Make good use of animated GIF images to shape your "brand image" and create a unique and unforgettable marketing experience
▌Text/Vista Cheng, founder of the website “Content Hacker”. This article was originally published on the “Marketersgo” website.
In today’s mobile era of information explosion, we have become accustomed to receiving all kinds of colorful information at the same time. We all know that images and videos are very powerful in spreading information. This is what the saying goes, “A picture is worth a thousand words.”
Friends who often play LINE stickers must be familiar with series of stickers such as White Cat and Dinosaur World. Especially the story of Qiqi fighting against illness and being as brave as a dinosaur has moved many Chinese people. This sticker also achieved sales of 6 million yen (equivalent to NT$1.62 million) in one day, and all proceeds were donated to the Children’s Heart Disease Foundation, which is even more impressive.
Using images to assist corporate brands in communication and marketing is undoubtedly an effective thrust and is more acceptable to the consumer public. But in addition to the well-known stickers or beautiful pictures shared on Instagram, the power of animated images (GIF) cannot be underestimated.
(Picture: taken from via GIPHY, please forgive me if it is removed)
GIF is a “compressed file” created to speed up transmission
According to Wikipedia, the so-called GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) is a bitmap graphics file format that reproduces true-color images with 8-bit colors (that is, 256 colors). It is actually a compressed file, encoded using the LZW compression algorithm, which effectively reduces the time for image files to be transmitted over the Internet.
It was developed in 1987 by Steve Wilhite, a computer scientist working for CompuServe. Even thirty years later, it is still one of the most widely used network transmission image formats in the world. And because dynamic pictures can show a variety of different consumption situations, they remain timeless.
With this said, motion graphics are the preferred language for Millennials to express their inner feelings through pop culture. For example, we can often see a bunch of emoticon pictures and dynamic graphics interspersed in many articles on Facebook or the popular WeChat public accounts on the other side. Although these pictures have the function of beautification and decoration, they also provide an excellent stage for marketers to create a unique consumer experience.
(Picture: taken from via GIPHY, please forgive me if it is removed)
Simple to understand and easy to communicate, Twitter has exceeded 100 million shares a year
According to statistics from Cisco (Editor: American Systems), 84% of communications on the Internet will be “visual” by 2018. Therefore, any visual content that may help a brand show its personality and characteristics is quite popular in the market.
Having said that, the main reason why dynamic pictures are eye-catching is that they are easy to understand, communicate and express, and are therefore favored by consumers. According to statistics from the social media Twitter, more than 100 million dynamic images were shared on Twitter in 2015 alone. The content of these images ranges from exaggerated emoticons, Jordan dunks, and even clips of celebrity concerts. It can be said to be all-inclusive and diverse.
Facing this trend, some smart marketers have already thought of incorporating humorous dynamic pictures into content marketing, so that they can have a more direct appeal than ordinary images!
(Picture: taken from Tenor, please forgive me if it is removed)
GIFs ride the wave of “content marketing” to win
Thanks to the boom in content marketing, more and more social platforms support GIF animations in recent years. Of course, the creation of dynamic pictures is simpler and more convenient than audio and video, and the production cost is also lower, which is also the key to winning.
▌Tenor: Monthly search volume exceeded 12 billion, acquired by Google
In March 2018, the global Internet giant Google announced the acquisition of Tenor, a GIF dynamic image search engine. This move will help Google support its search data and provide an increasingly popular advertising format for marketers. Four years after its founding, Tenor attracts approximately 300 million people monthly to its GIF search tool, with more than 12 billion monthly searches. After being acquired by Google, it will continue to operate under the Tenor brand.
(Picture: taken from Tenor, please forgive me if it is removed)
▌GIPHY: It can produce 1 billion animated pictures every day, with a valuation of more than 600 million US dollars.
In addition to Tenor, GIPHY is also another very popular GIF search service and dynamic image generator. It has more than 150 million daily active users and can produce an average of 1 billion dynamic images every day.
GIPHY has completed four rounds of financing since 2013 and is currently valued at more than $600 million, fully demonstrating the company’s vitality. CEO Alex Chung clearly stated: “GIPHY not only wants to be the Google of GIFs, but also wants to become an entertainment company with substantial influence.” Today, thousands of netizens stick to it every day to browse interesting dynamic pictures, and GIPHY has become an important channel for the promotion of many movies or events.
(Picture: taken from via GIPHY, please forgive me if it is removed)
Charming lies in the effective expression of “self-emotions”
David McIntosh, CEO of Riffsy, another aggressive company, made a great comment on the charm of dynamic images: “The key to the charm of GIFs is that everyone can find appropriate and effective images to express their emotions in an instant…”
It is true that moving pictures are a different type of information that goes beyond text. Although they are not a new technological product, they can firmly attract everyone’s attention. What’s even better is that it allows the majority of netizens to have the fun of collecting and curating pictures, and can also convey emotions through the collective creation of dynamic pictures, thereby helping corporate brands to create charming characters.
(Picture: taken from Tenor, please forgive me if it is removed)
Main picture source: Tenor
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