I LOVE YOU (insert GIPHY)

This is my first LinkedIn article, buckle up, I have the mic and this is going to be a long one (love having the mic).

• My Time at GIPHY
• The Future
• What Really Matters

GIPHY.

I started in September as an advisor who eventually transitioned to interim Chief Revenue Officer up until the acquisition by Facebook two weeks ago. It was an incredible run that offered tremendous learnings. Figured it was worth a LinkedIn post on the ride and some thoughts on the future of media.

Why GIPHY Works. I admired GIPHY long before I met David Rosenberg and Adam Leibsohn in 2016. It was clear to everyone who follows media at any level that GIPHY was a beast. 700MM daily user reach, billions of gifs sent daily, millions of those being created from brands directly. An immediate warm smile every time the name is mentioned.  

When I set up my first email account in 1995, I used emoticons constantly. I wanted to find a way to be human and quickly express myself in a text based environment and emoticons worked. :) Emoticons turned to Emojis as a more elegant way of solving the same problem: how do you bring context to text-based communication?

How do you jam the nuance of self-expression and personality into a fixed alphabet?

Turns out the answer was both simple and revolutionary. When you have access to almost every clip ever made — from movies, television, sports, commercials, etc. — you can find the perfect nuance.

Gifs and memes speak for us better than words and they do it faster. They are a sharp shooting shortcut to express anything: joy, boredom, desire … anything.

What happens if you say I LOVE YOU to your wife, mom, and best friend in a text. Does a heart emoji solve that? What you mean by “I love you” is very different for each of these people. That is impossible to capture in eight characters.

GIPHY solves that problem in two seconds. I would pick a Matthew McConaughey gif for my wife (she loves that guy), Schitt’s Creek gif for my mom, and Justin Tuck sacking Brady gif for my best bud.

Implications. Context. Meaning. All solved in seconds. This explains the explosive growth on top of messaging and stories. 10 billion gifs are put into motion across the globe each day via GIPHY. That is Billion, capital B.

Ok, now for the business opportunity.

People think scale and think dollars. Right? Wrong.

When you are big enough (there are two players that come to mind), you have earned the right to expect your share. You can deliver world class ad innovation, service and outcomes. Outcomes. Remember that word, I’ll be coming back to it.

For everyone else, and I mean EVERYONE else, it is a joke to think that if you have an audience you can expect dollars to flow. Scale, reach, share of voice ... whatever you want to call it is a commodity at this point. Connection, the humans behind it, the consumers using it… that is the value. For some reason we have lost sight of that.

Ok, back to GIPHY. Historically, mass market media has meant top - down messaging. You aggregate a big audience and find a way to market on top of it.

The wow here, is that the AD is chosen by the consumer, not the publisher! I am choosing the brand that I want to affiliate with. And, when I send that to you… you are seeing that brand. Double affiliation. I chose to send YOU a gif of Saquon Barkley squatting 2000 pounds wearing Union / Air Jordan 1s. What greater endorsement can there be?

My job at GIPHY was figuring that out with brands and content partners. How can you be a part of the intimacy and authenticity of friend to friend gif/meme communication? Because that is the secret sauce. Now imagine being able to tie it back to core brand metrics… recall, intent, recognition, awareness, whatever you want to measure, and it could be incredibly powerful.

Just wait. Excited to see it come to life, congrats Instagram. You have a winner.

FUTURE. 

What is an ad and what is content? That distinction is blurring and blurring fast. And with participatory media you could argue it never mattered much in the first place. How do you scale branded content? Good question, you don’t. That is a labor intensive game, a heavy lift service biz. How do you scale advertising revenue then? You earn it with something different.

Snap is earning it. There is a reason why their Q1 earnings were so strong. The product has always been tremendous but it is their PEOPLE (all caps) that are the differentiator. They are connecting self expression to brands in remarkably innovative ways.

Time will tell how successfully TikTok is able to monetize its remarkable ascent but their usage numbers and brand affinity are insane. Showing brands why and how TikTok is a one of a kind platform and how they can play a complementary role will move mountains for that biz. 

As always, big outcomes require both focus and a differentiated product.

These conversations actually happen and somehow lead to ad deals.

• Vendor: Hey Marketer, long time, hope all is well. Cool, cool. Big news, we are actually up. Traffic is 10x where we were pre-COVID and I have been meaning to call you.
• Brand: That is great to hear, congrats. What are you thinking when it comes to my brand / goals / strategy / etc.? Excited to dive in.
• Vendor: Let’s pump up the amount of :30s you are buying. Inventory is honestly going fast and unfortunately rates are going up because of the demand. Let’s lay something in immediately.

… this is going to change. Let’s break it down. #1, if you are referred to as a vendor, congrats, you earned that (I am being sarcastic, that is a disaster, you are a commodity, take a walk, self-reflect, and figure out how to earn the right to be a partner). #2, commodity status is exhausting… and that is going to catch up to you.

The next wave of the media business will move far beyond answering an RFP; it will flourish only by marrying radically innovative ideas to the massive scale that peer-to-peer social platforms offer. 

PERSPECTIVE.

This is fun. Or at least it should be. The world feels crazier than ever but the human desire to connect, to entertain and to be entertained, to laugh and engage … well, it feels more important than ever. And the way that humans are doing that with technology, interaction and passion is radical and fascinating. It’s changing at a blinding speed and the gatekeepers are falling over like dominos.

I have always enjoyed a good pontification session and I do that regularly with my personal advisory board (Carolyn Everson gave me this advice to create one years ago, it stuck)... outside of my wife, brothers, and late grandfather, Jack Johnson there is a core group and you know exactly who you are. Thank you for being there.

Relationships matter more than ever before. That said, do not forget or lose sight of the most important relationships in your world. Your family. Your friends. The people you love. Never take that for granted, give everyone a call today and tell them you love them… over the phone or via FaceTime, or hey, maybe pick out the perfect gif. Just stay away from straight text… you are better than that (especially after this missive).