Setting The Intention

In our 5+ year partnership with Dropbox, our work has spanned across the full expression of the brand, and this next collaboration was about bringing it all together. Dropbox wanted to reimagine how they engage with new and existing customers and punctuate the inherent value that their product can provide.

With those intentions in mind, we decided to get back to basics: finding the essential truth about Dropbox. This couldn’t be just another hollow marketing campaign filled with empty promises. Only after taking the time to understand the brand accurately, get to know the customer, and articulate the experience they are both looking for could we create an impactful and memorable platform and ultimately a campaign.

Focusing On Humanity

After extensive research, an insight emerged that would become the foundation of our campaign platform. We found that Dropbox customers—musicians, photographers, marine biologists, personal archivers, and more—have one critical thing in common: they care about their files. Yes, they may be JPEGs, MOVs, DOCs, RAWs, and PNGs, but they are also passion projects, innovations, memories, and history worthy of a safe space to live.

To build upon this insight we defined “For All Things Worth [blank]” as the brand’s philosophy and used it as the foundation of a multi-year brand platform. With the help of eight handpicked customers—including artists like Chaz from Toro y Moi, businesses like Creativity Explored and the USA Bobsled team, and personal archivers like Dominique King—we launched our first campaign derived from this platform, “For All Things Worth Saving.”

Rather than focusing on their experiences with the product, our stories found their center in their most important files, folders, and artifacts. This democratized our process. Rather than chasing celebrity endorsement, we were able to focus entirely on telling the best stories—stories that create a sense of belonging and trust for the Dropbox customer.

Building the system

Extending the brand identity created by Collins and in partnership with the Dropbox design team, we developed a marketing design system built to unify every activation within the brand platform. In tandem with the internal rebrand effort, we helped craft and document a simple and scalable design language that allowed us to emphasize and elevate specific aspects of the creative, depending on placement.

A Multi-Media Approach

To re-engage with our customers, we had to meet them where they were. So, we adopted a multimedia approach: producing outdoor, print and digital activations, connected tv, and social media content across a variety of audience segments and channels. The result is a hyper-local, undeniably human body of work that celebrates Dropbox’s customers, their stories, and their most valuable files.

Looking Ahead

This is only the beginning. This platform has led to a bold shift in how Dropbox engages with its customers—connecting the dots between what the brand offers and what the human benefit is. But we believe the real success of the platform will come from its consistency and its longevity. In that spirit, we developed and delivered a playbook outlining the essential elements of “For All Things Worth Saving” to facilitate the ongoing creation of stories and brand experiences.

We’re also continuing our collaboration, building on what we’ve created to dream up the next stories worth telling, and campaigns worth launching.