Adobe is best known for…you guessed it, Photoshop. As we can see below it’s not just anecdotal: there’s almost as most interest in the world for their Photoshop product as the brand itself:
And who is most interested in Photoshop? Creatives, clearly an audience they need to embrace and market to for their product to thrive with the next generation. And yet Adobe basically turns their back on one of the most well-known cultural phenomenons behind their product: to Photoshop, Photoshopping or Photoshopped.
Go search the term Photoshopped – we’ll wait. What did you find? Not a page or a blog post from Adobe acknowledging the term or some ongoing contest or UGC site embracing the cultural phenomenon of Photoshopping sponsored by Adobe. That would be smart. No, instead you find some posts on great Photoshop jobs from popular blogs like Psdtuts and Smashing Apps.
But keep looking on the page and you will find a legal disclaimer page from Adobe, which basically communicates that Adobe wants no part in a pop-culture phenomenon having to do with their product:
The Photoshop trademark must never be used as a common verb or as a noun. The Photoshop trademark should always be capitalized and should never be used in possessive form or as a slang term. It should be used as an adjective to describe the product and should never be used in abbreviated form. The following examples illustrate these rules:
Trademarks are not verbs.
Correct: The image was enhanced using Adobe® Photoshop® software.
Incorrect: The image was photoshopped.Trademarks are not nouns.
Correct: The image pokes fun at the Senator.
Incorrect: The photoshop pokes fun at the Senator.Trademarks must never be used as slang terms.
Correct: Those who use Adobe® Photoshop® software to manipulate images as a hobby see their work as an art form.
Incorrect: A photoshopper sees his hobby as an art form.
Incorrect: My hobby is photoshopping.
Someone at Adobe thinks this is protecting their Trademark – by making sure no one uses it as a noun or verb. Yeah, that’s working out pretty bad for Google. Maybe someone can clue me in: how does flat out ignoring or disdaining how the world (and the web) like to talk about your product help? Also who talks like their “correct” versions of the term, seriously?
I know Adobe want to be more social, their Omniture team pinged me within about 5 minutes of mentioning the product on Twitter the other day. Really nice people.
So rather than “protecting your trademark” (not what this is doing anyway) why not actually embrace the fact that the web loves to Photoshop as a verb and start marketing to us in our own interpretation of the brand? To ignore Photoshopping (and to throw it on a legal page telling us how we should and should not use it) is basically saying you don’t like us being social with the product. And yet the product is used to produce half the memes around the web.
Seems like they are ignoring the opportunity to leverage a huge marketing asset to popularize the product with a new generation and are instead demonizing it or passively letting it happen. Either way, seems silly not to embrace it.