Fotoshop by Adobe’

You’ve likely seen this video, it exploded on the internet one January and made all the rounds (HuffPo, Yahoo, etc). Jesse Rosten and I toyed with this one for a while after he announced that he wanted to make an “infauxmercial” about Photoshop as an actual beauty product. We went back and forth between taking the long-form infomercial tone (“but wait there’s more!”) and sticking with the shorter form Cover Girl-style (“it won’t rub off!”). In the end it struck a nice balance and clearly struck a nerve, based on the worldwide response. We researched magazine ads, watched makeup commercials, and gradually got more confused about our own self-worth. The warped spelling and pronunciation of “Photoshop” and “Adobe” was a reference to beauty products’ tendencies to ‘frenchify’ things. There was a series of actual-user testimonials we wrote that hit the cutting room floor – my favorite was the woman explaining all of Fotoshop’s cosmetic benefits and “oh yeah, I used to be a man.” This was a tightrope-walking challenge: it had to be smart and silly and subtle enough to not be preachy. We wrote a lot and Jesse took it from there to create something that started out looking like a real product, but spun into satire. Obviously, it was a fun one. My totally couture, home-sewn silver curtain even features prominently!