What you can’t say in a sentence; you can say in one emoji. Don’t believe us? We bet you can read this – 🧠🌊, 😀📘(answers disclosed at the bottom) Emojis have become commonplace in daily conversations, emails, internal chats, and in marketing too. Some businesses know how to use emojis creatively in copy and brand artworks. The 2021 Adobe Emoji Trend Report shares that, 60% of users are more likely to open an email if it contains their favourite emoji and 42% are more likely to purchase products advertised using an emoji. Older studies also show that businesses using emojis on social media have improved engagement.
Should brands use Emojis On Social Media?
We are inclined to say definitely! However, emojis imply different meanings across age groups, with Gen Z, millennials, and boomers understanding its implications differently. Slack and Duolingo recently launched their emoji survey in honour of #WorldEmojiDay, and 31% of Gen Z and 24% of millennials confirmed that their recipient misunderstood an emoji that they had sent. The same emoji can mean multiple things to different people across cultures, geographies, and languages.
Brands must become mindful of the emojis they use across digital marketing to ensure the message is communicated lucidly. Understanding the nuances of graphics becomes vital for businesses. Read top 8 tips for creating visual content on social media. As a social media marketing agency in Mumbai, we advise and recommend how a business should use emojis on social media and drive effective engagement.
Best Brand Campaigns for #WorldEmojiDay
AIR NEW ZEALAND
We loved Air New Zealand’s #WorldEmojiday campaign as it aimed at generating engagement among its followers.
Happy #WorldEmojiDay! Keen to play? Tweet us your favourite holiday destination in emojis, and see if we can guess it 😊 pic.twitter.com/Sc7Dl3aQbB
— Air New Zealand ✈️ (@FlyAirNZ) July 16, 2018
What’s interesting about this campaign is how the brand kept the conversation flowing. Users continued the conversation thread with emojis that signified their homeland or vacation destinations. ANZ interacted with each of them individually, addressing them personally. This is a classic example of great online reputation management and driving social media engagement.
AMUL
Amul is quick to respond to topical content on social media. Their moment marketing game is strong, and their creatives are more hits than misses.
Their #WorldEmojiday social media post in 2020 was reflective of the ongoing pandemic and incorporated the product aesthetically. The Amul girl is so iconic we’re wondering how it isn’t a registered emoji yet – just like the Tacobell 🌮? We’ll come to that in a bit.
DUCATI
When you ride a Ducati, the feeling is indescribable. Words can’t express how the heart and soul feel riding that lean machine, and Ducati – the brand – knows that.
So, they asked their followers to share – only in emojis – how they feel riding the Ducati. With over 2K likes, 33K views, and 70+ comments, followers went beyond emojis and extended into sharing emotions in gifs too!
EUROPEAN COMMISSION
When you’re trying to send a message, emojis work wonders to draft sentences and explain scenarios. The European Commission did a fabulous job with emojis to celebrate #WorldEmojiDay
They created an emoji timeline to help users remember and discover important moments of history, inventions, and events across Europe. Followers had to guess what event or achievement it was in the comments. Those who didn’t want to guess had access to the interactive timeline on their website to explain the rest – https://learning-corner.learning.europa.eu/eu-timeline_en#/dashboard With a large population restricted at home in 2020, it was a fun and engaging activity to gamify a social media post.
Over 900M emojis are sent every day without text on Facebook Messenger, and more than 700M emojis are used in Facebook posts every day, shares Emojipedia. Then it’s only natural that Facebook shares India’s favourite emojis on World Emoji Day.
Any guesses on which are the favourite emojis? We’ll tell you. In 2021, Facebook shared that,
- Gen Zs (18 – 24-year-old) usage was: 1 – ❤️, 2 -😂, 3- 🙏
- Millennial’s (25 – 44-year-olds) usage was: 1- 🙏, 2-❤️, 3- 🎂
FEVIKWIK
Fevikwik often uses emojis in their regular social media programming content.
If I text you 💔 please don’t bring Fevikwik, it’s not funny anymore!#Fevikwik
— Fevikwik (@Fevikwik_tweets) July 13, 2022
For #worldemojiday, though they borrowed a page from real-life situations. How often has Fevikwik come to our rescue for innumerable broken items? There’s pretty much everything it can fix, except for 💔.
KOLKATA KNIGHT RIDERS
Remember the iconic #emojichallenge on Instagram? Users had to follow a series of hand gestures and smileys to get the sequence right? Kolkata Knight Riders leveraged the challenge for #WorldEmojiDay with cricketer Eoin Morgan.
It gets better with more followers commenting on how well he did the challenge while sharing their own set of emojis for him to try as a challenge.
MICROSOFT
It’s always good to know the fastest way to respond with an emoji. Microsoft shared an easy way to access the emoji keyboard to share your feelings.
If Microsoft approved Emojis in emails, you can use them while writing to your colleagues as well.
OLYMPICS
Did you know you can depict over 12 Olympic sports categories using just emojis? Fascinated? Then check this out.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2809575365737639
What a fun way for a brand to use emojis on social media. Olympics nails it with this excellent creative that literally gets you thinking about all that you can say through emojis.
REAL ME
One way to celebrate #worldemojiday is to run an engagement contest. Emojis speak louder than words, and RealMe captures this insight well with its creative social media post.
Added bonus, lucky winners stood a chance to get goodies by simply commenting as part of the contest. With over 5K views, around 300 likes, and 70 comments, we’d say their campaign was on 🔥 – in a good way!
TATA
The year 2020 had a recurring theme, and brands wanted to ensure they were doing their part to educate. Tata’s #WorldEmojiDay social media posts do just the same.
Are you able to decode their emojis?
STARBUCKS
The whole food section of emojis makes for efficient conversation. Starbucks found a clever way to tap into the engagement quotient with their social media post.
From guessing double chocolate Frappuccino to hibiscus tea, followers were excited to win Starbucks goodies.
SWIGGY
Another food-themed emoji day social post that caught our attention was from Swiggy. Love how the brand leaves audiences with a friendly reminder to order as the emoji tells you!
UNACADEMY
Unacademy is a hub of comprehensive courses that help you prepare for competitive exams like UPSC, SSC, IIT JEE, CAT, and more.
Their #WorldEmojiDay Social media post takes from the theme of competitive logic questions too. The brand leaves users to decode an emoji code. We’re not telling you what it is. Go, figure 😀
BONUS EMOJI CAMPAIGNS
While the WWF campaign doesn’t revolve around #WorldEmojiDay, their campaign using emojis deserves a notable mention. WWF International launched the #EndangeredEmoji Twitter campaign in 2015, where fundraising was done by using emojis on Twitter. Users had to donate by tweeting emojis of endangered animals – 🐯🐨🐼🐒.
Watch the video to understand the mechanics –
The campaign saw excellent traction, and they continue to use emojis intelligently on Twitter.
🐯🐧🐘🐼🐒🐢 Don’t gamble with nature. Extinction is forever! It’s #EndangeredSpeciesDay #EndangeredEmoji 🐯🐧🐘🐼🐒🐢 pic.twitter.com/vxBmlvj9MO
— WWF_Australia (@WWF_Australia) May 19, 2016
TACOBELL
Efforts of Tacobell to bring the Taco emoji too cannot be ignored. The iconic taco emoji didn’t feature in the initial Unicode characters. But taco lovers across the world petitioned the Unicode Consortium to release a taco emoji, titled “The Taco Emoji Needs To Happen,” on Change.org and the result was this.
Attention: @Unicode approved the #TacoEmoji. Final step: iOS and Android adding it to our keyboards. pic.twitter.com/lFdXOlBhyP
— Taco Bell (@tacobell) June 17, 2015
Tacobell finally had its iconic taco featured on the emoji panel.
We hope you liked this rundown of brands and businesses that use emojis on social media. Answers: Brainwave and Facebook. From creatively depicting them in design to conveying hard-hitting messages, emojis are an efficient communication tactic today. If you loved reading this, don’t miss reading about brands celebrating international waffle day globally on social media.
