Adobe and Hasan Minhaj are here to liberate employees from the spatial and environmental confines of lethal and clunky office supplies. And they are channeling an oft-memed, cult classic film to do it—while simultaneously marking a milestone anniversary for the software giant’s most famous invention: The Acrobat PDF.

In “I Love you, Adobe,” the award-winning comedian, actor, producer, political commentator and television host confidently strolls through office cubicles introducing workers to a new way of working, sliding tablets on their desks and declaring “No more stickies, Jeremy,” saving another worker from cutting her tongue licking envelopes and teaching them how to “e-sign.”

This was really, really fun. It’s a really cool accomplishment.

Hasan Minhaj, actor, comedian

Chaos ensues, as the newly “freed” workers begin wreaking havoc on their cumbersome office supplies, prompted by Minhaj’s battle cry of “You’ve been drowning in paperwork. That ends today!” In a tongue-in-cheek nod to the 1999 comedy, “Office Space,” a woman takes a bat to a printer, a guy saws his desk in half after realizing he is now able to “work on the go,” and the upheaval leads to the “heave-ho” of a doomed filing cabinet out a window.

A standup pitchman

The spot, along with the amusingly meta “Fresh Scallops,” is part of the brand’s “Acrobat’s Got It” campaign, which was produced in-house. Both spots were directed by Josh Soskin of Ladybug, whom Minaj gave effusive praise when speaking with Adweek.

“Working with [Soskin] and working with Adobe … I just love doing creative innovative, boundary-pushing fun, cinematic work,” says Minhaj. “Working with the campaign was just a blast. This sounds really kind of Tom Hanks-y and folksy here … but I mean it. Just getting to do good work with amazing people. I’m very lucky to get a chance to do that, because there’s a lot of different things that I could be doing with my time, but this was really, really fun.”

The spots are available in 30 and 60-second versions and are currently running on Adobe’s website and social channels, including YouTube, and across linear during MLB games and PGA tournaments. Minhaj has also shared the campaign on his social channels. “Scallops”—which Minhaj told Adweek was inspired by Drake’s backstage rider requests—ran during the NBA Finals. A third, “behind the scenes” film will launch in August.

“When you have the right partner, there is a desire and an ambition to push [the creative],” said Minhaj. “You are able to have the size, scale and scope that you always don’t have in film and TV. And so, when they showed me the treatments, and they showed me that they were willing to kinda ‘go there,’ have a really stark, irreverent sense of humor, willing to break the fourth wall, I was like ‘Oh, this is gonna be great!’ This is gonna be something I feel could be entertaining [and] unique, but also it can totally satirize how ridiculous celebrity advertising can be forced or silly.”

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