This Is Our Year…
2018 has been dubbed the year that we (advertising folks that is) will finally start taking risks, both in life and in advertising. With the incredibly cluttered world of advertising and messaging, all of which are clamoring for attention, risks are the only way your product, service or work will stand out.
Let’s face it, in healthcare, risks are scary and we don’t really like to take them. Especially in healthcare marketing. But here is one risk that you should probably look at taking sooner rather than later.
Our GIF To You…
According to Reuters, more than 84% of communication this year will be visual.
GIF – short for Graphic Interchange Format, is quickly becoming the go-to language for the masses. But GIFs aren’t new. In fact, GIFs have been around since the late 80’s. (Anyone else just realize that was 30 years ago?)
Usually created from parts of videos or multiple static images, animated GIFs have viral appeal. They have become a part of internet culture. Compared to photos, GIFs are more appealing and more effective in Social Media strategy. And they take less time to create and are far less expensive than video. According to HubSpot, visual content is 40x more likely to get shared on social media than other types of content.
GIFs are a unique and effective tool to generate brand awareness, character, emotion and tone into a format that, unlike video, plays easily with any bandwidth on any device including smartwatches.
Giphy, an online database and search engine that allows users to search for and share animated GIFs, has more than 100 million daily users who send more than 1 billion GIFs each day. In fact, Giphy powers the GIF search on various popular platforms including Facebook, Slack, Tinder, and Twitter.
Beyond movies and television content, major retail brands have integrated GIFs into their marketing and advertising efforts. Subway, working with Giphy, reportedly created over 100 unique GIFs as part of a recent campaign. And McDonalds incorporated GIFs into the “All Day Breakfast” promotions over the past year.
GIFs offer brands potential access to the holy grail of advertising; moving your marketing away from marketing, and transitioning into a part of the culture and conversation in a very natural way.
Three to five seconds is the new three to five minutes. In this fast-paced world, consumers aren’t interested in spending more than a few seconds engaging with a brand, so GIFs are an excellent method of engaging and entertaining consumers. And, well designed and entertaining GIFs also carry viral potential.