Experience Maker Awards: Changemaker and Illuminator finalists demonstrate the power of purpose

Digital experiences can have real impact: A video will inspire someone to donate blood, and a well-designed website can help displaced workers more easily receive financial aid. The Adobe customers selected as the 2021 Adobe Experience Maker Awards’ Changemaker and Illuminator finalists demonstrate how they use technology to build better experiences to help create a better world.

The Changemaker

The Changemaker award highlights Adobe customers who have revolutionized their digital experiences to drive social or environmental impact. Each of this year’s finalists have delivered breakthrough experiences to help their communities.

• Winner - The American Red Cross (ARC) is driving a national push for blood donations by migrating redcross.org and redcrossblood.org onto one platform to make it easier for potential donors to sign up and save lives. Using real-time data and targeted messaging via Adobe Experience Cloud, ARC created personalized appeals for prospective donors, such as videos promoting donation to help sickle cell disease patients in the Black community while seamlessly enabling donors to make an appointment. ARC also uses the new streamlined platform, along with strong audience segmentation, to respond more effectively during natural disasters. Through Adobe Analytics, ARC has created an app that provides dashboards and real-time performance metrics to leadership, even while they’re working in a disaster area.
• University of the People (UoPeople) is the first non-profit, tuition-free online university, helping qualified high school graduates from underserved communities overcome barriers to college education and job placement. UoPeople initiated a digital marketing campaign that expanded enrollment from 200 students to over 65,000 and lowered the acquisition cost per student to just $60, or less than 1 percent of the market average. UoPeople uses Adobe Experience Cloud solutions to support a fully automated recruitment engagement system that nurtures students throughout the entire enrollment process — creating experiences that help students feel individually valued.
• Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) leverages its strongest asset, its customer profile database, to provide a valuable public health service. Employing analytics and targeting through Adobe Experience Cloud, WBA greatly expanded its touchless experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic by sharing products and services most relevant to shoppers’ interests. With its new myWalgreens app, which is approaching 70 million downloads, it’s giving customers information about the COVID-19 vaccine, helping them schedule appointments via an online portal, and checking in with them after they’ve received their shots.

The Illuminator

The Illuminator award celebrates Adobe customers who lit a path forward through unexpected and unprecedented circumstances. With every aspect of public life impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, Illuminator finalists were able to quickly adapt during crisis to continue to serve communities and help individuals during unprecedented circumstances.

• Winner - At the onset of the pandemic, the United States Census Bureau had to quickly move its long-standing, paper-based methods to the census.gov and 2020census.gov websites. The Bureau used several Adobe Experience Cloud applications to create more intuitive, personalized site navigation, making it easy and more secure for mobile users, who accounted for 80 percent of traffic. Relying less on census takers in the field, the Bureau turned to digital outreach. Insights from Adobe tools enabled the Bureau to pinpoint optimal messaging that would unite broad demographics around the shared objective to stand up and be counted in the Census.
• The Investment Bank of Berlin (IBB) became a lifeline to Berliners who lost jobs or were put on leave because of the pandemic. Charged with distributing government aid to 650,000 workers, IBB relied on Adobe Experience Cloud to create and deliver a website that could handle mass applications by reducing abandonment rates and processing times, as well as simplify site navigation to minimize visitor errors and confusion. Immediately after the site went live, IBB was able to process up to 6,000 applications per hour, a capability that kept many Berliners from insolvency.
• The Swinburne University Open Day event is a rite of passage for Australian students considering college, one that even a global pandemic couldn’t fully shut down. In less than 12 weeks, the university moved the event online by modeling an immersive experience on the popular Animal Crossing video game. Built and promoted through Adobe Experience Cloud applications, “Swintopia” let prospective students explore the campus, talk to avatars of students and faculty, watch videos, add study guides, and complete fun missions for discount vouchers. Though students didn’t have the full Open Day on-campus experience, 86 percent of students reported high satisfaction with Swintopia.

Don’t miss out

Join us in celebrating these phenomenal finalists! Attend the livestreamed 2021 Adobe Experience Maker Awards Gala.

Mark your calendar for two exclusive virtual events where we will honor finalists and announce our award winners.

RSVP today on LinkedIn:

• Wednesday, June 23 from 5pm – 6:15pm PDT (AMER, LATAM, JAPAC, INDIA) RSVP here.
• Thursday, June 24 from 4pm – 5pm BST (EMEA) RSVP here.

We look forward to shining the spotlight on this year’s inspirational finalists and winners!