AT&T GIFs

2021

AT&T wanted to increase brand awareness with Gen Z so they came to us to harness the POWER OF MEMES. We assembled our most ‘extremely online’ artists to create a collection of not-too-naughty + not-too-nice, holiday-themed GIFs. We got something in the recipe right, because they’ve now amassed 274 million views across 12 GIFs. That’s a lot of eyeballs!

Hunting for Meme Fuel.

This one was handled predominantly by an international crew of BUCKers, so we had some homework to do around American holidays. That led us to probing our U.S. counterparts with questions like “why turkey?”, and digging for facts and anecdotes that worked as lethal meme fuel. The goal was to find moments that our young audience of internet users found relatable and shareable, while striking a balance between weird and wholesome.

Making GIF Gravy.

Starting with thumbnail sketches gave us an indication of which ideas could work in a four second loop. Despite the obvious limitations, we discovered that GIFs could provide a heck of a lot of story, ranging from simple to surprisingly complex. Families fighting over pie, kids late for school, and a selfie-obsessed turkey headlined the spread of illustrations that set us on our way.

Pure BUCK Fun.

Ideas for our concepts came in from all directions — creative directors, art directors, and designers all dreamt up short, loopy scenes in a fun and free give-and-take process. There were dozens of fantastic ideas that didn’t make the cut, but it didn’t dampen the pure BUCK energy and mood that made the experience incredibly rewarding.

On top of amusing ourselves with a slew of witty concepts (twerking ghosts and a marshmallow jacuzzi, anyone?), we took an important lesson away from our ability to turn these small quirky ideas into viral content. Some of the best ideas could have died on the vine, but instead we pushed them into ever-evolving, weirder spaces until they grew their meme wings and left the nest.

Credits

BUCK

Executive Creative Director

Vincent Lammers

Executive Producer

Chance Woodward

Associate Creative Directors

Chris Markland

Jen Zheng

Producers

Alex Smith

Carolina Brandão

Jamey Kitchens

Production Coordinator

Wendy Lin

Head of 3D / 3D Supervisor

Joao Rema

Art Director

Simon Buijs

2D Animation Lead

Daniel Rodrigues

Design

Bernd Bousard

Christo Silveira

Manon Sailly

Maxim de Gilder

Miijke Coebergh

Remi Borowczyk

Yana Abramova

3D Artists

Antonin Derory

Irmak Semiz

Manon Sailly

Sonal Jodhav

Sophie Blayrat

Rigging

Hernan Ares

Jing Huang

Juan Carlos Barraza Mendoza

3D Animation

Cameron Hicks

Céline Chotard

Christine Jaudoin

Morgan Kelly

2D Animation

Andreas Maris

Andrés Cuevas

Anna Moessnang

Daniel Rodrigues

Agency

Vice President, Executive Creative Director

Frank Dattalo

Creative Director

Fernando Brevilieri

Helena Skonieczny

Will Danilow

Associate Creative Director

Trey Tyler

Design

Julia Meade

Executive Producer

Sydney Woodman

Producer

Cale McArthur

Kareem Taylor

Vince Varga