Thanks to the internet’s interest in never-ending, looping cat fails and Russian parkour accidents, the GIF file format has surged in popularity over the past few years – however, when put into context for a sales or marketing tool, the GIF can be a powerful communicative medium for explaining a process.
Among others who have used the file format to communicate their product and/or services have been a wide variety of Kickstarter projects – some of which have gone off to raise millions of dollars.
Perhaps this level of simple-yet-effective communication is why New York City-based marketing agency 360i chose to use the file format for their latest campaign for Toyota – which aims to bring users into the Toyota automobile production process.
Through a series of 45 GIFs that represent the most critical steps for creating a car out of a hunk of metal, users are transported to an actual working day at the Toyota assembly line in Georgetown, Kentucky. Through using a custom web app in tandem with the GIFs, users are able to create their own song mix (shareable on social media of course) based off of actual noises from the production process such as welding, steel stamping, engine starting, etc.
The resulting ‘song’ is cleverly named a “Gifony”.
https://youtu.be/8-hjS-EgeE0
“Making a Toyota is a lot like making a song,” says Toyota.
“Each has layers of moving parts and pieces that need to come together perfectly. That’s the beauty of our production process. It never loses rhythm. And now you can experience the sights and sounds of our manufacturing system like never before.”
Try out the Toyota|Gifony platform for yourself by heading over to Toyota.
