Everybody loves GIFs. In today’s partisan environment, it’s nice to know that we can all agree on that one fact. Now, we may retreat into our tribal groups to argue over the correct pronunciation of the word itself (I’m Team Hard-G, please don’t @me), but there’s no denying that billions of GIFs are served up across the Internet. Every. Single. Day. GIPHY, the largest platform for GIFs that is integrated into the fabric of major social platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter, powers over 7 billion of those daily GIFs alone.
What’s a GIF and Why Should I Care?
GIFs are highly visual and highly shareable pieces of content, often drawing from a shared lexicon of beloved characters and brands, that are most often employed as emotional shorthand to quickly connect with other folks from behind our glowing computer screens. Remember that 7 billion figure from a couple of sentences ago? That's why you should care about GIFs if you’re a brand or marketer. In addition to all those impressions, creating branded GIFs is an excellent way to connect with your audience no matter where they are and, because GIFs are innately meant to be shared, give your fans the tools to promote your brand on your behalf.
In addition to working with our internal design team, we also let the Tongal community run wild and pitch us on creating even more GIF Stickers in our recent Wacky GIPHY GIF & Sticker Project. For us, it only makes sense that the creators who will interact with our content should be the ones designing it too, and we plan to continue building out our GIPHY content library with their help in the future.
How do you release your GIFs into GIPHY’s vast ecosystem? Well, first you’ve got to sign up for an account, create some content, and submit an application for verification on GIPHY as a brand or an artist. Since I recently went through this process to create the Tongal brand channel, my advice is specifically aimed at other marketers. However, Tongal <3 creators so here’s a great place to start if you’d like to apply for an Artist Channel. (Already have a channel on GIPHY? Drop a link in the comments below. We'd love to check it out!)
Design Some Awesome GIFs and GIF Stickers
This is step one. You need engaging content that will connect with your audience, and GIPHY requires a minimum of 5 uploads before a brand can apply for verification. The type of content you choose to upload should depend on your brand goals and audience. How do you want your fans to interact with your brand? Which sentiments or themes will resonate with your audience?
At Tongal, we really wanted to reach our creator community on Instagram so we decided to primarily focus on creating GIF Stickers, the transparent GIFs that Instagram users have access to in Instagram Stories and DMs (and TikTok and Snapchat). GIF Stickers, as the name implies, stick on top of whichever image or video a user is sharing. They can be used to decorate or add additional commentary to the post at hand. Sounds boring, perhaps, but here’s how it looks in practice:
Sidebar: GIFs vs. GIF Stickers
There are two types of animated GIFs that you can upload to GIPHY, standard GIFs and GIF Stickers. I honestly didn’t know much about the difference before starting this project for Tongal, but now that I am practically a GIPHY expert, allow me to drop some knowledge on you.
It’s actually pretty simple: GIFs are animated images and GIF Stickers are animated images with a transparent background. I’d liken it to the difference between JPGs and PNGs, if you’re familiar with these static image formats. In practice, GIFs typically take up a full square or rectangle of space, while GIF Stickers are more freeform. Here are examples of each kind - make sure to hover your mouse over the GIF sticker to see its transparent background:
GIF #MadeOnTongal by April Merl GIF Sticker #MadeOnTongal by Nicolette Groome
Here are the essential specs to keep in mind when designing a GIF Sticker per GIPHY’s best practices:
Stickers must be exported with transparency - no white or colored background.
Crop the canvas to fit the sticker. Stickers exported with too much empty space in the frame will appear very small when they are uploaded.
Videos cropped into a circle or a square then exported with transparency will not qualify as a sticker.
Stickers should not contain unnecessary borders or edges since the background is meant to be transparent.
At least 20% of the first frame must be transparent to register as a sticker.
The source file must be a GIF. GIPHY currently does not support APNG.
RGB color mode is mandatory.
There is no maximum file size; GIPHY will automatically resize the GIF on upload for uses in various contexts of its sticker API.
You must set the GIF to loop "forever" before exporting.
Apply for a Brand Channel
So you’ve uploaded your minimum of 5 GIFs or Stickers, let’s circulate ‘em amongst GIPHY users. That’s right, it’s time to apply for Brand Channel verification.
Keep in mind that you must be a company, recording artist, actor or public figure with content you’ve created or own to be eligible for a brand channel. If you’re managing a client account in an agency environment, be sure to host content on your client’s channel. Them’s the rules!
When you’re ready, simply click here to fill out the verification form. Hit ‘submit’ and then wait.
Luckily, the process is pretty quick. After a few days, GIPHY gave us the great news over email that Tongal’s GIFs were accepted and now searchable within the platform. This is when the real fun begins because you and your fans can now start sharing this content. I won’t lie, I got a small thrill typing ‘Tongal’ into Instagram Stories the first time and seeing our GIFs and Stickers pop onscreen. And if the GIPHY content you've created resonates with your intended audience as they go about their day-to-day lives on social, they’ll likely feel a similarly positive sentiment when the unexpected familiarity of your brand pops up in their GIF search too.
#MadeOnTongal by Keaton Manning via GIPHY
