Tag: Emoji

Two Brands Go For Twitter’s Million-Dollar Branded Emojis For Super Bowl

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Pepsi and Anheuser-Busch are among the latest brands to get their own branded emojis on Twitter, just in time for their Super Bowl campaigns this Sunday. Pepsi created an emoji of a Pepsi can surrounded by music notes to accompany the #PepsiHalftime hashtag, whereas Anheuser-Busch created two emojis for Budweiser and Bud Light to liven up their respective Twitter campaigns. Sources say that Twitter reserves these bespoke emojis for its biggest advertisers, asking for a “seven-figure” price for them as a bundle deal in conjunction with its other ad products such as Promoted Tweets, Promoted Trends, and the newly introduced Promoted Moments.

What Brands Need To Do
Ever since Twitter came out with the first branded emoji for Coca-Cola, we anticipated it would sell more of the new ad unit. Now with the million-dollar asking price, it seems fair to say that Twitter has established branded emojis as a premium ad product. It remains to be seen whether Twitter will expand the availability of such custom emojis in the future, but for now, it has become a costly but flashy sparkle for brands to add atop their Twitter campaigns.

 

Source: AdWeek

Twitter Testing Multiple Emojis For Nuanced Responses

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Twitter users may soon be able to respond to tweets with more than just “hearts,” which replaced its star-shaped “favorites” just two weeks ago. The social network is reportedly testing a new reaction feature that contains dozens of emojis for users to express their reactions in a more nuanced way. In early October, Facebook introduced a similar emoji “Reaction” feature allow users to react to posts beyond a simple “Like,” which is often inappropriate for posts expressing sadness or other negative emotions. The same reasoning applies to Twitter as well, which at the moment offers no details on the roll-out of this new feature.

What Brands Need To Do
If this feature does become available to the public, brands on Twitter can expect more quick responses of emojis replacing comments expressing similar reactions. This expansion of reactions can provide brands with a valuable tool to gauge customer feedback and measure their sentiment in a more granular way, enabling brands to adjust their communications strategy accordingly.

 

Source: The Verge

Header image from @_Ninji on Twitter

 

How Toyota Is Using Custom Twitter Emoji To Connect With Football Lovers

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Automaker Toyota has become the latest band to join in on the branded emoji craze and partnered with Twitter for to reach football fans. Positioned as “a digital tailgate cheer,” Toyota will launch a contest to encourage football fans to tweet its new campaign hashtag #letsgofan, which comes with a custom fan finger emoji. The automaker is also hoping that this would help drive fans to download FanMoji, a branded custom keyboard app that Toyota recently launched as a part of its new sports-centric campaign.

What Brands Need To Do
Twitter started testing hashtag-specific custom emojis earlier this year, with Coca-Cola providing the first branded emoji in September. From ABC’s TGIT lineup to brands like Dove and Starbucks, those mini digital stickers that reward consumers for tweeting out branded hashtags are quickly proliferating across the twitterverse, offering brands a good visual signifier to engage the fans with.

 

Source: Digiday

 

ABC Uses Custom Hashtag-Emoji Combo To Unlock Previews On Twitter

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Following Coca-Cola’s debut of the first-ever branded emoji on Twitter last week, ABC is tapping into the marketing potential of emojis to promote the new season premiere of its Thursday night  lineup. Fans of the three “TGIT” shows can tweet special hashtag-emoji combinations designated by ABC (Scandal, for example, asks for a combo of #Scandal and a wine glass emoji) to unlock exclusive video content from the corresponding shows via auto-generated private messages.

What Brands Should Do
Although it remains unclear if ABC actually paid twitter for this activation, since there’s no new emoji specifically created for this promotional efforts. Nevertheless, it provides an interesting new use case of how brands can innovatively tap into emoji’s unique marketing potential on social networks. The reward of exclusive previews incentivizes fans to engage with the campaign and help spread the message, a clever tactic that all brands with social marketing efforts could emulate and put to good use.  

 

Source: Marketing Land

Are Branded Emojis The New Ad Unit for Twitter?

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Coca-Cola has partnered with Twitter to unveil a new custom emoji as part of its “#ShareaCoke” ad campaign. Previously, Twitter had only introduced these custom emojis for special events, such as promoting the upcoming new Star Wars movie and the VMAs, but never as part of an ad deal. The beverage company also seems to be working with social influencers, as evidenced by this tweet from famous racer Danica Patrick.

What Brands Should Do
Given the enduring popularity of emojis, it’s not hard to imagine Twitter continuing to sell custom emojis as a new ad unit to brands that wish to make a splash on the social platform. Brands that wish to try it out would be wise to start early, as the novelty might start to wear off once more branded emojis get introduced.  

 

Source: TechCrunch

Header image courtesy of The Coca-Cola Co. on Twitter

LINE Launches Emoji Keyboard App To Lure New Users

Posted on by Lab Team

Read original story on: TechCrunch

Earlier today, Japanese messaging app LINE introduced Emoji Keyboard, an iOS app that provides over 3,000 stickers and emoji for users to use in any app of their choice. Emoji and stickers have been generating great revenue for LINE, and it loves to remind users of them with auto-suggestions. To learn more about sticker usage and brand opportunities, check out our POV here.

Interestingly, the app is available worldwide with the exception of its three major markets: Japan, Taiwan and Thailand, which take up over half of its 205 million monthly active users. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that LINE is trying to lure new users into its app ecosystem, independent of its chat service, as it looks to grow its presence in the U.S. and other global markets outside of Asia.

Emoji-Only Messaging App Set To Launch

Posted on by Lab Team

Yep, you read that right. Someone is making a messaging platform where its users are only allowed to communicate through those playful little icons known as emojis. The network, aptly named Emoj.li, has not officially launched, but it is currently accepting username reservations. The usernames, of course, have to be emoji-only as well, properly reflecting the diehard emoji-purist ideals of its creators.

Following the surprising success of the Yo app, where you could only send your contact a simple “Yo” and nothing else, Emoj.li comes off as a whimsical, almost parody-like creation, riding right on the recent tide of testing the limits of messaging apps. How far this trend, undoubtedly spearheaded by Gen Z, could push forward our cognition of mobile communication remains to be seen. Who knows, maybe brands will pay good money to be integrated into the emoji library if this platform ever blows up—just imagine the potential bidding war between Pepsi and Coca-Cola over the soft-drink icon. For now, however, we could only respond with an enigmatic winky-smiley face.