When it’s better to bunt.
Advertising. It’s kind of the worst.
About a year ago, I had the realization that was my actual opinion, which was a bit terrifying since I’d worked my whole career in marketing.
It hit me that my opinion of ads in the real world might be different to my opinion of the ads I’d helped think up. That wasn’t ideal.
I started taking stock of marketing as an outsider. I kept track of how advertising was talked about by my friends, how it was seen outside the creative class, and what that meant for the broader state of advertising in 2017.
Bad news, marketers: most people don’t think it’s art. They just think we’re annoying.
It turns out a lot of people see advertisements as little stalkers that chase them down the street. Many casually make fun of how self-important most taglines sound, claiming to “change the world” with a toaster. We’re that kid at the party, seeking attention and influence he just can’t get. Well-intentioned, sure, but needy, loud, and too often trying to nail a joke that won’t ever land.
All of this came up a few months back over lunch with the US President of WeTransfer. It turned out he and the founders hated banners and pre-roll so much they built the entire site around spots designed to actually look good. Fancy that, they’re some of the best performing ads online.
He told me the company also offers 30% of the ad inventory free to musicians, artists, and photographers with inspiring work (roughly 5bn impressions in the last year). The ads on WeTransfer are made by an in-house studio with more artists, writers, and illustrators than classically trained marketers. The site itself was built with no sign-up and a lean-data policy so people can just… well, use it.
There are still no tiny stalkers. Or big ones for that matter. So I went to work for them.
When I arrived, WeTransfer had never really talked about itself, having chosen to invest in artists’ projects vs marketing the product. The company grew to 40 million unique users a month doing just that, mostly by having a simple product and not trapping or harassing the people that use it.
It’s shocking that’s rare.
But soon, as we saw some other companies go after our user base, we realized we had to dial up the volume a bit. Given my own baggage (as heartily detailed in the proceeding paragraphs), we talked with our friends at Doubleday and Cartwright about how we might do that respectfully. Most of that conversation revolved around what we stood for.
First, we talked about WeTransfer’s commitment to creatives. The company has spent almost nothing on ads while spending millions to support the arts since 2009. Grants for museum installations, new education programs, short films, photography projects, and hundreds more that feel self-important to list.
Over 70% of the people that use WeTransfer work in creative industries, and we come out of those industries ourselves. We’re tight with a lot of the people we’ve supported: folks like Jean Jullien, FKA twigs, Gilles Peterson, Ryan McGinley, Kate Tempest, Troy Carter, and more. Brilliant, kind, inventive people we’re humbled to have collaborated with.
Why the hell were we trying to think this thing up? They should think this thing up.
From there, we thought about what that would take. Trust. Some money. Potentially my job if someone made something universally offensive. Worth a roll of the dice, I guess.
We’d hand someone WeTransfer and some production budget, and see what story they had to tell. We wouldn’t interfere or try to shape a message. We’d just say “make a short film about WeTransfer” and see what happened.
So we did that, for our first ever ‘brand film’ which is really just a film that tells a story.
We worked with Mac Premo, who’ve we admired for ages. He’s a sculptor, a filmmaker, a storyteller, a playwright and a lovely person.
I know I’m biased, but to me this is just about a father making something that recreates a day with his daughter. That our product happens to fit into that narrative is great for us, sure.
But this is a real story told by a real person, about a day, that became a machine, that became a film, that became a one-man-play.
That shot when his daughter fixes her glasses just kills me.
Because of that shot, I think this is it from here. We’ll take our place as a patron and let artists take theirs, at the helm. People will make and we’ll transfer — ideas, stories, and our products in the context of those stories if artists see fit.
From there, we’ll keep building a product that won’t chase you down the backroads of the internet. The ads on WeTransfer will continue to be designed our way, so they look good and don’t take you out of your flow. We’ll keep investing in musicians, photographers, designers, and people that use WeTransfer — folks that do work that inspires us and who could use a little support here and there.
We might ask some of them to make something about us every now and then if we need a little help. Mostly though, we’d rather bring their passion projects to life. Because artists use WeTransfer and make it what it is, and that’s who should tell our story.
No one wants an ad from me anyways. I don’t even like ads.
