Adobe Success Story

Dividi Projects uses Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro Extended to create rich-media PDF files and PDF Portfolios that raise the standard of quality and interactivity in business communications

Rich-media customer engagement
Dividi Projects creates interactive, rich-media PDF documents, e-brochures, and presentations for corporations and organizations. The company began by delivering projects on DVD, but after investing in a range of Adobe solutions, Founder Harry Hemus quickly discovered that he could improve how clients deploy their marketing and communications projects using Adobe Acrobat software.

Benefits

• Enabled clients to unlock their digital assets and improve communications
• Combined virtually any type of media asset into a universally accessible file for easy viewing
• Reduced costs to assemble and deliver interactive communications
• Enabled recipients to reliably view rich-media content exactly as intended
• Expanded access to dynamic, easy-to-navigate content

Project Details

While clients increasingly implemented digital asset management systems, these systems were often used simply as repositories. The assets remained locked within the systems and were not used to engage audiences in more meaningful and powerful ways. “Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) technology offers tremendous opportunities to unlock the value of digital assets,” says Hemus. “Using Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro Extended to combine and present video, audio, and other digital assets within rich-media PDF files increases the overall impact of business communications so work stands out.”

With its focus on helping organizations deliver information simply and intuitively, Dividi uses PDF to optimize digital content. Increasingly, the company has seen client demand shift towards the creation of rich, interactive PDF documents, as well as PDF Portfolios, using Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro Extended software. The media-rich PDF files are much smaller than files in native formats and are instantly accessible to anyone using the ubiquitous, free Adobe Reader software.

Leveraging digital assets
With the use of interactive PDF documents, Dividi helps ensure that clients maintain the highest levels of branding and graphical design to engage and communicate more effectively with their target audiences. For Dividi clients, realizing added value and return on investment from the digital assets they already possess has proved to be the catalyst for continuing and expanding reliance on PDF.

Using Acrobat 9 Pro Extended in combination with components of Adobe Creative Suite, Dividi is transforming what is possible when it comes to delivering powerful, engaging content, without the expense and time typically involved with authoring DVDs or designing and developing full websites. Adobe PDF documents allow businesses, organizations, and individuals to take full advantage of digital assets for effective communications.

Dividi’s business increasingly focuses on creating rich-media commodities, presentations, and other materials using the multimedia functionality in Acrobat 9 Pro Extended software. Professionally designed PDF Portfolio templates also make it easy to combine a range of content into a branded package.

On a recent project, Hemus worked closely with designer Steve Knee, www.bladeweb.co.uk, who has produced outstanding design work for world-famous musician David Gilmour. Based on his experience of delivering rich-media content in PDF, Hemus realized that the format could be leveraged to package audio and compelling media in a single, compact file.

Knee created a first draft compilation of music, images, and text highlighting Gilmour’s performance of “A Great Day for Freedom” at his Live in Gdansk concert. Hemus then assembled the content into a rich-media PDF file, which is available online at www.davidgilmour.com/freedom/index.htm.

All of the music and images highlighted in the file were owned by David Gilmour and released by him as part of his Live in Gdansk CD and DVD project.

Explains Hemus, “PDF provides an additional cost-effective way to enable people to enjoy the experience of listening to music and building a music library, replicating the experience of CD and DVD and more, but as a digital download. It can mean savings for consumers, as well as for music producers.”

High-impact internal communications
The interactive PDF documents created by Dividi help clients stand out from the crowd. They also help ensure that client audiences will be able to view the content exactly as envisioned by the designer and author. “Using Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro Extended we can design dynamic, interactive PDF files and then build PDF Portfolios that enable users to easily navigate through the materials to reach the content that is most pertinent to them,” explains Hemus.

Hemus works closely with CW Corporate Communications (CW), a leading U.K. communications agency that specializes in developing internal and external business communications for major brands and large organizations. Over the past few years, the firm has noticed an increased demand for online corporate communications. “We wanted to give our clients more interactive and compelling ways to deliver newsletters and journals,” says Nigel Curtis, managing director at CW.

Hemus demonstrated what is possible today with interactive, rich-media PDF files, and CW was sold. “The wide adoption of Adobe Reader software makes dynamic PDF files a non-threatening way to add rich-media to electronic communications,” explains Curtis. “The focus now in internal communication is on employee engagement. The interactive PDF files created in Adobe Acrobat 9 help organizations deliver effective business messages full of dynamic content to audiences anywhere.”

To test reader responsiveness, CW conducted research with a local university. Participants received a traditional newsletter, a PowerPoint newsletter, a text e-mail, an HTML e-mail, and an interactive PDF document. “There was a clear preference for HTML and interactive PDF newsletters compared to other communication methods with nearly 70% of respondents perceiving the PDF version to be equally or more desirable than the HTML version,” says Curtis.

Familiar functionality
Interactive buttons and simple menus help readers quickly access the information they need, replicating a DVD user experience in an e-mail attachment. PDF documents also help ensure that recipients can reliably access the content, regardless of their computing platform, operating system, or applications. In addition, there has also been increased demand to include PDF forms as part of rich-media experiences, enabling clients to quickly obtain feedback and collect data.

For instance, CW has used PDF forms in client projects to streamline collecting feedback from recipients. One CW client collects training feedback using PDF forms and saves hours that would have been spent tracking responses and inputting data into spreadsheets. “People are amazed when they see what can be done with PDF,” says Hemus.

A big advantage of using interactive PDF files is the ability to add virtually any type of media, from graphics to video and audio. However, adding this rich-media capability doesn’t make navigation any more difficult. Menu-driven files actually help users access information faster than in traditional newsletters, where they have to scroll through pages of text to find the information they need.

By tapping into a wide variety of digital assets to create compelling, easily accessed PDF files and PDF Portfolios for clients, Dividi raises the bar for service by differentiating its clients’ communication strategies and helping to ensure they reach intended audiences with high-impact, memorable information.

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