Spring 2024 Newsletter
The weather is getting warmer and our projects are heating up! In this issue of our newsletter, we would like to share what our incredible team has been up to this late-Winter & Spring. We had the opportunity to work with some amazing clients this quarter and have a lot of great work to showcase. As always, we would like to thank our business partners for their endless support and flexibility.
Movie Magic
We love providing clients with creative ways to share sneak peeks of their films and boost engagement beyond the typical trailer. Our design and animation teams had the wonderful opportunity to work on creating rotoscope stickers for two upcoming movie releases: Challengers and Mad Max: Furiosa. Thank you to our Art Director, Jackie Karnoff, for taking the lead on these projects. We’d also like to shout out Charlie and Chihiro for all their hard work on the Challengers stickers. These stickers are available for free on GIPHY.
Warner Bros Pictures released the latest installment of the Dune franchise, “Dune: Part 2,” this past March. In celebration of its release, we’re throwing it back to the animated stickers our design team created for “Dune: Part One.” We loved collaborating with Warner Bros on these stickers and were very excited to see the evolution of these characters on screen in the latest installment. Click here to check them out!
Creations & Causes
At Bare Tree Media, we love to create work for causes near and dear to our hearts. The last few months, our design and social media teams have been working together to create social justice posts inspired by Black History Month, female empowerment, blood donations, and sustainability. Visit our GIPHY page to follow along with this series.
Winter 2024 Newsletter
Happy New Year! We hope everyone had a safe and relaxing holiday season. Our team members have been hard at work this year creating digital experiences for brands and clients across the world. As always, we would like to thank our business partners for their endless support and flexibility. We look forward to creating more for you in 2024.
Team Spotlight - Phoebe (Feeb) Om
Meet our Animation & Illustration Sprout, Phoebe (Feeb)! Feeb is a co-op student from Northeastern University. Starting this Summer, Feeb worked with our licensing, illustration, and animation teams to design messaging stickers, illustrated videos, GIFs, and Samsung themes.
“The team was definitely my favorite part of working at Bare Tree Media! I’ve mostly worked on animation and design projects by myself. It was awesome to bounce ideas off other people, get feedback from them, and see a large project come together through the efforts of multiple people. For example, for the Healthy Ocean Coalition animated video, it was so much fun creating assets of sea creatures and bringing them to life. My teammates taught me a lot about animating in After Effects from my team members, so it was a really valuable experience.”
We love watching our interns and co-ops grow, get creative, and produce work they are proud of. Over the last few months, Feeb has been working on her “personal project,” entitled “Bunny and Cat are Girlfriends.” This sticker pack is available for Samsung and Apple devices and can also be found on GIPHY & Tenor.
“I loved creating really goofy, meme-like stickers. I thought about what kinds of stickers my friends and I would like to send to each other, and I got to make it real! They ended up being very silly as a result… I hope lots of people will have fun using them!”
Licensing Announcement
Bare Tree Media is now the official digital licensing partner for Paramount and its global franchises. Our team is so excited to create and publish everything from Samsung themes to messaging stickers for iconic brands such as Avatar: The Last Airbender, Garfield, Spongebob Squarepants, Rugrats, and many more. Thank you to the teams at Paramount, Apple, Samsung, and Quidd for their support. We look forward to continuing our work with you all in 2024. For more information about this partnership, click here.
Movie Magic
Step into a world of pure imagination! Our illustration and design teams had the opportunity to design and animate illustrated and rotoscope stickers for the Wonka movie, featuring Timothée Chalamet. Thank you to our Art Director, Jackie Karnoff, for taking the lead on this project. We’d also like to shout out Katie Rose, Chihiro, and Julia for all their hard work and talent. This project had us all reliving our childhoods! These stickers are available for free on What’s App and GIPHY.
Our illustration and design teams designed animated GIFs for Hollywood’s latest fantasy/sci-fi movie, Poor Things. Thank you to Searchlight Pictures for trusting us with this project. Check them out on GIPHY.
We love rotoscope stickers. Our team created stickers for two of Warner Bros latest films: The Color Purple & Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. Thank you to our Art Director, Jackie Karnoff, for spearheading these projects. The Color Purple and Aquaman GIFs can be found on GIPHY!
Eye on AR
Our AR and social media teams have been working together to showcase our company’s AR skills. Check out our Instagram and TikTok to see all the different effects we’ve created internally and for brands. We’ve made effects for a variety of industries including, but not limited to, entertainment, sports, and beauty. In need of something unique for your brand? Check out our website baretreemedia.com to learn more about us and our AR team’s capabilities.
Our team loves being a part of the MetaSpark community. During MetaConnect 2023, our AR manager, Vedika Bhasin, had the wonderful opportunity to join other AR creators in sharing what they love about MetaSpark and what new features they look forward to exploring in the future. Click here to watch the full clip.
Creations & Causes
At Bare Tree Media, we love to work with companies who want to use art to make our world a better place. This past 2023, our team had the pleasure of working with the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) and the Healthy Ocean Coalition (HOC) to produce animated informational videos that raised awareness for important environmental causes. These projects were a full team effort—we loved the challenge of storyboarding, designing, and animating these videos. We look forward to working on similar projects in the future.
Summer 2023 Newsletter
Happy end of Summer and Hello Fall! In this issue of our quarterly newsletter, we are excited to recap all the creative content we made and shared throughout the Summer. Our team members have been hard at work creating digital experiences for brands and clients across the world. As always, we would like to thank our business partners for their endless support and flexibility. We look forward to creating more work for you all this Fall.
Company Reel 2023
Our 2023 Company Reel is here! See all the exciting projects we’ve been working on and clients we’ve been working with over the last few months. In need of something unique for your brand? Check out our website baretreemedia.com to learn more about us and our team’s capabilities. We create everything from AR effects to animated messaging stickers to illustrated videographics. A big thank you to our Creative Manager, Jackie, for putting together this Company Reel.
Team Spotlight - Julia Feldman
Meet our Animation & Illustration Sprout, Julia! Julia is a co-op student from Northeastern University. Over the last 8 months, Julia worked closely with our illustration, licensing, and animation teams to execute messaging stickers, GIFs, illustrated videos, and Samsung themes. She has worked on a number of projects including Wonka and IFAW and has created GIFs for our social media pages. We love to challenge our interns and co-ops to push themselves outside their creative comfort zones. Over the last few months, Julia has been working on designing her own animated sticker pack “The Goose,” which is available for Samsung and Apple devices and can also be found on GIPHY & Tenor.
“I loved going through the whole process of designing a character, coming up with expressions, illustrating, animating, and creating metadata and promotional materials. I learned so much about design and animation through this process and really appreciated all the support and critique given by my team members along the way.”
As Julia’s co-op comes to an end, we would like to thank her for all her hard work—she has been a fabulous addition to our team. We have loved watching her grow and develop her own artistic POV. We will miss her positive energy and cannot wait to see what the future has in store for her.
Licensing Expo 2023
Our CEO, Bob Ferrari, and Licensing Manager, Sonya Priest, took a trip out to Sin City for the annual Licensing Expo. We loved catching up with our existing brand partners, learning from industry leaders, and securing some new licenses. We will be announcing some new and exciting partnerships soon! Follow us on Instagram, X, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay up to date.
Branded Likes
Branded likes….we’ve missed you! There’s nothing we love more than these interactive animations. If you are a fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle franchise, our senior animator, Alexa, designed this X branded like for the new TMNT Movie. With the trigger hashtag #TMNTMovie, X users could activate this slimy surprise for 24hrs. Great work, Alexa!
Eye on AR
Our AR team has been using their knowledge of all things emerging tech to help brands give their followers immersive digital experiences. For the 2023 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, we partnered with Whalar to design a TikTok effect to be featured on the festival floor. It was so fun seeing how many creatives and attendees interacted with our effect. This project was a team effort and lots of fun to demo in the office.
“Rainbow Beach Disco” was also part of a larger Pride Month initiative. Pride celebrates unity, community, and self-expression. We love designing effects that create togetherness and encourage people to be themselves. Click here to try “Rainbow Beach Disco” and check out our TikTok to see our Cannes recap.
Fall 2022 Newsletter
The weather is getting warmer and our projects are heating up! In this issue of our newsletter, we would like to share what our incredible team has been up to this past fall. We had the opportunity to work with some amazing clients this quarter and have a lot of great work to showcase. As always, we would like to thank our business partners for their endless support and flexibility.
Team Spotlight - Wendy Jia
Meet Wendy, our summer illustration and animation sprout! Wendy worked closely with our senior illustrator and AR/animation teams to create her own personal sticker pack for GIPHY, Tenor, and iMessage. We will miss Wendy and look forward to seeing all her future creations! Please scroll down to learn more about the personal project she worked on while interning at the studio.
“Through Tea for Teaspoon, I got to explore so many of my interests, like character design, complex rigging, and 3D animation. With the help of my coworkers, I was finally able to accomplish my dream of designing my own personal sticker pack, while also challenging myself to learn new skills.”
Nothing is more rewarding than seeing our summer interns’ projects come to life. O.M.Tea! Meet Teaspoon—a mighty, fearsome matcha-thief brewing with mischief. Keep an eye out on your own cup, for you never know where he’ll pop up next…maybe even in your messages?! For Wendy’s personal project, she used Maya to create animated 3D stickers inspired by some of her favorite things!
“I thought about the things I love and wouldn’t mind working on for 6 months. I settled on matcha, hamsters, and deer. I also drew inspiration from the sticker packs I personally use. Taking all of this into account, I designed 21 silhouettes, narrowed it down to 8 thumbnails, and finally iterated on 1 design. That’s how I ended up with Teaspoon!”
As an animation student at Northeastern University, Wendy was able to explore the entire pipeline—character concept, color, modeling, rigging, texturing, lighting, and animating. She was able to develop marketable skills across multiple disciplines. Her favorite part was getting to design all of Teaspoon’s expressions! These 3D animated stickers are sure to last you an oolong time.
Disenchanted Animated Stickers
Raise your hand if you are an OG Enchanted fan (all of our hands are raised *very* high)! Our team had the wonderful opportunity to collaborate with Disney to design eight animated stickers for the release of Enchanted’s sequel, Disenchanted. We loved seeing our favorite characters—Giselle, Robert, and Prince Edward—come to life. Click the link to see them all on Walt Disney Studios’ official GIPHY page and be sure to catch Disenchanted on Disney+.
Samsung Themes & Season's Greetings
What better way to celebrate the holiday season than with some Samsung Themes? We collaborated with a number of brands to bring some holiday cheer to Samsung Galaxy users’ devices. See them below.
The Smurfs Christmas Cheer
Papa Smurf, Smurfette, and crew are bringing the Christmas spirit to your Samsung devices. This theme is perfect Christmas customization. Click here to download the latest Smurf theme from Galaxy Store.
Betty Boop Loves Christmas
We love the holidays almost as much as Betty does! Betty invites Galaxy users to get into the holiday spirit with her latest Samsung Theme. Click here to download “Betty Boop: Loves Christmas” from the Galaxy Store.
Garfield Christmas With Friends
Gather by the fireside and around the tree with Garfield and friends this holiday season. Make messaging the ones you love this holiday season even more festive with the “Garfield: Christmas With Friends” Samsung Theme, available now in the Galaxy Store.
Summer 2022 Newsletter
We are excited to recap all the creative content we made and shared throughout the summer in this issue of our newsletter. As always, we would like to thank our clients and business partners for their endless support and flexibility.
Team Spotlight - Raquel Fioroti
Meet Raquel, our graphic design sprout! This summer, Raquel worked closely with our senior illustrator and licensing team to execute design concepts for messaging stickers, Twitter emojis, and Samsung themes. We are going to miss Raquel greatly and look forward to seeing all the amazing things she accomplishes in her senior year at MassArt! Scroll down to learn more about the personal project she worked on while interning at the studio.
“Through real-life projects, I was able to develop my skills in Adobe programs, such as Illustrator, Photoshop, and After Effects. I learned about licensing for digital marketing and distributions and made some pretty cool connections with people working in those industries.”
We love seeing our summer interns get creative and work on projects that address causes important to them. #NationalThriftShopDay is not only about supporting local thrift shops but about bringing awareness to their charitable missions. For Raquel’s personal project, she designed a GIF to highlight one of the most popular thrift spots in the Boston area: Buffalo Exchange. As for what Raquel learned throughout this process, she found that she was able to showcase her design and animation skills, as well as create connections with the Greater Boston community.
“The design team at BTM was very open to me applying and learning skills even outside of my official job title. This project was challenging, but it was very rewarding to be able to bring awareness to shopping locally and second-hand. The best part was the shoutout I received from Buffalo Exchange…that was pretty cool!”
Read below to learn more about the other thrift shops Raquel highlighted (and may even create more GIFs for):
- Boomerangs: funds goes to the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS in Massachusetts
- Garment District: provide affordable clothing and costumes, always putting clothes to be recycled and reused, even after being on their racks
- Urban Renewals (Family Thrift Center): sell not only clothes, but toys, electronics, furniture, and jewelry too
Branded Likes for KSA
BTM takes on KSA! In case you missed it on our socials last month, Twitter named us the exclusive design studio of branded likes for the North America, Europe, and Middle East regions. On July 27th, our first branded like went live for Twitter users in Saudi Arabia. This design was created for stc pay, a mobile wallet that can be used to pay bills and send money to friends and family. We loved having the opportunity to bring branded likes to overseas advertisers and cannot wait for more designs to go live in the near future.
Smurfs X ZEPETO Announcement
In case you missed it on our socials, we are beyond excited to officially announce our partnership with IMPS The Smurfs & Lafig Belgium. We are working together to design and bring virtual goods within ZEPETO, Asia’s largest metaverse platform.
Bare Tree Media has worked with IMPS The Smurfs in the past to provide audiences with a variety of digital content, including but not limited to, branded mobile messaging applications, Snapchat AR experiences, Samsung Themes, watch faces, and a GIPHY channel. The initial launch includes Smurfs-themed 2D and 3D branded apparel and accessories. These items are available exclusively to ZEPETO’s global audience. More details announced at: https://bit.ly/ZEPETOlaunch
“This is such a ‘smurftastic’ opportunity to launch a popular branded IP, such as The Smurfs, into the metaverse with a leading metaverse partner such as ZEPETO. We are thrilled to offer ZEPETO’s global audience of 300 million users an opportunity to customize their avatars and metaverse experience with The Smurfs-branded digital goods collection…” – Robert Ferrari, president of Bare Tree Media
National Ice Cream Month
July is National Ice Cream month and our design, animation, & AR teams collaborated to bring our audiences *sweet* visual experiences.
Inspired by early 2000s computer games, our lead illustrator, Danielle, designed an ice cream vending machine game for our audiences. While fully leaning into the nostalgia of the 2000s, she also wanted to bring a new and modern approach to this design. Although the storyboarding sketches below show an ice cream purchase gone wrong, we decided that everyone should be a winner during National Ice Cream month!
Rudy, our motion graphics intern, brought Danielle’s 2000s vision to life through animation. By animating the “start game” and selection processes, users feel as though they are playing the game and receiving the ice cream themselves. A flashing sign with celebratory confetti appears when users are notified they have won the game.
Wanting to bring some sweetness to our Snapchat channel, our AR designer, Wayne, designed a simple randomizer lens inspired by Danielle’s design. When users end a video, an ice cream from the machine is randomly selected. National Ice Cream month may be over, but you can’t go wrong with a big scoop of your favorite flavor of this frosty dessert. Try out “Ice Cream Machine” by clicking here.
GIPHY Artist Channel Feature
Introducing GIPHY clips! This feature allows designers to upload animations that include sound. Our Bastille Day clip was featured alongside our other GIFs on GIPHY’s artist channel.
Back to Boston
Boston-based team members have been getting together weekly to work in-person for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic. Our hybrid work weeks provide flexibility, as well as an opportunity for new hires to meet long-standing staff. Team members were able to work collaboratively on design projects, discuss strategy, and even participate in a few bonding activities, including a Workbar birthday party!
Spring 2022 Newsletter
In this issue of our newsletter, we will be recapping all the creative content we made and shared throughout the spring. As always, we would like to thank our clients and business partners for their endless support and flexibility, and we look forward to collaborating with them on new projects this summer.
Quidd Partnerships
In case you missed it on our socials, we are beyond excited to officially announce our partnership with Quidd, the leading digital collectible marketplace. Bare Tree Media is working with Quidd to launch digital collectibles to fans. Upcoming collaborations will feature a variety of popular licensed brands. Previously, Bare Tree Media and Quidd partnered to release Smurfs-themed content and within the first two hours of launching, the series sold out and sales exceeded $100,000. More details announced at: https://bit.ly/
“Given the monumental success [of our first launch on Quidd], we are scheduling monthly product releases through year-end on the Quidd platform and invite brands to join us…by working with Bare Tree Media, brands can offer non-NFT digital collectibles to fans to be bought on the primary market and sold on the secondary market within Quidd…” — Robert Ferrari, president of Bare Tree Media
PAX East Conference & Licensing Expo
Members of our team had a chance to attend the PAX East Gaming conference in Boston, MA for the first time since the start of the pandemic. Our team enjoyed checking out the latest in all things gaming, including many indie games created by local game studios. We also finalized a partnership with an amazing global gaming company. We look forward to announcing the details of the partnership soon…so stay tuned!
According to their website, the Las Vegas Licensing Expo “has connected the world’s most influential…brand owners and agents with consumer goods manufacturers, licensees, and retailers.” Thousands of licensing industry professionals flew to Las Vegas May 23rd-26th to build partnerships, plan channel releases, and expose themselves to some of the newest brands available to the licensing world—and the BTM team was no exception!
Our studio representatives had the opportunity to meet with our valued licensors and discuss brand and product strategies for 2022 and 2023. We held 50+ meetings over three days with companies, including but not limited to, Sanrio (Hello Kitty), Mr. Men Little Miss, Hasbro, Care Bears, the Smurfs, and Pokemon.
“For me, this was the first meeting with a lot of our licensing partners in person due to COVID. I had the opportunity to network and gained more insight into the future of licensing in general. I was invited to a ‘Women in Toys’ breakfast and attended a character parade, featuring famous characters from Teletubbies, Squishmallows, etc. Overall, this experience was great and informative, despite it being at a limited capacity. The free swag was great too!” — Josie Martin, licensing coordinator at Bare Tree Media
Our AR team collaborated with the Smurfs to unveil a Snapchat Lens featured at the Licensing Expo. This hyper-casual gamified lens uses real-time 3D simulations and collision detection to bring users a fun, user-friendly AR experience. This lens also contains a custom link to a Smurfs sticker pack, available for iMessage, that has previously been promoted on our socials. Brands went crazy over the demo and requested our team to create AR experiences for them. Click here to try it out.
ARL Pet Prom & Adopt Don't Shop
Just because Earth Day is in April does not mean we can’t celebrate our planet and the beautiful things it contains all year round. May is National Pet Month and April is National Adopt a Shelter Pet Day. Bare Tree Media wanted to take the time to encourage our audience to support pets of all kinds.
In keeping with our mission of supporting animal welfare, we partnered with the Animal Rescue League of Boston and designed custom GIFS to promote their “Pet Prom.” The ARL Pet Prom highlights animals looking for their own fairytale happy endings. In addition, our AR team designed an Instagram Camera effect for the event that you can use on your own adopted pet.
Congratulations to the winners, Zilla and Fern, and be sure to check out these GIFs on the ARL’s official GIPHY page.
We created an official GIPHY page for the City of Boston Animal Care and Control Shelter and designed custom GIFS to promote pet adoption and care. Adopting from shelters provides all types of deserving pets with a safe and loving home. Our design intern, Wendy, created a special animated sticker pack for the occasion. Check them out and use them for yourself!
In addition, one of our AR designers, Wayne, created a lens you can use on your own adopted pet! This lens uses machine learning to detect the faces of dogs and cats—even hamsters and then applies the animations. We were so thrilled to see many of our Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok users try this lens.
Tiny Headed Kingdom Roll-out
Say hello to your favorite people with a PIF (a Pip GIF)! This month, Bare Tree Media collaborated with Tiny Headed Kingdom to release GIFs of everyone’s favorite tiny headed animals. Stay tuned for the release of more GIFs this June by checking out our GIPHY page.
#StandWithUkraine
We at Bare Tree Media, like so many around the world, are shocked and saddened by the sudden war that erupted in Ukraine. Our thoughts and prayers go out to those affected, and though we hope for peace to come quickly, we must be part of the solution.
Join us in showing solidarity with the Ukrainian people by sharing and donating to hospitals and other humanitarian efforts, including this one set up by our friends at Geeks for Less, who have strong Ukrainian roots. Donate here.
Eye on AR
Our AR, Design, and Social Media teams worked together to launch multiple virtual experiences across various platforms just in time for festival season! We designed 4 TikTok effects using Effect House and launched them the weekend of Coachella:
Pick one that encapsulates your festival weekend mood and share it while you jam out with your friends!
We are so excited to announce that Effect House is now available for everyone to use on TikTok. We look forward to seeing brands and creators flex their creative muscles in the world of AR. To see what you can create using Effect House, check out the effects we have made on our TikTok profile @baretreemedia.
Six Reasons Stickers & GIFs are Effective for Marketing
Marketing is constantly evolving around the consumer, and during the Age of Technology it’s evolving at a more rapid pace ever; it can be difficult for marketers to know whether or not they’re on the uptake or being left behind. Perhaps the most underrated game-changing tool for marketers are animated stickers and GIFs. Although many still use video, this format is frankly out of date for the modern internet user. According to a survey conducted by Harris Poll, a whopping 71% of Americans would rather send a digital sticker over a block of text. With such a large user base, it’s no surprise more and more companies have been seizing the opportunity to make branded stickers and GIFs to seamlessly integrate their brand into their consumer’s daily life. We partner with these companies to make their brand come alive within mobile conversations. However, not all companies are aware of the wide gamut of opportunities afforded to them across platforms or the sheer flexibility stickers and GIFs inherently have.
1. Custom Twitter Emojis that create trending hashtags:
Companies can pay Twitter to attach a custom emoji to a Twitter hashtag for a period of time. Then, whenever someone uses their hashtag the emoji automatically comes with it! The brand’s hashtag instantly stands out with its unique emoji and helps create a community around the product.
Recently, we collaborated with Disney on a campaign for Christopher Robin and other upcoming titles, including creating a range of twitter emojis to promote the film and make the hashtags appealing, relevant, and most importantly create the cute Pooh-bear association to the Christopher Robin movie in people’s minds. We managed the storyboarding, sketching, and illustration for these emojis.
2. Clickable Branded Stickers:
A branded sticker campaign’s main objective is to organically increase brand awareness and engagement. To that end, stickers are a revolutionary tool because it enables marketers to have their brand present in their customers everyday conversations across mobile. In other words, their brand becomes a permanent part of their customer’s life.
A good example of this is Lovate Health’s MuscleTech stickers, promoting their MuscleTech brand of products. These stickers are centered around and cater directly to the consumer base that uses MuscleTech products; as a result, they end up using them a lot because the sentiments and in-jokes are relevant to them. This entrenches MuscleTech further into the community in a feedback loop that keeps both the company and the consumer happy, and helps new initiates to the community naturally find their product in a sea of competitors.
Lovate Health has taken it even further by making their stickers clickable. These stickers, when sent, allow the receiver or sender to click the sticker and be redirected to a website, the app, or the app store. This is brilliant because users are able to interact with the images being received and has quick access to the company’s brand. They also allow people to send links to products they enjoy in a fun way!
3. Sticker Markets on Messengers:
Stickers and messengers go hand-in-hand, creating a demand for sticker marketplaces, which offer a wide variety of branded emojis and keyboard and almost functions as an advertising playground.
In 2016, around 50% of all mobile users used at least one form of mobile messenger, according to Stastia. The fact that since then, messenger apps continue to add free features like video calls, encryption and social media means that usage has only been increasing. Sticker marketplaces have also grown in kind, and many of mobile messengers have created their own sticker markets that draw users to their specific platform.
Apple and Facebook are leaders in this industry with their respective iMessage and Messenger platforms; in total, over 1 billion stickers sent on them. We’ve has observed the intense popularity of stickers it created for the mobile game Plants Vs. Zombies, which had 1 million downloads 4 days, and 2.5 million downloads in a week with over 100 million impressions.
4. Everyone is a Brand Ambassador:
This was touched upon briefly in point number two, but one of a branded sticker’s major selling points is the seamless integration into a consumer’s life: in other words, converting that customer into a brand ambassador.
This is one of the most effective ways of creating brand ambassadors because people are sending these stickers to their friends organically; they love the content and they are spreading the brand to all of their friends in a win-win scenario. Furthermore, people who are friends tend to be in similar target markets, which means having stickers so your customers can share your brand with their friends is the ideal way to spread your brand.
5. They Can Reach New Audiences
Stickers are an important bridge that connects companies to a younger audience in a charmingly appealing way. In an age where this younger audience has been collectively groomed to ignore the millions of ads they see every day, stickers appeal as authentic and fun, leading more of this audience to be attracted to and spread your brand (in the form of stickers). Sometimes you even get people who were previously unaware of your brand but will buy sticker packs because of artistic appeal or funny witticisms, which could convert them into customers. If not, they’ll at the very least be creating more brand awareness for your brand.
6. They Have Potential for Going Viral
Some of these sticker apps/packs go viral and have millions of downloads. Although not a guarantee, the possibility is always there and because stickers are created to be spread on the internet, where the phenomenon of “going viral” first appeared and retains the farthest reach, it is a direct line to the culture that facilities going viral.
Overall, the existence of stickers as a marketing tool has opened a completely new avenue for brands and consumers to communicate through. Instead of having their message get “lost in textlation”, customers can augment their thoughts with your brand, without losing what they want to say.
Most importantly, they can do it in a way that feels fun and cool and makes them feel good, which will push them to keep doing it. People can show who they are by sending stickers of TV shows, music, or quotes they like from pop culture that curate their personality by showcasing the communities they’re a part of and appealing to others like them. In layman’s terms, stickers/GIFs are great for showing some personality!
Behind the scenes of the Christopher Robin Film's iMessage Stickers
Once upon a time in the hundred acre wood, the classic characters we all know and love needed a new look for their very own set of iMessage stickers. In anticipation of the new Christopher Robin movie, Disney approached us to create of set of stickers in line with the stuffed animal character designs of the movie.
We drew inspiration from children’s books and developed a style that resembled cut paper with distinct texture shading. We then illustrated all nine characters that were going to be in the sticker pack: Christopher Robin, Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, Piglet, Eeyore, Rabbit, Owl, Kanga and Roo. This tested the style’s flexibility in rendering human characters, stuffed animals, and realistic computer generated animals.
Sketch Phase:
Once style direction was determined, the next step was sketching out all the stickers.
Color & Texture Phase:
Upon sketch approval, all stickers were colored and textured.
Animation Phase:
The art was then sent over to our animation team. Many were animated in After Effects but a few required special attention. Those got frame by frame treatment. Rough animation was completed to get direction approval before final rendering.
It was pleasure to work with the team at Disney and an honor to work on characters we all adore. The team looks forward to seeing the movie this Friday, August 3rd!
Check out the full sticker pack and download for your iPhone!
Happy World Emoji Day 2018
It is 2018, and Emojis have taken over. The once perceived “silly, childish” messaging stickers have become completely integrated into our daily conversations. Snapchat filters even let us turn ourselves into our very own Bitmoji. Emojis allow us to demonstrate feelings and emotions to a greater specificity than our words. Here at Bare Tree Media, we pride ourselves on being the original and the longest-standing emoji designer. Day in and day out, we work to give everyone the ability to say just what they want (with OR without words 😉). It seems with each new day more emojis are created by designers across the globe providing each of us with unique ways to express ourselves or just have fun!
Apple’s Custom Emojis: Memoji
World Emoji Day calls for big news, and companies have delivered. Apple Inc. announced they will be releasing Emoji 11.0 for iOS and MacOS, an emoji pack including 66 new emojis for Apple fans to enjoy in late 2018. Along with these new emojis Apple is also releasing their Bitmoji counter, Memoji. The 3D emoji will be available with iOS 12 this fall. Memoji’s are to follow-up Apple’s animated stickers that use facial recognition to overlay animal filters, Animojis. Memoji’s take the next step and allow users to create and use their custom Emoji stickers to express themselves in a unique audio-visual hybrid. With innovations like these, developers are reimagining where and how emojis can exist, proving the only way is up.
Facebook's Emoji Keyboard Stays Strong
Facebook and their messenger are one of the leaders in the emoji space, having adopted all 2,800 Unicode Emojis. Unicode is a consortium of the biggest tech companies and a few countries, who decide on what should or should not be an emoji. Facebook once again proudly released their annual Emoji statistics, demonstrating significant increases in emoji use and engagement. Here are just some of the numbers:
- Over 5 billion emojis are sent everyday in Messenger
- 900 million emojis are sent on Messenger that don’t even have text
- 700 million emojis are used in Facebook posts everyday
- The 😂emoji is the most popular around the world
- The ❤️emoji has doubled in usage in the past year
Twitter Branded Emojis
Emojis have made their mark on our society, and now large companies are working towards making their own mark through branded emoji stickers.
Recently, Twitter teamed up with Disney to release custom emojis of the upcoming movie Christopher Robin and chose us to create them! Each of core 100 Acre Woods characters got their own little emoji to accompany their hashtag. Tweets including #ChristopherRobin, #Pooh, #Tigger, #Eeyore and #ItsPiglet grew in number. Twitter users that might not have engaged with tweets involving the Christopher Robin movie in a normal situation began tweeting about the movie. Some solely so that they could have the emojis on their feed!
Emoji Merchandise
There are now emoji clothing, pillows, an Emoji Movie, and now premiering tonight in New York City, “EmojiLand: The Musical” on Broadway just a couple theaters down from The Lion King. Many companies have realized the power of emojis, and how developing new emojis allows for each company to integrate themselves in a language rapidly growing in popularity. No one truly knows the future of emojis, but we do know it’s bright. 🌟
Join Us and Share Your Favorite Emoji with Bare Tree Media on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram!
Garfield Celebrates His 40th with Augmented Reality and Mobile Messaging Stickers
Boston, MA — June 19, 2018 — Today marks a major milestone for the world’s most beloved and lazy cat, Garfield. He turns 40 and still looks great whether napping, snacking, or driving Odie and Jon crazy. To celebrate, Bare Tree Media collaborated with Paws Inc to create a special 40th anniversary series of mobile messaging stickers and augmented reality effects.
“We are excited to be part of Garfield’s 40th celebration and offer fans our digital options to join the party.” — Robert Ferrari, President of Bare Tree Media
iOS fans can find the 40th sticker series on iTunes for use within iMessage and as a new sticker pack added to the Garfield StickerTap app. Android fans can find the stickers in the emojiTap app and the Garfield StickerTap app on the Google Play store.
Fans active within Snapchat and Facebook can add Garfield augmented reality effects altering their identity and sharing 40th greetings using the Garfield Snapchat Lens and Garfield Facebook AR Camera Filter.
“This is a special milestone for Garfield and I am thrilled fans can have fun celebrating all month and all year long with stickers and AR.” — Jim Davis, Creator of Garfield
About Bare Tree Media
As a pioneer in the digital creative and technology sector, Bare Tree Media enables brands to reach, engage, and entertain consumers through the creation and digital publishing of branded emojis, messaging stickers, GIFs, digital collectibles, metaverse virtual goods, and augmented reality experiences within popular messaging platforms. Interested brands can learn more at www.baretreemedia.com or contact Bare Tree Media at info@baretreemedia.com.
About GARFIELD
GARFIELD was born on the comics pages on June 19, 1978. The creation of cartoonist Jim Davis, GARFIELD is a humorous strip centered on the lives of a quick-witted orange cat who loves lasagna, coffee, and his remote control; Jon Arbuckle, his owner; and Odie, a sweet but dumb dog. Follow Garfield and Odie, along with nearly 19 million other fans, on Facebook and Twitter, and Instagram.