In order to reach a young, tech savvy audience, it’s not surprising that brands have jumped on the emoji and GIF hype.
The idea here is pretty clear cut. Today, we spend a lot of time on our mobile phones, but grabbing users’ attention in-app isn’t easy. This makes mobile advertising challenging. So, instead of serving pop-up ads that people may dismiss, brands have been immersing themselves into emojis and GIFs.
Emojimania
We, the people of mobile, love emojis. We use them to interact, joke, and express how we feel. In ruling our digital interactions, emojis have pretty much become a new language.
The rise of emoji has been propelled by messaging apps and social media. A study by Appboy shows that emoji use in campaigns has experienced a staggering 777% year-over-year growth.
Emojis, As A Form Of Advertising, Eh?
Yes, emojis as a form of advertising is now a thing. By integrating emojis into mobile keyboards, brands have a direct connection to our private messages, the place on our phones where we pay the most attention.
Last year, beauty giant Dove noticed all standard emojis have straight hair, so they created their own keyboard with curly haired emojis. By downloading the keyboard and tweaking their settings, people could communicate with new emojis, tactfully branded by Dove. By sharing branded content in messages with friends; people were participating in a very strong form of endorsement for Dove!
Dove are not alone. Other brands such as Kim Kardashian and Burger King have capitalized on the craze. To celebrate the return of chicken fries, Burger King launched a chicken fries keyboard. Fans were excited about their return, and there was a lot of conversation happening around the topic on social media. So, it made sense for Burger King to introduce a keyboard during the hype.
When utilizing emoji as a form of advertising, we can learn from Burger King that it’s important to offer branded emojis at a time when the conversation is happening, and when it’s relevant. Are you launching a new product, or a cool new feature? Emojis could be a way to get yourself into conversation at a time when people want to talk about you!
Emojis are shaping advertising in a way that we want; a way we want to engage with. For users and brands, it seems like a win win. Plus, it’s cheap too! Evan Wray, co-founder of Swyft Media (a virtual keyboard maker that specializes in emojis, GIFs and stickers) said emoji marketing can cost as little as $1.50 for 1,000 impressions!
Next Up, GIFs
Like emojis, GIFs are everywhere and they’re becoming a go-to language for the younger audience who don’t leave home without their mobile phones.
With GIFs, you can quickly find a short looping (and often, funny) video file to express yourself in a matter of seconds. They’re a great way to express emotions and thoughts in a way that words and photographs struggle.
Big players in the tech world have progressed to ensure their users can easily share GIFs in conversation. Last year, Facebook and Linkedin integrated GIFs into their messaging platforms across iOS, Android and web. Twitter also followed suit, reporting that over 100M GIfs were shared by its users last year. Following this integration by popular messaging platforms, it’s likely the use of GIFs will increase. Microblogging site Tumblr which has long supported GIFs, sees 23M GIFs posted to its site daily!
It hasn’t taken long for Apple to jump on board. In its recent WWDC conference, Apple announced an overhaul of iMessage to include GIF libraries so users can search and send them directly in iMessage.
Thanks to mobile, GIFs are being propelled into a very widespread form of instant visual messaging!
So, How Can GIFs Be Used In Advertising?
Simple, GIFs can be monetised. Brands can seamlessly become a part of this visual messaging craze that is being rapidly shared across mobile through native advertising.
Popular GIF library GIPHY serves over a billion GIFs daily. 80% of these GIFs are branded, meaning they’re from TV, movies or celebrities that GIPHY have content deals with. GIFs are particularly well suited for advertising TV and films because scenes can be cut down into short looping videos. They’re a great way to get character and brand awareness into mobile messaging, leaving an appetite for longer and more complex content.
Like emojis, big brands have been getting involved with GIFs. Keyboard maker Riffsy partnered with 20th Century Fox and Universal Studios to create GIFs for the films ‘Taken 3’ and ‘Minions’. Riffsy reported that the ‘Minions’ GIFs were shared 80M times, showing that there is a strong use case for GIFs as a form of advertising!
In order to encourage interaction from users, it’s important to create GIFs, not ads. Halifax bank ran a campaign with GIPHY where they created funny GIFs to use when someone owes you money. The idea was fun, clever and encouraged engagement from users organically. GIPHY report that the Halifax GIFs were still being used months after the campaign ended, demonstrating the willingness of users to engage with such content.
If you’re not yet convinced, think of it like this. Say you’re hungry, you fancy a pizza and you want your flatmate to join you. With GIF libraries, you search ‘pizza’ and a Domino’s GIF may appear which you then share with your friend. This is a direct form endorsement for Domino’s!
Mobile advertising is no longer just mobile advertising, it’s becoming a part of conversation in a natural, organic way.
Round Up
In chat, we want to be witty, charming and smart. This is where emojis and GIFs come in hand!
On our tiny mobile screens, it can be hard for advertisers to catch our attention, especially when we’re messaging. But, thanks to emojis and GIFs, they have an ‘in’. An ‘in’ which is opt-in, entertaining, and can be shared at scale.
Whether branded emojis and GIFs are here for the long-term is questionable, but these experiments by big brands mark the beginning of a new trend in native advertising. A trend which is present in the most private and personal spaces on our mobile phones.