Tech Stack Racer
View the case- Brand
- Adobe
- Year
- 2019
- Objective
- Engagement
- Industry
- Tech & Telecom
- Mechanic
- Puzzle
- Platform
- Installation
- Agency
- Thinkingbox
Objective
Adobe wanted a showpiece for Summit 2019 that could make the inner workings of its Experience Platform tech stack legible to an IT audience, while proving that IT and marketing teams could actually work side by side. The booth also needed to hold visitors at the demo stations and generate social buzz under #AdobeExperiencePlatform.
Solution
Two players — one standing in for IT, one for marketing — pick a difficulty level and land in one of seven customer scenarios, then face a marble-run track built from a string of puzzles, each representing a different piece of Adobe's stack. To send the ball rolling toward the next stage, the pair has to talk through each puzzle together, since neither role can crack it alone. A clock runs the whole time, with the pair racing to deliver the "best customer experience" in the shortest time. Finishing posts their time to a leaderboard that refreshes throughout the day, and the fastest team on each difficulty level takes home a gift card.
- 1
At the Adobe Experience Platform stand at Adobe Summit 2019, visitors are invited to play Tech Stack Racer, framed as a race to "deliver the best customer experience in the shortest time."
- 2
The player picks one of three difficulty levels; each level runs its own leaderboard and its own day's prizes.
- 3
The player is assigned one of seven everyday scenarios, a real-life situation used to illustrate how Adobe's tech stack shows up in daily life.
- 4
The game runs as a marble-run: a ball travels along a track and stops at each stage until the player clears that stage's puzzle.
- 5
A scenario is built from nine such puzzles in sequence, each one representing a different component of the Adobe technology stack.
- 6
Puzzles are solved in pairs — an IT-side and a marketing-side participant must act together, or the ball does not advance.
- 7
The run is timed: clearing the scenario faster earns a higher spot on that level's leaderboard, which updates through the day.
- 8
Whoever tops the leaderboard on one level is invited to also play the remaining two difficulty levels, repeating the same loop.
- 9
At the end of each day, the top scorer on each of the three levels receives a gift card.
- 10
As a side mechanic, players can post a photo or video of their run publicly on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn with the hashtag #AdobeExperiencePlatform to enter separate prize drawings held at set times.
