Animated GIFs have been circulating the internet for over 30 years, but have recently risen in popularity - especially where digital marketing is concerned. The term GIF is in fact an acronym for ‘Graphics Interchange Format’, which was introduced back in 1987 as a way of presenting a moving image.

Although largely used for entertainment purposes, businesses around the world have started introducing GIFs to their social media content strategy as a way to raise brand awareness and increase popularity. 

Why do brands use GIFs?

GIFs can be used as a fun and innovative way to share information with fans; to connect with your audience or to simply express an emotion. For example, if you have just launched an exciting new offer then you could use a bespoke animated GIF to highlight the key offerings.

On Twitter, GIFs are often used within conversations and brands often use GIFs when responding to customers to add a more ‘human’ feel to their response. Some brands also use GIFs in order to portray a certain emotion or express a reaction, often humour.

Where can GIFs be used?

GIFs can be incorporated into your marketing strategy in many ways. Whether you choose to embed a GIF into email campaigns to help your brand stand out; or you upload fun and quirky GIFs to Twitter, GIFs are a sure-fire way to get people interacting with your brand. 

The team here at Squideo don’t just like to use animated GIFs on social media, we also use GIFs on our website to add a quirky dimension to the site itself. We highly recommend using animated GIFs on your website as they are a fun and easy way to show off your business’ personality.

If you want to feature a GIF on Instagram we recommend instead creating a 3-5 second video which loops. These are called looping videos, and simply start and end at the same place, creating the same effect as a GIF.

Here's our favourite looping videos we've seen brands use on Instagram:

Google

Google created this slick video to advertise a science fair for children. They have a great grasp on their branding, ensuring every viewer knows a google image when they see one. In this GIF, they have kept the simplicity and primary colours, but moved a series of building blocks into a rocket shape. This piques interest without giving everything about the event away.

Starbucks

Starbucks whipped up this super swish video to advertise their brand new Vegan red cups on Instagram! The festive red cups are already a Christmas exclusive to Starbucks, filling people with all the festive feelings when they arrive! Including plant-based options on the menu ensures everyone can enjoy a hot festive drink too!

YO! Sushi

The team at YO! Sushi are experts at creating animated videos for their Instagram page. Luckily, due to their bold and colourful branding, block colour backgrounds and large titles make GIFs easy to produce and don't look out of place. Whether they're advertising a store, a new recipe, a wholesaler or just want to make you crave Sushi, they've created a GIF for everything!

Salesforce

Salesforce use their mascot in a variety of scenarios, but in this case, this video was created to advertise their dance party. The use of their fluffy, cute mascot, adds an element of friendliness to this CRM software behemoth.

How to Upload a Video to Instagram

If you want to follow suit with the above brands, you'll need a short 3-5 second video creating! Speak to the team at Squideo today, we're a professional animated explainer video company, ready to make your brand look amazing!

Once you've had your video produced, you can follow a blog post, such as this one from Wave Video, to find out how to upload your video to Instagram! https://wave.video/blog/how-to-post-a-video-on-instagram/.

How to Create an Animated GIF

Here at Squideo, not only do we create awesome animated videos for our clients, we create bespoke animated GIFs too. Our super creative in-house team of video producers will work with you directly to help design a bespoke animated GIF that portrays exactly what you’re looking for.

Whether you’re looking to advertise a new competition or simply want to spice up your marketing strategy, our animated GIFs are bound to elicit a bigger and bolder audience response than static images ever could.

As well as GIFs, we also offer the creation of several other animated extras including our popular animated email signatures, animated brand logos and info graphics – all of which can be used as part of a campaign to help your brand stand out from the crowd.