Shockwaves from the COVID-19 outbreak can be felt worldwide. Every business in every industry is facing the impact of this economic fallout, including the creative community. With galleries, cultural centers, and performance venues closing their doors, artists and freelancers are left scrambling to figure out their future. WeTransfer wanted to help and so, we asked ourselves how we could do that, in an authentic meaningful way.
We decided to do what we do best. Ever since the beginning, we’ve donated 30% of our advertising space on our global platform to raise awareness for artists, creative work and good causes that we believe in. Starting today, we will ramp this up and donate an additional 500 million ad impressions (equivalent to 5 million in cash) on our highly-trafficked homepage wallpaper to showcase the work of artists and organizations that support them. As the cursor tracks across the wallpaper a button encouraging users to “Support this artist” appears and direct visitors to their websites.
“So many people across the world are looking for hope in some shape or form. Because WeTransfer is entwined with the arts and our mission is to help creators create, it’s important to us that we start there,” said Damian Bradfield, Chief Creative Officer at WeTransfer. “While this exposure won’t bring things back to normal, it is vital to keep people creating and innovating. We want to channel our efforts and do our part to help make that happen.”
We will highlight over 50 artists from our global community of artists and collaborators as well as numerous causes and initiatives set up to directly benefit creatives affected by the measures in place due to the pandemic. We will showcase new artists or organizations weekly until the number of impressions runs out.
WeTransfer is wholly committed to the creative community. It’s in our DNA. We launched in 2009 to make it easier for creatives to share their work, and have since evolved our set of tools to facilitate the entire creative process. Creativity gives rise to the best ideas and solutions. It inspires empathy and an understanding of unfamiliar cultures. Now, more than ever, it is critical to support and protect the creative community.
In addition to our wallpaper initiative, WeTransfer will be offering complimentary access to our tools that promote creativity and remote work. We are offering Paste Pro for free to new teams to help them build, shape, and pitch ideas effortlessly. We are also giving free access to 10 Paper Store Journals until June 1, 2020. The Paper Store is a collection of journals with creative prompts, daily exercises, and drawing tutorials. It comes in handy when you need to homeschool your children or find a creative escape with your family or by yourself.
Our mission since the beginning has been to make it easier for artists to share their work, and we have since evolved our set of tools to facilitate the entire creative process. We know that we can best support our artists and freelancers by being an amplifier and by mobilizing the power of our community. In this difficult time the best thing we can do is stick together and support one another.