Every day we express our joy, anger, disappointment, elation, and every other imaginable emotion in quite a modern way, through the use of our favorite little emojis. As they pepper your texts and your tweets, do you ever just sit back and think about just how major a part they’ve become in our every day lives?
Emojis were introduced in 1999 when the use of picture messaging skyrocketed. Mobile operators in Japan wanted to find a solution to this new type of communication, and these tiny images were it. In 2011, Apple incorporated emojis into their international keyboards, and since then, they’ve become a main mode of texting, and have infiltrated pop culture completely!
There are emoji phone cases, T-shirts, hats, lanyards, cups, Halloween costumes. Rather than dressing up as Thing 1 and Thing 2, friends are going to parties as the two dancing girls. And for those last minute costumes, drawing one of the yellow-faced emojis and making it into a mask is the perfect way to improvise.
This language of pictures has gained so much power that companies and organizations including IKEA, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), and Domino’s have all incorporated emojis into their marketing plans. Katy Perry even featured them prominently throughout her recent Prism tour, and released several emoji-heavy lyric videos as well.
In fact, IKEA loved the idea of emojis so much that the Scandinavian company created its own app titled Emoticons, with several images representing objects around the house. The idea behind this was to improve communication around the home. For example, rather than texting, “Can you do the laundry?”, you can text:
Makes laundry look so much more appealing, doesn’t it?
Following that, WWF released the #EndangeredEmoji campaign through Twitter to help save animals from going extinct. For every emoji tweeted, WWF would donate €0.10/£0.10. To sign up, the user would simply retweet the above message. (To find out more information, visit the #EndangeredEmoji website.)
Another company that finds emojis useful in its strategy is Domino’s. In May, the pizza chain introduced a new Tweet-to-Order system, in which customers would tweet the pizza emoji to @dominos to automatically order a pie.
Now, customers can also text the pizza emoji or the words “Easy Order” to DPIZZA (374992) and get the same result. All the customer has to do is sign up for a Domino’s account they are all set to go!
Emojis have made such an impression on our world that they were even granted their own special day. July 17 has been named #WorldEmojiDay, as two emojis (the calendar and notepad) both bear the date, and last week the Twitter world gathered ’round their phones to celebrate this new phenomenon. Of course, brands and celebs alike jumped in, too:
What’s your favorite emoji? Did you celebrate #WorldEmojiDay? Let us know in the comments!
Metter Media LLC is a Boston-based social media management company that implements community-based, localized social engagement strategies for small businesses and corporations alike. Need help with your social media? Email Lauren today.
