There is no doubt that the popularity of emojis is here to stay. What started as a silly add-on to text messages has now become a universal digital language of its own. With the rise of this new mode of communication, brands and agencies are consciously making the effort to leverage emojis to connect with their consumers in ways that have not been possible in the past.
Just as people use emojis to add personality and charm to their texts and social media posts, brands are following suit. With the use of an emoji, brands and consumers alike can express more complex ideas through one-character pictures. Some brands have even created rich-media campaigns around emojis.
This past year, Taco Bell launched a petition on Change.org to convince Unicode Consortium (a non-profit that has a hand in identifying new emojis) to create a taco emoji. The campaign received 33,000 virtual signatures, successfully convincing Unicode to add a taco into the emoji catalog in July 2015. Taco Bell then leveraged this win by launching a creative social campaign, where the fast-food restaurant invited Twitter users to tweet a taco emoji aside any additional emoji to the @tacobell handle in order to receive an illustrated response.
Read MoreThere is no doubt that the popularity of emojis is here to stay. What started as a silly add-on to text messages has now become a universal digital language of its own. With the rise of this new mode of communication, brands and agencies are consciously making the effort to leverage emojis to connect with their consumers in ways that have not been possible in the past.
Just as people use emojis to add personality and charm to their texts and social media posts, brands are following suit. With the use of an emoji, brands and consumers alike can express more complex ideas through one-character pictures. Some brands have even created rich-media campaigns around emojis.
This past year, Taco Bell launched a petition on Change.org to convince Unicode Consortium (a non-profit that has a hand in identifying new emojis) to create a taco emoji. The campaign received 33,000 virtual signatures, successfully convincing Unicode to add a taco into the emoji catalog in July 2015. Taco Bell then leveraged this win by launching a creative social campaign, where the fast-food restaurant invited Twitter users to tweet a taco emoji aside any additional emoji to the @tacobell handle in order to receive an illustrated response. More than 600 variations of possible responses, some animated and others stagnant images, encouraged large volumes of tweets. For example, by typing in a taco emoji next to a lightning bolt emoji, users received a tweet from Taco Bell that included an animated video of a taco-headed Zeus throwing lightning bolts at objects to turn them into tacos. Another variation allowed users to tweet the taco emoji next to a smiley face, which generated an image of a taco emoji wearing sunglasses. Taco Bell branded the campaign with the #TacoEmojiEngine hashtag to generate buzz and awareness.
A recent study by Instagram showed that brands are increasing their focus on creative engagement with audiences as more advertisers move to this platform. Creative use of branded hashtags, emojis and even emoji hashtags (where the emoji replaces text usually included next to a hashtag) have been proven to help brands pop amongst their competition. Instagram revealed that 35 percent of brands are now utilizing emojis in their posts in order to connect with audiences. While this study also shows that emojis in posts open the door for more audience engagement, advertisers now need to go the extra mile to deliver a creative message, rather than just placing an emoji at the end of a post.
Millennials and post-millennials have quick thumbs, short texts and are very emoji-savvy. For brands to stand out amidst the digital clutter, it’s imperative that they stay on top of emoji messaging trends. For instance, Bud Light recreated an American flag made entirely out of three emojis: the flag, a star and a beer. The beer company then tweeted this emoji “collage” to its followers on the Fourth of July, including the trending #4thofJuly hashtag for added visibility. Although this tweet only lasted a day, it resonated well with their Twitter audience in a timely and creative way, garnering more than 145,000 retweets.
Likewise, Chevy adopted the emoji tactic by issuing a press release made up entirely of emoji characters to which they explained, “Words alone can’t describe the new 2016 Chevrolet Cruz.” Chevy generated buzz around the release of their new 2016 model by challenging users to decode the message and share their results using the hashtag #ChevygoesEmoji. This campaign resonated well with Twitter users, and has been applauded by digital marketers as well.
Such campaigns make it clear that advertisers must accept emojis as a form of communication, and more importantly, learn to speak this new illustrative language.