How Bobble is making brands fall in love with GIFs, memes and stickers

India is in love with GIFs and stickers. So much so that every Bollywood actor is getting one made. There are GIFs for every movie that's being released and even brands have jumped on to the bandwagon.

The popularity of GIFs and stickers is pretty evident from the fact that they are trending regularly at the 29 spot on Google India trends.

Though India's obsession with Graphic Interchange Format (GIF) is a couple of years old, globally the concept starting becoming popular with the rise of listicle sites such as BuzzFeed in 2010.

And in India, at the forefront of this revolution is Bobble, one of the leading GIFs and sticker developers.

Bobble isn't only making one-on-one communication personalised, expressive and smarter with its cutting-edge artificial intelligence but also revolutionising the way brands are using the format.

The size and potential of this new industry is so massive that every month over 10M Bobble users type 100B+ words in 30 languages and share 100M+ content. Approximately 97% of this content shared is on chatting platforms like WhatsApp, Messenger, etc. With technology like Intent Prediction being offered to help consumers make their lives easier, brands can use this to subtly market their products to the right mix of people.

Ankit Prasad

Bobble's founder Ankit Prasad, who's an IIT Delhi dropout, told BuzzInContent.com, “Content like stickers and GIFs are relatively new, and are helping consumers move conversations from offline to online platforms. In the offline world, our communication is a lot more eloquent. It has tone, context, expressions, and is far more consistent, not depending on where we are interacting. Our vision at Bobble is to bring this colour, context, and personalisation to your digital interactions.”

This is where stickers and GIFs acted as saviours. Brands always follow their users’ consumption patterns, and now that such content is so popular, brands are adopting themselves accordingly. This presents great success for not just users, but even brands.

Usual GIFs/stickers are static in nature. And if brands were to insert their content, this integration would also be static.

Backed by 18 reputed angel investors, SAIF Partners, India’s most successful VC fund, and Xiaomi, India's No. 1 smartphone brand, Bobble offers great flexibility in content branding with the latest technology.

“We have created a platform-like structure for dynamic brand insertion. Brands can bid on inventory, type of objects, type of logo, etc. Not only this, we also help with better targeting basis different demographics. The process is flexible enough that it’s not just logos that can be utilised, but even characters, dialogues, and taglines of brands. This presents a very easy, yet highly effective technique,” said Prasad, who wrote his first program at the age of six and saw his first start-up turning profitable at the age of 16.

“We understand our users’ brand affiliations, and using this data, we are able to push the exact right brand to the exact right user.”

The generation today has a very minimalistic approach to communication, and they prefer concise, impactful communication instead of long, descriptive formats. Bobble’s content offers a lot of expression with minimal effort.

Brands align themselves to their users, and this is visible with how much brands have evolved to match their audiences’ likes and dislikes. Sensing the minimal tone of their audiences, they have also opted to create conversations around serious topics using short, impactful hashtags. Certain brands also build human-like personalities on social media, which act as representatives of everything the brand has to offer.

GIFs and/or stickers if used correctly can be extremely beneficial for brand messaging and positioning.

“At Bobble, we aim to provide technology to let you stay true to your emotions and feelings, allowing you to freely and creatively express your special self in every context. The influence that brands can build by leveraging this can lead to immensely engaged, creative and loyal users who serve as word-of-mouth brand ambassadors using branded content. This tends to have a better response and is more memorable as compared to non-branded stickers. Basis the conversations using the platform, Bobble has several categories under which stickers are offered and can be useful for brands. There is apparel, home and furniture, F&B, footwear, automobiles, electronics, sports and fitness,” Prasad said.

Given the limitations offered by chat/social apps, stickers and GIFs are perfectly suited for communication right now. When apps in the future start experimenting with more content formats, brands and content creators can definitely leverage such opportunities more and begin brand insertion.

Speaking on the future of GIFs and stickers, Prasad said, “As per ongoing trends, growth can positively be expected in this aspect. Youth adoption will play the strongest role in this process. With an increased need to express more, better, and create their own brands, content like stickers and GIFs are definitely the way to go.”

WhatsApp had recently announced it would allow advertisers on its platform. When asked how that would change GIF usage in promotion on the platform, welcoming the move by WhatsApp, Prasad said, “This will give brands another mechanism to advertise on, and gain more users. But ads are typically meant for a conversion or a transaction, which are short-term goals. Bobble helps brand achieve long-term gains like brand positioning and brand associations. Ads also have their own limitations, especially that they look like ads, possibly being forced upon people. The response to native and branded content is a lot stronger than just ads.”

According to Prasad, “The move from endorsement by celebrities to endorsement by users’ needs to be made for much more effective marketing. A product recommended by a close friend while chatting with them seems more credible than a product presented to you via an ad. Bobble enables brands to position themselves within users' conversations with Bobble conversational content suggestions. This opens up huge opportunities for branding, proven by Bobble partnerships with existing brands. Our stronghold over regional languages allows better penetration for brands. Not just elite India, users that speak any language other than Hindi would associate better with such suggestions and ads.”

Prasad, who was on Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia 2018 List, among a few other popular millennials, feels that there is always room for new and better things, especially with all the technology that is available to us. “Branded AR filters can be a route that can be explored for marketing on WhatsApp,” he concluded.