Anyway

Instagram wanted to be famous for creativity. But before talking about what people make on the platform, we needed to talk about why creativity matters in the first place.

So we built Anyway: a brand campaign about the thing that kills most ideas before the world ever sees them. Doubt. The little voice that says you’re not ready, not good enough, not experienced enough, or that you should probably just do it tomorrow.

There will always be a hundred reasons not to make something. Instagram is here to help people do it anyway.

Context

Instagram has always been a place where culture shows up first. But the brand had never fully articulated its own point of view on creativity, or why a platform built around making and sharing should matter to the people making the work.

The opportunity was to move Instagram from a passive place where creativity is posted, to an active enabler of creativity itself. Not just a gallery. Not just a feed. A push.

Because creativity rarely begins with confidence. It usually begins with the opposite.

Idea

Doubt kills creativity.

It stops people before they try. It gives them excuses that sound practical, responsible, even smart. You’re not ready. You don’t have enough experience. Someone else is already better at this. Wait until it’s perfect.

The campaign answered that voice with one word: Anyway.

Make it anyway. Ask it anyway. Dream it anyway. Run it anyway. Start before you’re ready anyway.

To make the message feel less like a brand manifesto and more like real creative wisdom, the work came from creator to creator. Instagram brought together a group of artists, filmmakers, musicians, designers, and cultural voices who have all had to ignore doubt in order to make something the world could not ignore.

The Work

The campaign launched as a full brand platform across film, social, outdoor, in-product experiences, creator content, and bespoke films. Each execution used Instagram’s own visual language — UI buttons, post frames, story tools, handwriting, creator handles, and platform behaviors — to turn the product into part of the idea.

Anyway Case study

Brand Films

The film set the tone for the platform: intimate, cinematic, and honest about the fear that comes with making anything new. Instead of pretending that creativity is effortless, it showed the tension behind it — the hesitation, the second-guessing, and the decision to move anyway.

OOH

The outdoor work took Instagram’s interface out of the phone and into the world.

In Button Press, creators physically interacted with oversized Instagram UI buttons, turning familiar product actions into public gestures of creative commitment. In X Anyway, Instagram posts became stark black street posters, with handwritten words like “dream,” “make,” “ask,” “wear,” “swim,” “match,” and “rise” crashing into the frame.

OOH Case Study

ONP / Social

On platform, the campaign behaved like something native to Instagram rather than advertising placed on top of it. Feed posts, Stories, and Reels carried handwritten prompts and creator-made visuals that felt raw, personal, and made to be shared.

Lines like “Start before you’re ready,” “Mess is magic,” “Create the world you wish existed,” and “First they ignore you” turned the campaign into a collection of reminders for anyone sitting on an idea.

Bespoke Films

Instead of forcing every creator into one format, the campaign gave them room to make the idea their own. The bespoke films expanded Anyway into different creative worlds, from Rosalía’s handwritten type system to Cole Bennett’s surreal Yeti universe.

In Product

The campaign also moved inside Instagram itself.

Rosalía’s Type turned the campaign’s handwritten energy into an in-product type treatment, allowing people to write their own “anyway” messages directly inside Stories. Other product ideas used unlockable Reels and secret-code mechanics to make creative participation feel like discovery.

Ask Anyway

The Q&A series made the platform’s message feel even more direct: creator-to-creator advice from people who have had to keep going through uncertainty.

Fred Again and Gabriel Moses appeared in trailer and full Q&A formats, answering the kinds of questions people ask right before they decide whether or not to make something.

The campaign turned Instagram’s belief in creativity into a simple invitation.

Not when you’re ready. Not when the doubt goes away. Not when everyone understands it.

Anyway.