Communication has changed dramatically since the early days of mobile phones, when texting meant pressing the same number three times just to get a single letter. Today, people are constantly connected, and much of how they express themselves is shaped by emojis, GIFs, and, increasingly, artificial intelligence.

For brands, that shift puts visual content marketing at the center of a bigger question: how to show up in the conversations people trust most, like the group chats where they share news with friends and family.

In this episode of AdTech Heroes, our host Jon Wallett sat down with Kevin Hein, Chief Growth Officer at GIPHY. After roles at Ziff Davis, CNET, and Yahoo, and time at Facebook from 2010 to 2023, Kevin has spent the past two years at GIPHY. 

They talked about the rise of visual self-expression, why group chats have become so trusted, and why the human element still matters in a world shaped by AI.

Key Takeaways

• Visual content marketing has grown alongside messaging, as people increasingly express themselves through GIFs and emojis.
• Group chats are among the most trusted spaces in people's lives, and a branded GIF shared there carries that trust with it.
• Meta, Amazon, Google search, and programmatic arguably cover 90 to 95% of a brand's market, so standing out takes extra creative work.
• AI can produce visual assets, but according to Kevin, it's not yet good at the context that makes them worth sharing.
• GIFs can drive sales without a click or a discount code, with Pepsi's campaigns showing an average 3% lift.

How Does Visual Content Support a Modern Conversational Marketing Strategy?

Kevin sees two forces behind this shift: one technological, one social.

On the technology side, texting evolved from early mobile phones to the BlackBerry keyboard, faster email systems, SMS, and iMessage. Over the past decade, messaging platforms have completely taken off. On the social side, texting is simply easier. There's no small talk before getting to the point, it works on a subway with bad signal or on a plane, and it's easier to type "I landed" than to call. The pandemic, which made many people more insular, only fueled the habit.

He compared messaging to the old dial tone. People expected it to always be there, and if it wasn't, something was wrong. Messaging has become just as much of a commodity. If every messaging platform shut down for a day, it would be anarchy. Jon offered a modern equivalent of the dial tone: the three dots that appear while someone is typing.

Messaging doesn't translate emotionally the same way as being together in real life. And yet, in Kevin's view, the group messaging environment can be even more powerful. As Jon put it, that's your tribe in that moment.

That's where visual content marketing comes in. People are passionate about brands, and they share GIFs related to them with friends and family. For a conversational marketing strategy, that means brands can become part of how people talk to each other.

‍"We have data that shows 40% of people know more about their group chat daily lives than their own family does."

Why Is Dark Social Marketing Becoming Essential for Visual Content Distribution?

Dark social refers to sharing that happens in private spaces, like messaging apps and group chats, rather than in public feeds. The group chats Kevin describes are exactly that kind of space.

When someone gets engaged, lands a new job, or has other big news, they're usually not picking up the phone to call someone first. They tell the group that's already there.

That trust shapes how visual content marketing lands.

On GIPHY, the ads are exactly the same as the GIFs people send each other, only labeled as sponsored. Kevin called that sameness a lot of the power. When a branded or sponsored GIF is shared in a group chat, its message carries more weight, in a way people may not even notice, because the trust is already there.

Looking ahead, Kevin expects more platforms to embrace their own messaging systems, much like retail media networks, where brands realized they had audiences they could build an advertising business around.

Why Brands Struggle to Integrate Visual Content Marketing

If GIFs are a universal language of the internet, why haven't more marketers fully embraced them as part of their visual content marketing? Kevin pointed to a few factors.

The first is the shape of the market. Between Meta, Amazon, Google search, and programmatic, a brand can arguably cover 90 to 95% of its market across the entire funnel. Most of that is automated, and the most advanced AI advertising systems from Meta and Google will do much of the work. The result is low-cost, high-impact coverage, but also creative that can become blended and commoditized, with less experimentation.

GIPHY is flourishing in the remaining 5 to 10%.

The second factor is the extra lift. Working with a partner outside those major platforms can mean additional steps, like adapting a 30-second TV spot into GIFs or going through extra approvals, and at the speed the industry moves, that can become an obstacle.

When brands do that extra work, the campaigns are more impactful. It's the kind of differentiated work many marketers chose the profession to do.

Creating Visual Content People Want to Share

Apple is a recent case study. GIPHY partnered with the brand for the first time on three campaigns: one for AirPods, one for iPhone, and one geographically targeted in Mexico.

The Mexico campaign is built around a telenovela, an Apple-branded show that's a big hit in that market. People choose one of about 20 GIFs from the show, then pick from about 20 pieces of preset copy, and share it. In other words, they create their own GIF based on the show's content.

The result is highly differentiated, with massive engagement. It also reflects a broader pattern: the brands willing to do a little extra work are seeing far greater impact because they're differentiating.

Why AI Can Create the Asset but Not the Context

Could generative AI make this kind of specialized work more efficient? GIPHY's engineering team already uses AI tools to increase efficiency, productivity, and insights. On the creative side, Kevin was more measured. People are still able to detect the AI blips, even in a short GIF.

In his words, AI "is able to produce the asset, but it's not good at the context."

He used the World Cup to explain. If AI creates GIFs for the tournament, it will focus on the goals and the high-exposure players. In reality, the best GIFs are the ones where a red card was pulled, where someone innocently trips another player, or where someone in the crowd did something fun. AI doesn't know that yet, and GIPHY has the insights to know what people actually want.

Kevin is confident AI will get there, with GIPHY helping to drive that. For now, he isn't seeing large demand for simply churning out 3,000 variations of the same copy. Or, as Jon summed it up, AI can't yet read the culture of the moment. Younger consumers spot generated imagery very quickly, and the goal for marketers isn't to fool their audience.

It's a distinction we think about often here at Seedtag. Understanding what a piece of content shows is one thing. Understanding how a moment feels, and why people respond to it, is what turns relevance into resonance.

The Types of Visual Content People Share Most

Asked what resonates beyond sports, Kevin related it to how people live their lives. Everyday occasions, like Happy Monday, happy birthday, and Friday, still drive a massive amount of traffic. Then there are unique moments in people's lives, like a journey to a new location or an accomplishment such as skydiving. And finally, there's what's trending right now around the world, whether it's a reality show, where LeBron James chooses to go next, or a big moment in the cricket community.

It's a combination of life, and that's what people are sharing. Jon connected it to fandom, which goes well beyond sports into many parts of culture.

How Do You Measure Visual Content Marketing?

Kevin believes everyone in an organization, up to the CEO, is now highly accountable to quarterly results. Top-funnel brand messaging is still critically important, but if marketers could only choose one, most would go to the lower funnel because they can track it.

That creates a tension for visual content marketing, and for GIFs in particular. People send and receive them, but they don't click on them to go somewhere, and there's usually no discount code. Sharing is the action. So Kevin pushes his team to have business outcome conversations, focused on the metrics that define success for each campaign and supported by research.

Pepsi offers a clear example. The brand wanted to tie its GIF campaign to sales, so it sent anonymized sales data that GIPHY matched on the back end. Across multiple campaigns, GIPHY has seen an average 3% lift in sales, even though the creative never showed where or how to buy and included no discount code.

GIPHY is also seeing success across CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods) and entertainment, especially shows that run for short bursts of time with tight budgets. Those clients often say a GIF was the most shared piece of media in their entire campaign. And as Kevin noted, grabbing attention right now is the hardest thing.

Where Creators Fit in a Visual Content Marketing Strategy

With the creator economy growing so fast, creators are a natural next step. GIPHY has experimented with them over the years as monetization across social media platforms has shifted. It hasn't found the exact recipe yet, partly because creators sometimes want people to click out to something, which is harder in a GIF format. But it's on the list and something the team is actively working on. Kevin believes the creator community could play a big role in driving adoption.

When someone picks a GIF tied to a brand they love and sends it to their group chat, they're raising their hand.

That's the opportunity. And the brands willing to do the extra work to show up in those conversations are the ones seeing the impact.

You can watch the full conversation with Kevin above.