ABB empowers global teams to create faster with Adobe Express

Kristen Smith has built a career around purposeful design and visual creativity. As director of Creative and Visual Storytelling within ABB, she partners with communication teams worldwide, developing messaging that not only aligns with the brand but also incorporates her unique sense of art and design.

ABB is a 140-year-old global technology leader in electrification and automation, with a focus on a sustainable and resource-efficient future. The company’s solutions connect engineering and software to optimize how things are manufactured, moved, powered, and operated. More than 105,000 employees are committed to driving innovations that accelerate industrial transformation.

That vision is delivered by individuals around the world who specialize in communications, ensuring effective messaging to both coworkers and customers.

Many of ABB’s communicators work on small teams in different countries with varying resources. With that in mind, Smith is looking to Adobe Express to help execute with the right balance of speed, creativity, and control. Working in conjunction with the rest of the Adobe Creative Cloud apps and services, the all-in-one content creation app helps the team deliver high-quality, branded, and localized content faster than ever.

Breaking engagement records on social

Smith recently used Adobe Express for a week-long Countdown to Earth Day campaign delivered over LinkedIn to celebrate ABB’s commitment to sustainability. She created basic infographic panels using templates sized perfectly for display on LinkedIn. The visuals include infographics created in Adobe Illustrator, corporate photography, and a mix of AI and traditional imagery pulled from Adobe Stock. For videos, she used the built-in captioning capability to generate subtitles, increasing its reach and engagement in minutes.

“We achieved engagement rates up to 21 percent during the campaign — 6X higher compared to regular engagement,” says Smith. “Part of this success comes from learning to work so quickly with Adobe Express. I had a lot of time to experiment with more creative designs and could elevate the quality of my work.”

Smith multiplied time and money savings when localizing the campaign into Norwegian and French. Localization typically involves multiple rounds of reviews and communicating with vendors across time zones. Prior to adopting Adobe Express, it could take up to eight days for Smith to work through all of the design edits and deliver translated final assets to local teams.

For the Earth Day campaign, Smith ran the text through automated translation and exported the infographics as PDF files. This streamlined workflow helped her send the files to the regional reviewers in just 30 minutes.

“I can’t put a value on the time savings,” says Smith. “It’s literally the difference between ‘yes’ and ‘no’ when it comes to getting localized assets out the door.”

Keeping an enterprise on brand

Smith champions the broader use of Adobe Express within ABB teams, emphasizing the benefits of developing libraries and templates to inspire teams to produce more assets without needing outside help.

Ninoska Tippet, Marketing and Communications specialist supporting the Electrification Smart Building group, started using Adobe Express to create short videos for social media. Tippet says, “Libraries help us keep content on brand with little effort, making sure that we’re consistent in how we represent our company.” She’s interested in exploring how generative AI tools powered by Adobe Firefly, such as the ability to remove backgrounds, will help her become even more efficient.

Templates not only help to solidify branding but also empower anyone to produce well-designed assets in significantly less time. In his role as the Program manager for University Relations and Early Talent, Jim Saulsbury leverages social media to showcase university engagement activities. He views templates as a valuable tool to create polished, brand-aligned social media posts for use across their corporate channels.

“I was surprised by how easy Adobe Express is to use and how much more robust it feels compared to other tools,” says Saulsbury. “Between the templates and ease of use, we have more opportunity to create our own content.”

Behind the scenes, Anna Janas, Global IS Graphics and Multimedia Tools manager, and the ABB Global IS team bridge the technology relationship with Adobe. “A lot of work has been done in the background to enable this solution at ABB, including promoting its adoption on a global level. We are also working on trainings and integration with our Brand Portal, including the templates that have already been added to Adobe Express.”

Connecting with the Creative Cloud ecosystem

While Express has everything needed to create content all in one app, designers can still take advantage of the Creative Cloud ecosystem of products and services. As the Multimedia producer, Motion System Drives at ABB, Julie Macie frequently works on videos to attract more eyes to corporate ideas.

While Macie prefers Adobe Premiere Pro for longer, more complex edits, she has started using Adobe Express for simpler videos and social media projects. She imports sequences from Premiere Pro and vectors from Illustrator into Adobe Express where she adds animations, transitions, and voiceovers.

“Our teams are starting to really embrace video for its power to explain complex ideas in a creative way,” says Macie. “As animation and video become more in demand, Adobe Express will save us a lot of time, especially for social media posts where the ability to quickly resize assets can triple production speed.”

Empowering teams to become storytellers

Working with Adobe Express, a growing number of people across ABB are gaining the power to deliver creative, on brand communications faster and with less effort.

“What’s so great about Adobe Express is that I have time to try things that I never would have done before,” says Smith. “It’s beyond empowering as a creative — it’s game changing. Adobe Express is the difference that allows us to grow and bring ABB content to more audiences.”

Learn more about Adobe Express for business here.