We created the first and only peanut butter jar designed to end an internet debate: the Jif ‘Gif’ jar from Jif. The internet has been debating how to pronounce the file format – GIF – for 10+ years. Some insist it’s said with a hard G (like gift). Others say it with a soft G (like Jif). Our limited-edition jar doubled as a pronunciation tool, helping to clear up the confusion. With only a few thousand in stock on Amazon for a (very) limited time, the Jif ‘Gif’ jar became the most sought-after peanut butter sensation in internet history.

The Situation: After a 50-year-long campaign targeting choosy moms, Jif lost its relevancy among younger consumers, who were now the ones responsible for driving category growth. Without being top of mind, they were drifting away from the brand without even realizing it.

The Brief: JM Smucker challenged us to put Jif back on the map with this young, internet-savvy audience. Jif’s existing campaign was leaning into taste superiority, but the brand needed to drive salience by engaging in social conversations beyond peanut butter to sell more peanut butter.

The Objective: Achieve fame and drive engagement with younger peanut butter people by stirring up buzz online.

In 2020, we hacked a debate that was raging online for nearly a decade.

GIF--the file format--is it pronounced Jif or GIF? Hard G or Soft G?

It seemed as though everyone had picked a side. The inventor of the GIF, Steve Wilhite, said it was a soft G. President Obama was team Hard G. But what about Jif peanut butter, where did we stand? Simple: there are billions of GIFs (with a hard G) but only one Jif (with a soft G).

Using a limited-edition Jif ‘Gif’ jar to end this debate, we launched #JifvsGIF, taking on the inventor of the GIF, professional linguists, and millions of keyboard warriors worldwide who had been calling the graphic interchange format the same name as our beloved peanut butter. Did we change all their minds? Nope. But we sold a ton of Jif, and successfully hijacked the debate.

Target: Jif had traditionally focused on parents of young children, but social conversation showed the most passionate peanut butter fans were actually young adults who loved sharing their opinion on every trending conversation on social media.

Approach: We needed to spur an online debate that only Jif could own. Through social listening, we discovered that every time Jif brand mentions spiked, it had to do with the debate over the pronunciation of “GIF.” This was the one place people were talking about the brand because it was unclear how to pronounce GIF – like gift or like Jif peanut butter.

Insight: The internet feels very strongly about three things: love for peanut butter, limited-edition merch, and the correct pronunciation of GIF.

Strategy: Get people talking about Jif peanut butter by reigniting the debate on GIF pronunciation, using a limited-edition jar as the hard-to-get centerpiece.

We teamed up with GIPHY just in time for National Peanut Butter Lover’s Day to take a stance on the pronunciation and set the record straight once and for all with #JifvsGif.

We tapped into the limited-edition cultural trend to create a unique Jif ‘Gif’ jar that declared our intention to end the GIF pronunciation debate. Jars were seeded to 50 media outlets under embargo, which created a flurry of coverage on launch day. They also were sold exclusively on Amazon as a special limited-edition item only. Consumers, and the internet, loved it.

We stirred up social buzz through 19 micro influencers, including comedians, pop culture voices and linguists to drive conversation.

We also created a series of Jif GIFs for both influencers and consumers to share and partnered with Funny or Die to release a fake video counterargument to hilariously extend the dialogue on day 2 of the activation.

The initial batch of 2,350 jars sold out in just 3 hours. We quickly pulled together another 1,000 jars to meet the high demand and sold out in minutes. It was the #1 new release in Grocery and Gourmet on Amazon and many jars started appearing on eBay for 5x the price.

Even the creator of the GIF, Steve Wilhite, missed out! Don’t worry, we sent him one (even though he still thinks it’s pronounced “Jif”).

The #JifvsGIF activation spurred over 180 million unique engagements on social channels, surpassing our initial estimates by 1700%. Our #JifvsGIF GIFs had engagement rates of more than 3xs GIPHY’s benchmarks. We achieved 5.5k mentions of Jif vs. GIF, reached 182M social users and #JifvsGIF was the #2 trending term on Twitter.

We tripled the number of daily social searches for “Jif,” and drove a 300% increase in Jif.com site traffic.