WeTransfer

WeTransfer puts itself at the heart of creative process in new ads

WeTransfer has taken an unusual approach in its first out-of-home advertising campaign, comprising of a series of murals at various locations in Brooklyn, NYC that aimed to show WeTransfer as an essential tool in the creative process.

WeTransfer has long aimed to position itself as the file-sharing tool for the creative industries. It has gone about this in a number of ways, perhaps most prominently by turning over its webpages to artists and designers to create artworks that entertain users while they are waiting for their downloads.

This might seem like a small thing, but – combined with the ease-of-use of the service – it makes a mundane necessity of work a more pleasurable experience, and helps showcase great work. More recently, WeTransfer has been asserting its creative relationships in other ways, by making a series of films about how artists and musicians create, which included a film on Björk’s work with director Jesse Kanda.

For its first out-of-home campaign, which took place last month and was created by Stink Studios, WeTransfer again emphasised its relationship with the creative industries, through a series of unusual murals that were put up in five locations around Brooklyn. All featured the tagline ‘You make. We transfer.’

WeTransfer
Part of the first series of murals
Early murals being painting

The murals – which look at first glance like slick posters but are shown in the making-of images here to be painted artworks – ran over a period of a few weeks at the sites, and evolved over time, with the hope clearly being that locals would catch the changing narrative.

The story itself was pretty mundane, though this was ultimately part of its charm. The opening murals revealed emails and text messages about the project with the musician Kelela, who, the artworks revealed, had been invited to creative direct the ads.

Later mural in the series. Photo: Zenith Richards
Creation of later mural. Photo: Zenith Richards

The messages showed Kelela collaborating with the brand and deciding to show images from her debut album Take Me Apart in the space. They also showed her getting permission from her team and the photographer of the shots to do this. Finally, the murals were changed from messages to the artworks themselves.

This nuts-and-bolts style of campaign is certainly on the odd side of billboard communications and runs the risk of falling a little flat if people only see one part of it (especially if that’s just the emails bit). But it’s unusual enough to grab attention and does a great job of showing WeTransfer’s place in the creation of work.

Plus, above all, it reiterates once again that if you’re a creative person, this is the brand to do your file sharing with.

WeTransfer
Photo: Zenith Richards
WeTransfer
Photo: Zenith Richards

Credits:
Agency: Stink Studios
Art director: Steve Olimpio