32 | Flogging our book in London
and WeTransfer's marketing challenge.
Note: This is the second in a short series about the book I co-authored with WeTransfer co-founder Damian Bradfield on building a more soulful brand. Not a Playbook: The science Art of Building a Brand is available for pre-order here.
It’s not an AdWeek conference, I was reminded several times. It’s Advertising Week. Three days, really, to gather media planners, commercial officers, CMOs, agencies, and a sprinkling of British TV celebrities in a very cool spot in London ill-suited for such a large gathering.
Located on the Strand — the once-thriving hub of an active newspaper scene — 180 Studios is part of the SoHo House Group (what isn’t, these days - I ate at House-owned Cecconi’s one night, and availed myself of the House-owned Cowshed hand wash in my hotel bathroom). 180 House (the actual SoHo House) offers beautiful and textured interiors with tasteful chairs and excellent coffee on the top floor overlooking London.
We weren’t there.
We were down below (and even further down below), in brutalist spaces nicely redesigned but then chopped up with furniture, signage and screens to funnel people in an orderly fashion (No one funnels like the English). Lanyards bounced, check-ins beeped, and pre-recorded voices announced the beginning of panels.
Ours wasn’t one. It was a happy hour with excellent tequila drinks kindly hosted by WeTransfer to launch Not a Playbook. A nice crowd gathered on the second floor as co-author Damian and I blinked into bright lights and talked about what the WeTransfer story can offer marketers and brand builders.
We were marketing the book. And the book was marketing what WeTransfer did.
Because WeTransfer was not very good at marketing WeTransfer.
The Church and State divide
There are about 100 significant-sized brands out there that would kill to have a gathering of (actual) storytellers as skilled as those at WeTransfer’s arts platform, WePresent. They commission eyebrow-raising photo essays, stories about creatives from all corners of the world, publish art manifestos and have a side-hustle in designing excellent microsites (like Seb Emina’s Wild Memory Radio). But they keep a tidy (and justified) distance from the sales and marketing side. The site design doesn’t share the same visual language of the brand. And you’ll never see overt product mentions in the pieces they run, or even the films they commission.
Actor Riz Ahmed shouted this out in a memorable way the night before he won an Oscar for a film WeTransfer worked on, financed and platformed (For the actual quote, buy the book). Their church and state divide is rooted in a proud legacy of the awkward dynamics between advertising and editorial teams at media publishers for more than a century.
But in this frantic age, where everything is “content” (your customer reply form, your terms and conditions, Severance) and where brands are desparately trying to elevate above the social media fog, there is a missed opportunity.
Creating clever marketing stunts that win on social mean very little for sustained brand awareness without the continued drumbeat of a coherent brand story. WeTransfer relies on WePresent for that. And you could easily see their editorial mindset benefiting the sales and marketing side of the business, where unconventional campaigns and creative partnerships drive business results. The relationship could’ve also gone both ways, with WeTransfer using the product and sales relationships to champion the Oscar-winning storytelling WePresent was doing.
But all of that requires a different mindset, one in which sales or product are able to weigh in with ideas or requests in the artist relationships the editorial side is building. And that might have walked back years of building credibility in the artistic community.
For artists, by artists
WePresent did a warm and soul-affirming short film with FKA twigs celebrating dance and community in Baltimore, a city the artist had come to love. They did this in 2016, shortly after twig’s first album had announced the arrival of a serious talent. The brand world has since caught up. She’s all over On Running’s recent campaigns.
When the newly hired comms manager (and friend-of-the-letter Annematt Ruseler) saw the film, she loved its message and worked the blog and media circuit hard, netting a number of mentions. The only feedback? The microsite the team designed didn’t have the WeTransfer logo anywhere on it.
Reading this in 2025 with every brand trying to win authenticity with carefully planned artist collaborations, it sounds absurd. But the light touch earned twigs’s trust and credibility, and was the start of a long partnership between her and the brand. She had this to say about such relationships in the book:
“There’s nothing like an artist’s word, or world. Artists are original thinkers, and it’s those original thoughts that capture the attention of the world. I think brands should trust their artistic collaborators, because they’re there to change the cultural DNA, they’re there to think of something new, they’re there to portray a message that no one has thought of before.” — FKA twigs, Not a Playbook.
This is a helpful reminder to anyone working with an artist or creator in 2025. Not all want to be commoditized (I think creators have warped the conversation a bit in this sense).
But as Damian pointed out in our talk on Wedensday, almost all would love a helping hand. AI has come for one of their most profitable revenue streams — brand collaborations — and there is a real opportunity for companies, not just to partner with artists to gain authenticity with sought-after demographics, but to distinguish themselves in supporting human-made craft and artistry.
As WeTransfer found out, artists empowered to create passion projects without submitting to a list of brand guidelines often become the most vocal supporters of a brand, and work that much harder to support the project they’ve created together. WePresent started off in 2016 profiling photographers and illustrators who loved the product. In the last few years, Marina Abramović and Olafur Eliasson have served as year-long guest curators. That comes from trust. And long-term thinking.