.”

Whether collaborating with colleagues or working on their own, Adobe Express gives designers and non-designers alike the freedom to be creative and still work fast.

“Dentsu operates at massive scale so anything that we can do to improve productivity has a significant impact,” says Martin. “By empowering all employees to become efficient brand content creators, we help people focus on doing their best work and bring value to our clients.”

Expand your knowledge

Sakura Martin, dentsu’s Global Brand & Design Lead, shows how you can enable non-designers to self-serve on-brand, engaging content using assets and templates created by your design team - and keep your designers focused on work that delivers real business impact: Empower Your Design Team for Strategic Impact.

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