Recently, Gifs on the internet have become a hugely popular form of photo/video. From Buzzfeed using Gifs on their popular list articles, to Ikea using gifs to reply to their customers, big brands have started using gifs in their everyday marketing strategy. If you go on popular modern brands social media pages they are full of gifs with pop culture references, from 90’s references of older movies (such as Clueless) and more modern gifs, such as when people aren’t impressed so they whip the cult favourite Kanye gif. Millennials have taken the gif, which is one of the oldest type of images, and have used it as a language to respond to all of life’s situations.
Brands see YouTube videos, adverts, TV shows, movies- the list really does go on, and turn them into gifs using websites such as gif.com. Once they do this they invent a funny or witty caption, and post it online. When brands do this, engagement via retweeting, favoriting or liking does increase. Asos menswear recently did this in an inventive way, taking Drake’s new video Hotline Bling which has recieved a huge online response, and joked his dancing is a happy dance for, “when your autumn jumper got you dancing like…” It is a fun way to show your presence on social media without constantly plugging your products or just replying to customers, it increases your presence in a quirky way and shows you as a modern and fun business.
Dell, whilst launching a new computer, sent out an email campaign to promote the product, and included a 4 second gif to show how this device was different to others as the screen detached from the keyboard to be a tablet and laptop in one. Compared to quarterly campaign benchmarks, Dell’s first gif-centered email campaign produced the following increases- 6% increase in open rate, 42% increase in click rate, 103% in conversion rate and 109% increase in revenue, according to an article by Marketing Sherpa
These figures show how such a simple thing, a moving image, can capture the attention of consumers. You will know it yourself, you open your email inbox on a morning and sitting there are emails from every company you’ve ever purchased from. These emails, for the most part are all the same with no difference or originality, however if you open one which is funny, quirky, and most importantly different, people might stop and look. Take Boden for example, the photo on the right is far more engaging than the photo on the left which is the static version. Such a simple moving image can make a huge difference to the way a photo looks.
Other brands use twitter to showcase their gifs, such as Dennys and Wendys, who use their classic branding and have turned them into simple gifs:
If you are on social media, or sending email marketing campaigns, gifs are definately something you should be thinking of as to how to fit them into your online presence to boost your brands creativity, and more importantly, your engagement level.
