Join us on July 30 in NYC for a breakfast & panel
It’s the bane of life of most office drones: Somehow, someway you get stuck in a group email that quickly fills your in-box. Publicis strategist Keith Stoeckeler has a solution for you: GIF-U, which gives you boilerplates for responding to emails with the appropriate GIF response.
Say the email chain has gotten terribly boring. There’s GIF for that. The effort is undeniably silly, but it has a semi-serious purpose, according to Stoeckler, particularly at a time when agencies are under the gun to get more efficient.
“I answer a lot of internal agency emails with GIFs, and the team has seen how that completely shuts down an email chain, which is really the intent,” he explained.
Stoeckeler started GIF-U with the help of his creative director at Publicis Carlos Figueiredo. GIF email options include things like “You’re an asshole” with a GIF of Jack Nicholson giving the finger, and “You’re boring” with GIFs of animals yawning and a “Give-a-fuck-o-meter.” The site also accepts user submissions.
GIFs have enjoyed quite the resurgence on the Web that not many other Internet artifacts have. “Sure, the written word is awesome and it’s great when someone can put some really cohesive words together, but a photo beats that a lot of times, and a GIF trumps all,” said Stoeckeler. “It’s just the best way to express how you’re feeling about something without being vocal at all.”
Stoeckeler hopes more people will start responding to emails with GIFs and that people will get a few laughs.
More in Media
WTF is LLM honeypotting?
Publishers and ecommerce brands under siege from AI crawlers are starting to fight back with an old security trick updated for the LLM era: “LLM honeypotting.”
Why a once-anonymous creator unmasked herself to build a bigger media brand
Kristi Cook used to YouTube anonymously. Once she revealed her face, her account became wildly popular.
Creators are crashing through Hollywood, but there’s a ceiling
Hollywood is tapping creators for hit horror films, unique IP, and cameos, but there are limits to their star power in its current state.