Spotlight

Forge in 5

Learn how Catchy brought the "Forge in 5" video tutorial series to life as a content solution to increase product awareness among Atlassian developers.

“Forge in 5” is a series of video tutorials showing developers how to use Atlassian’s new app development platform, Forge. As a cloud-based solution, Forge makes life easier for developers by simplifying the app-building process and building in tools for efficiency and security. Since it’s a complex platform, these tutorials aim to help developers understand what it is, what it does, and how to implement it.

Tutorials are an essential element of any developer marketing content mix but often one of the hardest to get right. It takes a blend of science and art to ensure they’re useful for your audience and effectively driving awareness for your brand. A highly-focused decision-making process is critical.

“Forge in 5” resulted from a strategic and creative process focused on Atlassian’s objectives and the needs of their developer audience. It’s a one-of-a-kind tutorial series to address a one-of-a-kind challenge.

Where “Forge in 5” Started

Our team started this project by learning everything we could about the Atlassian Ecosystem, Marketplace, and the Marketplace Partners, or third-party app developers, that engage with it. Through an extensive research process, we investigated the Forge product rollout and the challenges that came along with it, building profiles around the potential business disruptions, technical challenges, and user sentiment.

From there, we completed a competitive analysis and content audit to identify where Atlassian had communication gaps and opportunities for improvement. This process provided the foundation for our resulting content strategy and recommendations across creative concepts and messaging.

Specifically, we saw a unique opportunity to use tutorials to simplify the Forge story and bring new developers on board.

A Note on Video Tutorials

In developer surveys, video content is the most sought-after type of information, outranking written articles and case studies. When used for tutorials, it provides a platform for simple, visually appealing messaging that can reach specific audience segments, particularly developers engaging with a new product. Video tutorials are great for explaining complex subjects, making them easy to understand for beginners or anyone considering adoption.

How the Project Came to Life

The biggest challenge with the “Forge in 5” was the complexity of the platform and the corresponding technical concepts we needed to communicate to developers. When production started, we aimed to translate this complexity into an engaging, easy-to-follow script and storyboard. Creatively, we did this by using metaphors to explain key concepts and leaned on a mix of illustrations, motion-based diagrams, and text-based cues to support the viewer.

Our team was involved with every aspect of the project from start to finish, providing our expertise and creative support across every part of production. We ran a streamlined approach to meet the project’s release and resource goals.

Here’s the production breakdown from our first full episode:

What “Forge in 5” achieved

The first episode of “Forge in 5” is the highest-ranked video on the Atlassian Developer YouTube channel with more than double the views of any other upload. The second episode achieved more views in the month following its release than the channel’s average lifetime viewership. Atlassian also found additional uses for the content, using it to support their flagship event and grow the Forge footprint across their broader developer marketing program.