Adobe’s Hilarious ‘Office Space’ Sendup Starring Hasan Minhaj Is a Tribute to 30 Years of the PDF

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.”

PDA for PDFs

For Minhaj, the opportunity to partner with Adobe on the campaign and collaborate with them in the making of the creative in celebration of the PDF’s 30th anniversary was one that left him feeling “really touched,” although he admits to actively using the product in his everyday life for “call sheets, film scripts and standup scripts.”

Fun fact: Among those scripts was the recent blockbuster, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-verse. Minhaj told Adweek he was brought on to help authenticate the storyline of the film’s Indian Spiderman; a full circle moment for him after making the 2012 short film, “Indian Spiderman,” in which he played “Hasan Peter Patel.”

“[Acrobat] touches every part of my creative life and personal life,” he says, while also citing that growing up in Northern California, many of his family and friends worked in Silicon Valley, giving him an extra soft spot for tech and innovation.

“I know how much blood, sweat, tears and effort go into product launches, and how difficult it is to create a piece of software or hardware that lasts the test of time,” says Minhaj. “So, the fact that Adobe reached out, and the fact that Acrobat has been around for 30 years and going … yeah, it’s a really cool accomplishment to go, ’Yeah, they asked me to be a part of that campaign’ … it’s a nice little feather in the hat, and I appreciate it.”

He continued, “I know that brands have a very long list of people that they want to work with. And the fact they wanted to work with me on this iconic achievement in their software legacy means a lot. Like, that’s really cool.”

Another thing he found really cool…smashing the printer.

“You gotta love an ‘Office Space’ moment. Getting to destroy an office was great. Anytime you can just get that middle-management aggression out … is always a plus. It was a good shoot.”