MarTech Interview with Caroline Huber, Executive Vice President of Product at GIPHY

Should B2B marketers drive their online messaging with more GIF’s? Caroline Huber, Executive Vice President of Product at GIPHY shares pointers on why and how GIF’s can enhance your online marketing:

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Welcome to this MarTech Series chat, Caroline, tell us about your journey at GIPHY.

When I joined GIPHY in 2015, it was still an early stage startup with just 11–12 people, and I was the first Product Manager hired. We were growing so quickly—our content library, our distribution network, our user base—that I had a lot of opportunity to learn, problem solve, and expand my role quickly. First I expanded my product leadership role, helping to build out our product strategy and product and design org, and then continued to take on more cross-company strategy and operations over time. Now, GIPHY is in a much different phase than it was then (more than 100 employees, growing a revenue business, and is now a part of Shutterstock), and I have a more holistic leadership role with oversight over business strategy and the organization at large.

How has GIPHY evolved as a platform over the years? How have you seen brands change how they use gifs, memes and such others to drive digital marketing initiatives?

When GIPHY was founded in 2013, GIFs were a quirky media format shared by niche communities on the internet. Most people didn’t know the word GIF, let alone how to find and share them, and most platforms didn’t support the format for sharing.

GIPHY made the GIF ubiquitous by both integrating with all the major social and messaging platforms where people communicate and by working with brands, artists, and content owners to create and distribute content optimized for communication and self-expression that will perform best on those platforms.

Now GIFs are synonymous with GIPHY, and GIPHY is an integral part of any company’s digital storytelling strategy. GIPHY is the only way brands can reach users in most messaging contexts, and the way people use GIFs to communicate allows brands to extend the lifespan of their marketing campaigns if their content is expressive and shareable.

What can today’s digital marketers do to use gifs and memes more authentically to drive impactful messaging? Can you share examples of any impactful GIF or meme strategies?

In order to be successful on GIPHY, digital marketers must create content that users actually want to share, that truly enables self-expression and communication—not just content promoting the brand. We have proven that users will readily share branded content, as long as it is genuinely funny or expressive, and when they share, they will connect with the brand in a more authentic way than if they had passively watched an ad.

In addition, GIPHY strives to be a positive presence on the internet, and we hope to inspire brands to use the language of GIFs to drive their message and make real connections with users in a way that makes the internet a better place.

In terms of great GIF content strategies, I always like to direct people to our artist directory to get an idea of what it takes to make a great GIF. There is so much timely and creative content in there that helps people express themselves and emote how they’re feeling — from the simple to the complicated. Artist GIFs, along with our amazing content partners, always show up on our annual list of the most-viewed GIFs. which proves that they understand the kind of content that communicates.

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What are some of the common misconceptions around the use of gifs you’d like to dispel? 

There was a funny rumor that GIFs were outdated, which is silly because the GIF is just a format—a short, looping image—that has so many different use cases and contexts. Also, our data suggests otherwise, as we serve more than 10+ billion pieces of content every day and our usage is only growing. Since we relaunched our Ads platform just a few months ago, we are already seeing major brands like Pepsi’s Pure Leaf and L’Oreal’s CeraVe leverage GIPHY to reach their target audiences where they communicate  in the way only GIFs can.

We know that people will always need short-form visual media to express their ideas, emotions, and reactions on the internet, which is why we strive to capture every moment that they might need to communicate and why we continue to expand and innovate on the format.

Can you talk about the state of today’s digital marketing media use (images, gifs, videos, etc) and how brands can drive unique messaging using these differently?

Good digital marketing should be an extension of the brand: whether they’re using text, stills, GIFs, or videos, these media types are all just vehicles for telling a brand’s story in a way that resonates with their key audiences. To leverage these formats effectively brands need to first understand what the purpose is of their content. Is it to inform, connect, engage, or all of the above? What we learned with GIFs in particular, for example, is that they are best leveraged to meet people where they are communicating and provide conversational content that they can share, not just view.   

How do you see the future of digital marketing changing in regards to conversational content? What’s on the horizon for GIPHY?

We will certainly see platforms and marketers alike striving for more authenticity in the near future, especially with so much research demonstrating the value of authenticity to Gen Z audiences. One of the most authentic things a brand can do is provide content that adds true value to consumers in a way that: 1) makes sense to who they are as a brand; and 2) encourages, not interrupts, a consumer’s ongoing conversation. We already see this trend as many campaigns at this year’s Super Bowl strove to make bigger moments that would endure beyond the game. In summary, the future will show that the winning strategy for advertisers will be to understand how people communicate and create content that they need to express themselves in their own voices.

For GIPHY, we are going to continue investing in ways to help brands and content partners alike get this strategy right. We will continue to push the GIF format and expand our distribution network so that we are meeting users wherever they are communicating on the internet and helping brands to join the conversation!

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