The Australian Tax Office is using animated GIFs to sell the message of superannuation consolidation to trendy youngsters.

The ATO has paid for articles on the list-based, cat-heavy, news and entertainment site BuzzFeed.

Financial advice is pretty long way from BuzzFeed’s traditional articles, which today include headings like “15 Vegan Instagrams That’ll Make Your Mouth Water, and “27 Dogs Having The Time Of Their Lives”.

The ATO says BuzzFeed was chosen as part of the super consolidation campaign based on advice from federal government's contracted media buyer, the Mitchells-AdCorp alliance.

“The ATO is obviously trying to make itself cool and groovy,” University of Canberra digital sociology academic Deborah Lupton told Fairfax Media.

“[BuzzFeed] is quite irreverent – it includes a lot of gossipy and scurrilous stories in its mix and they also stick in a bit of hard news,” Professor Lupton said.

Stories have already begun to appear, including “Your Superannuation Explained, But With Dogs”, and “11 Small Things You Can Do To Save Money”. Both articles include links to the myGov portal, which allows users to gather all their superannuation into a single account.