AT&T | GIF A LITTLE LOVE

CONCEPT

It’s almost impossible for a brand to be relevant or remembered during the holidays, with the never-ending influx of deals overwhelming our social feeds. But (and this goes without saying) 2020 was different — people didn't want material things this year…they wanted the physical things they couldn't have – laughing together, eating together, being together. So, in a year where connection was actually all that really mattered, AT&T decided that was what we had to create. We partnered with GIPHY to create a festive GIF series that set out to remind people that we're not as far apart as we might think.

PROCESS

2020 was a mood…lots of moods. so people had a ton of emotions to express by December. We tapped into GIPHY’s historical data (from past holidays) and their real-time data (since the pandemic) to create a psychological model that predicted the search terms that would have the most relevance during the 2020 holiday season. We then dove further into GIPHY’s data around current visual trends to help us craft our own unique and modern style for our holiday GIFs. Using the insights we gathered, we partnered with a world-class animation studio to bring our subtly branded executions to life – and in turn, giving people another reason to reach out to connect with friends & family over the holidays.

RESULTS

GIF A Little Love got a ton of love from the internet. With over 546 million views, nearly 5% engagement rate, and over 24 million engagements and counting, turns out people really dug our data-powered GIFs. In the end, we helped people connect with family and friends in culturally-relevant, memorable ways. AT&T animated conversations from afar and became a conduit for connection during the most-weird-of-holiday-seasons - millions of times over — and we did it all with absolutely ZERO media budget.

The 2021 One Show awarded us in several categories:

  • (SHORTLIST) Creative Effectiveness – Consumer/Brand

  • (SHORTLIST) Creative Use of Data – Social Media

  • (WINNER) Native Advertising, Media Buying Strategy-Shoe-String