[vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” overlay_strength=”0.3″][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” width=”1/1″ tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid”][vc_column_text]When listening to Coffee with CART an off-the-cuff remark was made about how companies are starting to make their own emojis. The topic first caught my interest because I was curious if making a branded emoji would be something we could try on our own, or if a third-party would be needed. From a design standpoint, I was comparing them to favicons. Turns out if you want a branded emoji, yes, a third party will need to get involved, one who has a close relationship with Twitter, and a following of more than a million.  -Adweek: Here’s why your favorite Brands are making their own emoticons

Example of a favicon vs. emoji

 

I have a habit of using emojis in my emails. I reviewed some emails I get from our retailers, and noticed I seem to be alone in emoji use 🙁 It just so happened one evening I was watching a show on CNN where a journalist announced he didn’t like emojis. “Why can’t we just write about how we feel?” Unfortunately for the others watching this show with me, I found myself almost yelling at the TV in disagreement and realized that I might have some passion on this topic.

I’d like to challenge you to make a list of forms of communication that aren’t impacted by time or country of origin. Here is what I came up with:

• silly facial expressions to make a baby laugh
• universal sign language

Face recognition and identifying emotion is a very complex skill humans have developed through years of evolution. These skills are very easy to take for granted. However, we are finding a group of people who lack these skills is really quite large. Many of these people are very intelligent and we would benefit if we found ways around these communication gaps. What if emojis were used as a tool to help people identify emotion better? I wonder how Steve Hawking feels about emojis? Would it make communication more effective for people who are unable to communicate verbally?

What about those of us who aren’t a journalist? Some people are better at writing than others for multiple reasons. Writing can be a challenge for some with Dyslexia. It would be great to know you could communicate your ideas well but don’t have to spend hours getting it down on paper.

Here are a few things I learned about emojis using Google:

According to Wikipedia – Emoji, Ideograms and smileys used in electronic messages and Web pages. The characters exist in various genres, including facial expressions, common objects, places and types of weather, and animals. Originally meaning pictograph, the word emoji comes from Japanese e (絵, “picture”) + moji (文字, “character”). The apparent resemblance to the English words “emotion” and “emoticon” is just a coincidence. The exact appearance of emoji is not prescribed but varies between fonts, in the same way that normal typefaces can display letters differently.

History: Emojis or emoticons started with keyboard icons to make images that characterized a feeling or emotion in an email conversation. In the mid 1990’s, pagers are where people first started using a combination of text characters, like a colon and parenthesis to make a smiley or frown face. People use emojis in a emails, text messages and social media posts so the other person can better gauge the tone or mood of the conversation.

We had a good day 🙂

It’s been raining all day 🙁

I don’t know :-/

We <3 flowers!

When technology changed through the years, so have emojis. They have replaced the need for “lol” because there are now multiple different smiley face and laughing emojis to take its place. -Wikipedia: Smiley

We had a good day 😀

It’s been raining all day 😞

I don’t know? 😕

We ❤️ flowers!

People still need to be expressive and animated using text communication. While the digital world is ever-changing, what seems to be clear is that the need for a smiley face hasn’t gone out of style.

A few months ago, Coca-Cola became the first company to use the branded hashtag emoji on Twitter as part of a marketing campaign: #ShareACoke. As soon as it launched, more than 170,500 mentions used the Coke emoji in the first 24 hours.
-SocialTimes: How the Branded Hashtag Emoji Is Taking Over Twitter

“When some mobile app users have the option to use images of their favorite brands, they don’t see it as advertising.” noted Evan Wray, co-founder of Swyft Media. “They see it as self-expression.”    -Adweek: Here’s why your favorite Brands are making their own emoticons

It’s like the equivalent of drawing your favorite band’s logo on the cover of your notebook in high school.

Don’t confuse these: Emojis, emoticons and stickers.

Emojis – The emoji keyboard, which now comes standard on many smartphones, is comprised of various emojis approved by the Unicode Consortium.

Emoticons and Stickers – Brands wanting to create their own emoticons and stickers first have to make their own apps or partner with messaging apps like Kik, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger to have their branded emoticons downloaded for consumer use.

-Adweek: Here’s why your favorite Brands are making their own emoticons

 

Take a look at all the Emojis out there: emojipedia.org You can also adopt an emoji for a year.

Play the game: Hi Guess this Emoji

♨️ 💨 🎈

Hot Air Balloon

Next time you send me an email, try using some emojis. I really want to know not only your marketing requests, but how you feel about them. Emojis can really help “read between the lines”. What if you used a few emojis when you reply to customers “contact us” emails? They might help a bad situation go a little smoother if they know how you feel as well.

 

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