Adobe Systems Inc. has introduced a promotion with online education portal and service bigchalk.com Inc. to feature Adobe’s LiveMotion design tool to teachers, parents and students online.
Called the Adobe LogoMotion Contest, the promo at www.bigchalk.com/bc/adobe encourages participants to design original multimedia logos for school activities. Users are offered a free 30-day product trial and a chance to win LiveMotion and other Adobe products such as PhotoShop, GoLive and Illustrator.
The deal is part of the 1-year-old bigchalk.com's strategy to partner with traditional brands striving to tap the online K-12 education market. Previous site sponsors include Visa International, Office Depot, Gateway and McGraw-Hill Cos.
“It's a sponsorship opportunity. That's what we're seeking,” said Nan Halperin, vice president of Web sales and marketing at bigchalk.com, New York. “It's meant to associate bigchalk.com with premium companies who want to be perceived well in the education market.”
The LogoMotion contest targets teen-age students and teachers to create logos for their school Web sites, clubs, sports teams, yearbooks or school newspapers. Participants can use a combination of sound, artwork and motion in their designs by downloading a free trial version of the LiveMotion software.
A new product, the software is a Web design package for creating interactive graphics and animation. LogoMotion participants can download the software via a link on bigchalk.com from www.adobe.com/products/livemotion/tryreg.html.
Once bigchalk users download the LiveMotion software, they can animate any graphic for export as a macromedia Flash file. After creating the logo, users can post it on a Web site or a site created on bigchalk.com. The logo can be sent to bigchalk.com as a JPG, GIF or SWF file.
A panel of judges will award prizes to 10 winners whose work is scaled for execution, ability, technical expertise and originality. Three grand-prize winners will get the Adobe Web Collection, a package comprising PhotoShop, LiveMotion, GoLive and Illustrator. Seven runners-up can choose any one of these software products.
Grand-prize winners also get their logos displayed on bigchalk.com and the Adobe site at www.adobe.com/education. The contest runs through March 31.
The U.S. education market is an increasingly important focus for brands such as Adobe. These marketers hope to introduce their brands to children at an early, impressionable age so they remain loyal customers as adults.
According to industry statistics, the United States has 53 million students in kindergarten through 12th grades. In addition, there are 50 million parents — decision-makers whose buying choices are often influenced by their children.
In all, the domestic education market for buildings, supplies, computers, books and fees, among other items, is an estimated $500 billion industry. It is this market that bigchalk.com seeks to tap through efforts such as the Adobe promotion, on-site advertising and subscription fees from schools.
Styled as an education destination, bigchalk.com offers its audience content, community and curriculum. It has both subscription-based and free learning tools. The tools include the bigchalk Retriever search service, Homework Central, Media Seek, the eLibrary reference service for students and ProQuest products for research.
Halperin said mothers accounted for 67 percent of the roughly 600,000 unique visitors to bigchalk.com in December. The rest was split between teachers and students. The site also sends weekly e-mails to 175,000 users who registered for newsletters.
