Emojis have changed our ‘language’ in the ever-evolving world of digital communication. The quick inclusion of an emoji in your text or email is an easy way to show the person on the other side how you’re feeling. Something that’s becoming more and more important in a world that has us interacting more via conference calls than in boardrooms. We used to rely on someone’s facial expression or tone of voice to show us how they were feeling. Communicating how we feel digitally can be a difficult thing to do, and an online or email interaction can easily be misinterpreted.
Yeah 😎 Ok 😊
or
Yeah. Ok.
See the difference in the message above? The first seems happy about your news, and the other might read as disinterested or unimpressed.
In 1982, Carnegie Mellon professor Dr. Scott Fahlman invented the first emoticon: the smiley. 🙂 Emoticons paved the way for the Emoji, created in 1998 by Shigetaka Kurita, a Japanese phone company employee. Those cute, crazy, and colourful symbols are changing the nature of written language. They add a depth and human touch on digital channels and are quickly forming a new universal language. Emoji is now used by 92% of the online population.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, how much is an emoji worth? 💰💰💰
Emojis are now so universally used and available across all platforms, that they’ve given birth to a whole new type of marketing. Emoji marketing is on the rise because visuals can pack a bigger punch than the written word and draw more consumer attention. Burger King and IKEA have created their own branded emojis. Companies are licencing emojis to build promotional incentives into their sales campaigns. Domino’s Pizza even incorporated “emoji ordering” in to their online ordering system via Twitter.
Looking for new ways to incorporate emojis into your marketing plans can be fun. Emoji marketing could be an interesting way to engage a new audience while humanizing your brand. If 92% of the online world already speaks Emoji, you should probably start learning a few key phases. 😉