Adobe Voice: Professional presentations without the creative agency

Powerpoints? That’s so old school.

Adobe wants to enable businesses to talk about their brand through interactive storytelling without having to hire a creative agency. Adobe’s solution? A new, free app for the iPad called Voice, which combines pre-made animation, graphics, photos, and narration tools to allow companies to easily create professional-grade videos. This is a different type of customer for the software company, but hints at its interest in a new audience.

“You don’t have to stare at a blank page, mess around with bullets and slides or film anything,” says the Adobe Voice team in a blog post. “You just record your voice, select beautiful icons and imagery and it’s all automatically combined with a soundtrack and cinematic-effects. All you have to do is tell the story. And the app takes care of the rest.”

Users can choose from different themes (such as a chalkboard or watercolor painting), more than 25,000 photos (or their own photos from their iPad library), and a variety of music options to create the look and feel of their brand. Then, they can add text and voiceover narration recorded directly into the iPad. Voice adds professional-looking effects automatically, such as smooth transitions, small animations, and motion blur.

Adobe points out that this can be helpful for businesses, nonprofits, and school projects.
 
“The story starter functions in Voice allow my students to quickly ascertain what their intent and purpose is,” says Jeff Larson, a high school teacher, about the app on the iTunes store. “It gives them a nice framework, and guides them step-by-step through what they want to say.” In a video of Mr. Larson’s class, students are able to create quick videos and share ideas about different issues using the app.

In anther video, Stephanie Kuoch, founder of Steppie Clothing and Accessories, shows how she can create videos with a personal touch, even while managing all the other aspects of her business.

“The best thing is the ability to use my voice to share my message with customers,” she says. “I’m able to recreate that personal connection.”

However, if businesses use this, they have to be careful to make the video unique. Users can’t add their own filmmaking, which means they’ll have to rely on the internal media library. Granted it is huge, but users will have to keep the vibe authentic to keep the video from looking like a scrolling reel of stock images. Adobe does include instructional prompts that help users determine the cause and intent of their video in order to keep the message streamlined. The really nice thing about Voice is that users don't have to worry about copyright issues – all images and music is from Creative Commons and Adobe automatically adds credit for all the media at the end.

Previously, Adobe has stayed more within the realm of professional creatives and major enterprise clients with programs such as Photoshop, AfterEffects, and Flash. This move indicates consideration for nonprofits, small businesses, students, and schools, groups without the budget for a graphic designer or outside creative agency, but who still want a stylish and professional way to present their story.

Recently, app and software companies have been toying with new ways to make the business world a bit more tech savvy. LinkedIn and organizational app company EverNote teamed up to create a business card scanning app that connects business cards to LinkedIn’s professional network and EverNote’s suite of applications.