- Jif is launching a limited-edition peanut butter label as part of a tongue-in-cheek campaign intended to settle the debate over the pronunciation of “GIF.”
- The masses, including former President Barack Obama and the GIF creator himself, have long been at odds over whether the animated video format is pronounced with a hard or soft “g” sound.
- “We think now is the time to declare, once and for all, that the word of Jif (with a soft ‘G’) should be used exclusively in reference to our delicious peanut butter, and the clever, funny animated GIFs we all use and love should be pronounced with a hard ‘G,'” Christine Hoffman, Jif’s consumer-engagement group lead, told Business Insider.
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Long before viral sensations like “the dress” divided the internet, another online phenomenon was already polarizing the masses: the pronunciation of “GIF.”
The GIF – or graphics interchange format, a file label for short animated clips – quickly became a staple of the internet after it was created in 1987. Over the course of more than three decades, GIFs have proliferated across social-media feeds, serving as their own type of internet lingo.
But all the while debate raged: Is GIF pronounced with a hard or soft “g” sound?
Now, Jif is taking matters into its own hands. The peanut-butter brand owned by J.M. Smuckers Co. is stoking the embers of the 30-year-old controversy with a tongue-in-cheek campaign intended to settle the pronunciation debate.
In advance of National Peanut Butter Lovers Day, March 1, the company is teaming up with GIPHY to sell limited-edition containers of peanut butter that swap out the classic Jif label with "Gif" and replace "7 g of protein" with "hard g pronunciation."
For Jif, the effort is intended "to put a lid on this decade-long debate and prove there is only one Jif ... it's creamy, delicious peanut butter, not a looping picture you can send to make friends and family laugh," Rebecca Scheidler, Jif's vice president of marketing, said in a statement.
The products will be available on Jif.com and Amazon for $10 while supplies last.
However, the special-edition label is seemingly a departure from what had appeared to be Jif's former pro-soft "G" stance. In 2013, the company expressed support for GIF founder Steve Wilhite, who spoke out against the popular hard "G" pronunciation - which by then had even become the preferred manner of speaking for the Obama Administration - in an interview with The New York Times.
"The Oxford English Dictionary accepts both pronunciations," Wilhite told The New York Times. "They are wrong. It is a soft 'G,' pronounced 'jif.' End of story."
In short order, Jif made a GIF of its own in support of Wilhite's announcement and their shared pronunciations.
"We're nuts about him today," a brand spokesperson told The New York Times regarding Wilhite.
When asked what prompted the change of heart, a Jif spokesperson was quick to deny that the 2013 GIF was an official statement by the company.
"It's true - we've always been nuts for a good GIF, and the guy who created it - but we've never have taken an official stance on the pronunciation before," Christine Hoffman, Jif's consumer engagement group lead, said in a statement to Business Insider.
She continued: "With millions of GIFs in use daily, the pronunciation confusion continues to be a conundrum for all of us... We think now is the time to declare, once and for all, that the word of Jif (with a soft 'G') should be used exclusively in reference to our delicious peanut butter, and the clever, funny animated GIFs we all use and love should be pronounced with a hard 'G'."