How Gifs Help Brands Tell Stories One Frame At A Time

Gifs, more than still images but not as heavy as videos, provide the best of both worlds to brands who want to tell fun, adorable stories on social media

VinayaBrands
brand gifs

GIF images are not a recent invention but they have become amazingly popular nevertheless thanks to the evergreen ways of using it to narrate a story. Those Graphic Interchange Format images, better known as gifs, provide the best of both worlds for those who want to tell a memorable story.

Animated gifs are the most popular in the lot: frame by frame of a little story that could well be stitched together to form a brand story, especially in this information-heavy age where attention spans are fast dwindling, every individual is a creator and visual has largely replaced textual everywhere on the social web. Owing to its popularity and demand, the format is also supported by social networks, making it an absolute staple in your content marketing or brand communication plan.

This year Republic Day saw a lot more brands celebrating with gifs on social networks. (Republic Day visuals/gifs). And the weekend gone by with strong love notes in the air, also witnessed gif-loads of Valentine wishes by Indian brands. (Valentine’s Day visuals/gifs)

It was 2015 that saw the real emergence of gifs by brands, what was made popular by the listicles from the likes of Buzzfeed and 9GAG, became a regular on brand social media properties. Be it in sectors like auto or insurance, FMCG or technology, mostly every brand was indulging in gifs.

Kingfisher - the king of good times - wanted to redefine the category by claiming to be ‘the original social network‘ last year. The beer brand had rolled out a series of interesting gifs to demonstrate how it was the ‘original social network’.

Last year Oreo embarked on a global path to bring more ‘playfulness’ in consumers’ lives, and what better than a gif to convey animated playfulness. Oreo’s microsite and social media properties made a generous use of gifs for #PlayWithOreo to demonstrate more interesting ways of playing with your Oreo like doodling, popping, playing, imagining and more.

When Center Fresh wanted to convey its new offering promised a higher level of cooling, it resorted to gifs. The liquid filled chewing gum shared a series of gifs featuring actor Cyrus Sahukar, as part of its ChaliHawaaMastaani campaign.

Amazon’s Diwali sale involved a massive content strategy on social where gifs were used to respond to people who spoke about their new TVC.

Frooti had embarked on a massive rebranding exercise last year where the mango drink began to introduce people to ‘The Frooti Life’. As part of its engagement activities, it asked fans to tag their friends who could do with a taste of #TheFrootiLife to brighten up their day. Frooti communicated with fun animated gifs demonstrating the Frooti life.

For the Flipkart flash sale for Lenovo A6000, the tech brand had roped in Ranbir Kapoor who made his debut on six social networks for six hours. Gifs formed a vital component of the communication strategy on the networks. All brand communication happened via Ranbir sharing fun gifs with his fans.

This year is full of promise in the space of visual content, with better data connectivity would come quicker ways to tell your story. Indians consume more video content compared to other countries, and this behaviour would only be on the rise. Vine videos, Snapchats competing with the regular animated gifs and videos on Facebook and Twitter. Videos would rule 2016, a thought that has been shared by creative heads of the industry, would also be aided with the help of lighter animations like gifs.