WeTransfer launched its latest research initiative, the Emerging Creative Hubs Index, for the first time last year. The Index shines a light on where creative progress is happening and calls out the top 10 emerging creative epicenters in the United States. WeTransfer teamed up with strategic insight and brand studio, TRIPTK, to dive deep into a wide range of data sets, including anonymous WeTransfer user data, to uncover the stories hiding in plain sight. The list is packed with under-the-radar locales, celebrating the people and places that challenge conventional wisdom about who, where, and how creativity strikes. Combining this rigorous research and interactive storytelling, WeTransfer is at the forefront of creative culture and bringing attention to emerging creative hotspots around the world. Through the launch of the Index, WeTransfer created a Creatives Hub Grant program, giving away 100k to nonprofits helping to further the creative community within the top 10.

WeTransfer worked with New York-based agency TRIPTK to develop the index framework for which the report would be based on, dove into WeTransfer’s data to determine where people are transferring their files, and designed the landing page for how WeTransfer told these stories. WeTransfer’s internal studio team developed the creative for the campaign touchpoints, showcasing the interactive storytelling through engaging campaign assets.

For the creative, WeTransfer and TRIPTK were inspired by city maps - the colour-ways, bold type, and informational design influenced the editorial and campaign identity of the project. Combining with WeTransfer’s own visual brand language and this inspiration of city maps from all around the United States, the campaign looked uniquely WeTransfer.

We wanted to focus on our US market, specifically creatives in the freelance and small-business field, for this campaign. We believe that there are more creative centers around the US than just the major cities. Tapping into our anonymous user data to see where people were transferring files, we were able to develop a short list of cities in the US to look into and develop more qualitative data. Focusing on these smaller cities in America gave us more of a direct access to the creatives we wanted to speak to in this campaign and who we make our products for. Once we were on the ground in these cities speaking to the community leaders, we realized that there was so much booming talent in these communities – we wanted to contribute to these creative centers with a grant program that supports nonprofits in the creative sector.

Once we developed our short list of cities where the most files are transferred, we developed a research index that combined qualitative and quantitative data to tell the stories behind the creative in these 10 cities. The research phase took about three months and the creative and editorial execution took another three months to complete. Once we had a beautiful microsite of our research, storytelling, and grant program information, we launched via our social media (paid and organic), email newsletters, and through our community partners in the emerging ten cities.

For the creative, WeTransfer and TRIPTK were inspired by city maps - the colour-ways, bold type, and informational design influenced the editorial and campaign identity of the project. Combining with WeTransfer’s own visual brand language and this inspiration of city maps from all around the United States, the campaign looked uniquely WeTransfer.

From our paid push, we received 7,098,723 impressions, 20,987 clicks, 11,308 site visits, and 0.30% CTR. Across 15 organic posts, we received 49.4K impressions, 1.3K engagements, 2.5% ER for those posts. Combining both our organic and paid efforts, we had a total of 52,000K pageviews for the first three weeks of the campaign.

For our grant program, we received 62 applications and awarded ten nonprofits $10,000 each to use how they see fit – some used it to launch a music festival, support youth in creative education, and supply resources to the community.

The hyper-focused local campaign allowed us to directly speak to creatives in those cities and our grant program proved we want to support these creative communities, differentiating WeTransfer in a sea of competitors is its authentic connection to creativity.