Subway is the latest brand to create animated GIFs and the results are absolutely delicious.
The restaurant’s digital agency in the U.S., 360i, commissioned a handful of GIF artists to create 73 original animations featuring subway sandwiches to promote its #JanuANY promotion, which offers up any footlong sub for five dollars.
In one, a sub bounces a soccer ball. In another, two characters ride a sub like a surfboard. There’s even a set that feature subs floating over cheesy, idyllic stock locations fit for Kayne West’s much-parodied “Bound 2” video, like this one of subs floating over a beach sunset. (You can see all 73 on Giphy.com, a GIF search engine that’s hosting the campaign.)
In the past brands like Coca-Cola, Nike, MTV and American Apparel have made GIFs, which were first re-popularized on the social web on sites like Tumblr, and are now used on Buzzfeed listicles, Canadian news sites and everything in between.
As Marketing reported during South By South West last year, the surge of use of GIFs in the media has caused brands to get into the GIF-making game, and these Subway GIFs are among the best a brand has created yet – a feat accomplished by tapping GIF artists who are already popular online.
“Brands always want to do what editorial is doing,” Lindsey Weber, associate editor at New York Magazine said at the time. “They want to do what people are talking about and looking at. Brands see the GIF as a huge thing and they want to play in that field.
Edelman Canada launches Creative Newsroom
Following the lead of its U.S. and U.K. counterparts, Edelman Canada launched a “creative newsroom” this week, setting aside dedicated space in its Toronto office for creating content based around what’s trending for its clients. The agency has long done newsroom-style real-time marketing, an area of growth that Eastern Canada senior vice-president Dave Fleet says has moved to a “must-have” for brands. For example, the agency created ads for Jello to share on its social channels that showed a toy shark in a “pool” of blue Jello during “Shark Week.”
Taco Bell Canada follows up on its Twitter Tacos
Taco Bell Canada gained huge traction on the social web last summer when it printed tweets of angry consumers on the shells of its Doritos Locos Tacos (DLT) tacos. This week, the brand launched a follow-up video announcing that DLTs have been permanently added to the menu in Canada. To celebrate, the quick-serve restaurant (and its agency, Grip Ltd.) offered a lifetime supply of tacos to one Toronto-based consumer in exchange for getting a drawing of a DLT tattooed on his arm. Click through for the video.
The Numbers
Just one third of social media marketers (34%) are seeing a return on the investment they put into social media, according to ExactTarget’s “2014 State of Marketing” report. Whether it’s misguided initiatives, a lack of reporting or problems with the networks themselves, the figure is a startling one given the amount of investment in social media. Here’s a by-the-numbers look at the report.
78%
Marketers currently investing in social media
57%
Marketers using social media for advertising-based initiatives
60%
Marketers using social media for social listening
31%
Marketers who say social media is “fully” effective
66%
Marketers who say social media has an “indirect” impact on business
52%
Marketers who expect social to deliver an ROI in the future
