Made with Henry Duong (filming, editing, and production).

Extending Bonusly's brand to GIF platforms.

TLDR: Pitched and directed 64 branded, work-relevant GIFs for Bonusly so that anyone can give a quick thanks, thumbs up, or celebration! GIFs were uploaded to Tenor and Giphy, so customers could add these GIFs to recognition posts in Bonusly's employee recognition software.

As of October 2022, the GIFs have been viewed over 5.4 million times on Giphy.

Background & Process

Bonusly's platform relies heavily on GIFs to convey meaning within appreciation posts. I was inspired by a few different factors to create new GIFs:

1. It was challenging to find GIFs that only convey the intended emotion without additional meanings; a "thumbs up" GIF from a TV show may have additional implications or context that either the sender or receiver may not be aware of, increasing the chances of miscommunication.
2. When you searched for "Bonusly" GIFs on Bonusly, there weren't any relevant results.
3. I thought it would be cool to have Bonusly GIFs show up in other places where people were showing recognition as a way to increase off-platform brand awareness.

The Pitch

Have you ever spent precious time looking for the perfect unique GIF to express your appreciation, only to fall back on the same old classics?

If you answered “YES” join me in creating dozens of brand new Bonusly-branded recognition GIFs to be distributed across the internet and used in our product.

Seeking videographers and on-screen talent. 

Order of Operations

1. Shotlist planning with Henry and other collaborators.
2. In-office photoshoot with a DSLR and LED panel lighting.
3. Post-processing in Apple Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere Pro.
4. Cropping, color correction, and watermarking with the Bonusly logo.
5. Uploading and tagging on Tenor & Giphy.

Challenges & Learnings

• Acting is hard and it’s challenging to get the effect you want.
• Making a good GIF is surprisingly complicated; every platform has different requirements and the compression algorithm doesn’t like fancy gradients.
• Work through your pipeline with one asset before processing them in bulk to identify the best total process and avoid duplicate work.

Outcomes

• 64 brand new Bonusly GIFs are available in-product and on Drive.
• Free to use in sales, marketing, and customer support materials.
• Great case study for potentially using video more in our prospect and customer communications.
• Thank you to Henry, Vicki, and Helen!