Ikea, Subway cash in on digital stickers for Venmo

Brief:

Ikea and Subway are among the brands to work with messaging tech company Holler on branded digital stickers for mobile users to share on Venmo. The social payments app this week introduced the branded content as part of a broader rollout of animated stickers that customers can use while paying in stores, splitting bills or sharing payments with friends, per an announcement shared with Mobile Marketer.
Subway's animated sticker shows its Veggie Delite sandwich being split in half with text that says, "Split the Bill" for Venmo users who post how they divided a lunch expense with a friend. Ikea's animation shows two people pushing a shopping cart filled with merchandise from the home furnishing chain.
Holler provides recommendations on which animated stickers to use in Venmo, where users include emoji in 90% of the transactions they share with others in the app, per the announcement. Venmo also set up a dedicated email address for users to submit their suggestions on additional animated stickers.

Insight:

Subway and Ikea's animated stickers from Holler help to extend their branding efforts into the conversations people have on Venmo, the PayPal-owned app that lets users split their transactions with friends and followers. Branded content such as animated stickers or GIFs can be effective for marketing when it's engaging and urges social sharing, especially among young adults who rely on mobile platforms for communications and payments.

The branded content also is well suited for a social payments app like Venmo, whose users are highly likely to decorate posts with emoji. That fits with a broader trend among the general population, as about 71% of Americans use emoji, GIFs and digital stickers because they believe they can express their emotions better through images, according to a survey by GIF-sharing platform Tenor and Harris Poll.

The expanded content library for Venmo gives its users another reason to use the app amid competition from other peer-to-peer payment platforms like Zelle, which is indirectly owned by a consortium of major banks, and Square's Cash App. As part of that heightened competition, Venmo last year created a cash-back rewards program to incentivize mobile consumers to use the app at major retailers.

Candy brand Snickers last year worked with Holler on similar branded stickers for people to share in mobile messages, generating 42 million views among 61,000 people. Holler also integrated its platform with dating app Badoo, letting users liven up their messages with animated images.