WeTransfer Urges Users to Harness the Power of Doubt to Drive Positive Change

WeTransfer​, the company that builds digital tools for the creative process, today announced its new global brand campaign​, 'Doubt. Create. Repeat.' The campaign, created in partnership with lead creative agency, Preacher, reflects on feelings of uncertainty and calls on creatives to leverage doubt as fuel to propel new ideas forward. As a company uniquely embedded in the creative community, WeTransfer is seeking to reframe doubt as a way to question, iterate, and build a pathway to positive change.

‘Doubt. Create. Repeat.’ centres on a 75 second online spot encouraging people to question everything, and reflects WeTransfer’s diverse product offerings that help break down, build up, evolve and push big ideas forward. Those products include collaborative presentation tool, Paste; popular sketching app, Paper, and inspiration gathering app Collect.

“Nothing is more important and central to the creative process than the question of, ‘is there a better way to do this?’” said Damian Bradfield, chief creative officer and president of WeTransfer. “Historically, some of our greatest artistic achievements are born out of conflict or revolution that’s reached critical mass. Conflict and struggle draw remarkable creativity in us that connects, inspires, and soothes. That’s the time we’re living through right now, and we wanted to capture that sentiment in this spot.” 

Daniel Warwick of Biscuit Filmworks directed the work, best known for commercial work including Smart’s 'Yellow Car,' Mercedes-Benz’s 'Chicken,' and Das Handwerk’s 'The Way of the Master.'

In addition to the longform, 60 and 30 second versions are running online and with streaming partners like Hulu, along with 15 second cuts specific to each part of the product offering. A second 30 second will run Hulu, as part of a placement where viewers can choose their own ad experience - to watch the final spot, or a version on how it was brought to life using individual WeTransfer tools. Videos and high-impact takeovers will also run across creative communities, including music and film subreddits on Reddit, and sites like Genius, HypeBeast, HighSnobiety, VICE, and Soundcloud.  Additional activations include Sunday newsletters in The Hustle, that will feature long-form editorial with elements, graphics, and charts created using WeTransfer tools. Podcast spots will also run on Song Exploder and 99% Invisible — for which Preacher created live-read audio scripts for the hosts.

Media strategy and execution for 'Doubt. Create. Repeat.' was handled by independent creative media agency, Noble People.

“We were excited to address the moment we're all going through with a different point of view. Instead of trying to assure everyone that we'll get through this together, like so many brands have been doing over the past several months, we wanted to issue a challenge to our creative audience—  a cheeky nudge to use this time of doubt as an opportunity to push new and better ideas out into the world.” said Marcus Brown and Zach Watkins, creative directors at Preacher.

“It was a true pleasure and honour to work with such intelligent creative minds at Preacher for such a great brand,” says Daniel Warwick, director, Biscuit Filmworks. “WeTransfer is a fantastic platform we‘ve all been working with a lot over the years. So, it was even more fantastic to shoot an ad like this for them. Even though the agency & client were remote for the shoot we were able to have a great creative time producing this in Romania with Ottar Gudnason as dop and Jakob Rühle as my producer being physically on the ground. It was my first time shooting a remote job - but it was great to realise how well it worked! Thank you to WeTransfer, Preacher, Biscuit & Digital Spirit for the smooth operations!”

Since launching in 2009, WeTransfer has been committed to supporting the creative community. For more than 10 years, the company has fortified this commitment by donating 30% of its advertising space on its global platform to raise awareness for artists, creative work, and causes that align with its mission. This year, upon the onset of the global pandemic, WeTransfer accelerated its support and ​donated an additional 500 million ad impressions​ on its highly-trafficked homepage wallpaper to showcase the work of artists and organisations that support them.