The recent explo­sion of the GIF for­mat across the Inter­net has right­ly caught the atten­tion of many mar­keters. How­ev­er, any brand look­ing to take advan­tage of this high­ly share­able for­mat should have a thor­ough under­stand­ing of the Graph­ic Inter­change For­mat before div­ing in.

GIFs are won­der­ful, weird, and cur­rent­ly ubiq­ui­tous. GIFs allow us to neat­ly pack­age and share cul­tur­al moments, emo­tions, events, and mem­o­ries – real­ly any­thing. As GIF Can­vas artist Jason “Shoop­er” Reed said in 2012, “If a pic­ture is worth a thou­sand words, a good ani­mat­ed GIF is worth 24,000 words per sec­ond. By that math, a 10-sec­ond GIF is equal to the word pow­er of Moby Dick. If Melville read that he would weep…”

Behold The Awesome Power Of The GIF!

In the last five years, the Inter­net has tru­ly bowed down to the awe­some expres­sive pow­er of the for­mat, though the tech­ni­cal specs and offi­cial names have evolved some­what. Plat­forms like Giphy have explod­ed in pop­u­lar­i­ty in recent months – as both a repos­i­to­ry of exist­ing GIFs and a des­ti­na­tion enabling fans to cre­ate and share their own ani­mat­ed cre­ations. Almost every­day a new GIF-relat­ed plat­form or ser­vice is debuted, whether it be Tum­blr intro­duc­ing tech­nol­o­gy that enables users to con­vert videos and images into GIFs, or Insta­gram recent­ly unveil­ing Boomerang, which allows users to cre­ate 1‑second “loops” (which are not GIFs by tech­ni­cal def­i­n­i­tion, though they serve a near­ly iden­ti­cal func­tion). Apple has even devel­oped and incor­po­rat­ed GIF-like tech­nol­o­gy into the lat­est iter­a­tion of the iPhone with Live Pho­tos. Even VSCO’s recent­ly debuted DSCO app bills itself as a “high-qual­i­ty GIF mak­er” despite the fact that its out­put is in MP4 for­mat. This evo­lu­tion of the short-form, loop­ing for­mat by some of the biggest names in tech demon­strates some of the impli­ca­tions that the GIF for­mat has had on the way we com­mu­ni­cate and share infor­ma­tion. We might be call­ing these out­puts dif­fer­ent names, but they all stem from the com­mu­ni­ca­tion behav­ior that was cre­at­ed by orig­i­nal Graph­ic Inter­change For­mat.

GIFs Are Changing The Way We Communicate

The pro­gres­sion and adop­tion of GIF method­ol­o­gy illus­trates how cul­tur­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion is shift­ing. We are find­ing clever ways to enhance and per­son­al­ize our com­mu­ni­ca­tion with one anoth­er. We’ve all been guilty of mis­read­ing the tone of a plain old text mes­sage, whether miss­ing some sar­casm or read­ing too much into an ellipses. How­ev­er, it’s next to impos­si­ble to mis­in­ter­pret the inten­tion behind a GIF. Though GIF key­boards obvi­ous­ly won’t replace tex­ting, GIFs and their bed­fel­lows have fun­da­men­tal­ly altered the way we talk to one anoth­er. They’ve added col­or and cus­tomiza­tion into our com­mu­ni­ca­tion habits, inte­grat­ing cul­ture into the inti­mate cor­ners of our dai­ly lives like nev­er before. Icon­ic movie clips and beloved TV char­ac­ters now stand in for us when we want to express hap­pi­ness or dis­ap­point­ment. Drake’s instant­ly icon­ic “Hot­line Bling” dance moves do the trick when some­one on the group thread asks who wants to go to the club tonight, and Ali­cia Silverstone’s “As if” ges­ture does a pret­ty stel­lar job of express­ing dis­in­ter­est in going to a coun­try con­cert. GIFs have enabled us to com­mu­ni­cate with cul­ture.

GIFs Are A Legit Media Evolution

Giv­en these emo­tive and com­mu­nica­tive capac­i­ties, we’ve seen the speedy inte­gra­tion of GIFs (and their com­pa­tri­ots) into inter­per­son­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion plat­forms. Mes­sag­ing ser­vices like Pop­Key, Riff­sy and the very recent­ly unveiled Giffage have sprung up, weav­ing GIFs into our tex­ting habits, enabling us to trans­mit GIFs in our con­ver­sa­tions with the same ease that we might send an emo­ji. Face­book Mes­sen­ger has offi­cial­ly adopt­ed a GIF but­ton, and the bril­liant inter-office mes­sag­ing ser­vice Slack has a built in GIF gen­er­a­tor (cour­tesy of Giphy). The auto­play and auto loop fea­tures on Insta­gram have enabled GIFs to be shared (albeit as MPG4 files), and you’d bet­ter believe that Boomerangs push direct­ly to the Insta­gram app. At any point dur­ing the near 30-year his­to­ry of the GIF, it would have been easy to brush it off as a sil­ly, throw­away ani­ma­tion; more than pic­ture but not quite video. The recent cul­tur­al adop­tion of the GIF for­mat con­firms that this is a legit­i­mate evo­lu­tion in media.

A Unique Opportunity For Brands

We’re see­ing the GIF being used as per­for­mance art, as a means of recap­ping impor­tant shared moments, ‘relay­ing news, and a way of illus­trat­ing cook­ing recipes. We now have the chance to weave our brands into the per­son­al lex­i­cons of our fans and con­sumers. If we can repack­age our con­tent and brand DNA into artis­tic, hilar­i­ous, engag­ing GIFs, peo­ple will use our brand to com­mu­ni­cate in their dai­ly lives. Icon­ic prop­er­ties can cre­ate util­i­ty con­tent, brand­ed con­tent that fans actu­al­ly seek out to inte­grate into their key­boards and habits. We can cre­ate art, emo­tion­al­ly poignant moments, move at the speed of the cul­ture in an authen­tic and rel­e­vant way. Brands and agen­cies are con­stant­ly wor­ried about “speak­ing the lan­guage of the Inter­net” and keep­ing pace with those oh-so-shifty “mil­len­ni­als”. The GIF gives us an oppor­tu­ni­ty to real­ly do this, we just have to use a lit­tle cre­ativ­i­ty cou­pled with a thor­ough under­stand­ing of the oppor­tu­ni­ty at hand. This may seem eas­i­er for some brands than oth­ers, and you might think that the mar­ket­ing teams behind enter­tain­ment prop­er­ties seem to have an edge, but GIFs can tru­ly be used by any brand. This is where is gets tricky though – you need to have under­stand­ing of the cul­ture and be able to think cre­ative­ly about how your brand might inte­grate into GIF cul­ture. This is eas­i­er said than done for sure.

Should Your Brand Use GIFs?

Just because GIF tech­nol­o­gy exists, doesn’t mean that mar­keters have to flood the space for the sake of cre­at­ing brand­ed con­tent. Mar­keters have a ten­den­cy to trend-hop in hopes of stay­ing rel­e­vant but the GIF offers us the chance to ask, “Why should I do this?” Before “GIF-ing” from the hip, ask:

1. Is there an ele­ment of your brand that is visu­al­ly appeal­ing?
2. Does cre­at­ing a motion graph­ic demon­strate a prod­uct advan­tage or spe­cial fea­ture?
3. Is your brand a part of the enter­tain­ment world? (TV, The­ater and Music all pret­ty much have license to GIF, at will.)
4. What val­ue can a con­sumer find in your GIF? (i.e. Does it con­vey a uni­ver­sal human emo­tion?)
5. Is it share­able? Or is it sim­ply super cool to look at?