Adobe and Canva make their mark with marketers

Adobe announced last week that it’s buying design platform Figma for $20 billion (or roughly half a Twitter). The news came shortly after Canva announced an expansion of its user-friendly design suite.

A Figma of Adobe’s imagination: Adobe shares suffered after the acquisition announcement, but Adobe’s President David Wadhwani cited the deal’s “massive” market opportunity in an interview with Bloomberg Television.

• The acquisition feels necessary for the Photoshop creator. Once the leader in the design space, Adobe’s products don’t have the same collaborative capabilities as competitors.
• That’s where Figma comes in. The software is already used at companies like Airbnb, Microsoft, and Salesforce. It provides powerful tools for streamlining collaboration.
• But why try when you can buy? Purchasing Figma eliminates it as a competitor, helps Adobe’s coworking hiccups, and offers Figma’s cool factor to Adobe’s tools.

A blank Canva: Valued last year at $40 billion (or approximately one Twitter), Canva offers a fresher alternative to Adobe, and building out a creative suite will streamline Canva use the same way Adobe hopes Figma will.

• Canva’s co-founder Cliff Obrecht told TechCrunch that the company is “not trying to compete head to head with Google Docs,” and will focus instead on visual tools, improving its offerings for the 85% of Fortune 500 companies that TechCrunch reports are already using Canva.

Drawing comparisons: “These moves are all about collaboration and ease of use,” our analyst Dave Frankland said. “Easy-to-use and no-code solutions are gaining traction quickly.”

Canva’s growing at a time when a lot of companies are struggling, but Adobe has the legacy factor. The question now is if it can integrate its and Figma’s users successfully, something it’s done before with its acquisitions of Marketo and Workfront. However, that $20 billion price tag could raise the eyes of antitrust watchdogs.

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