Animated Stickers

Background

Every year during the winter holidays, the creative sub‑unit of our digital experience design team creates an animated WhatsApp sticker pack to spread Christmas joy, foster team engagement, and raise awareness of our department and what we do.​Our first sticker pack was launched in 2024, and in 2025 we continued the tradition with a revised approach.

Challenge

The 2024 sticker pack was heavily focused on department branding and resulted in fewer than 100 downloads.​

The working assumption is that the design focused too much on a brand with very little recognition outside the company, which limited its appeal to a larger audience and negatively affected engagement. all while failing to attract new audience.

Uploaded Dec 2024 - 79 downloads in a year

2024 design

Design revision

For the 2025 sticker pack, instead of relying on a brand‑focused design style that was not relatable for the broader audience, we adopted classic holiday imagery: a red‑and‑green color palette, a gingerbread man character, and other symbols typically associated with holiday celebrations.​

This year’s pack is Christmas‑themed and inspired by Telegram’s classic outlined vector sticker style, which is widely associated with making a conversation more fun.

2025 design

Conclusion

When designing merch, stickers, and other collateral for a brand without an existing fanbase or user base, it can make more sense initially to create something relatable to a larger audience in order to drive downloads and engagement.​

Focusing the design too heavily on a very niche, internally oriented identity can fail to raise brand awareness and may not attract a new audience.