Let’s all take a second to consider how many text messages we send a day. Yep, that’s quite a few. They are disturbingly convenient in our fast-pased, constantly communicating world. We love the idea that we can rapidly send a brief (and sometimes grammatically incorrect) thought across the country in seconds. But what’s even better in today’s world, thanks to digital developments, is that now we have even better and quicker ways of expressing ourselves, and that is what we call emojis.
A Windows blog explains that the first emoji was created by Docomo’s Shigetaka Kurita in the 90s as part of i-mode, the world’s first widespread mobile internet platform. Kurita came up with 176 designs that he hoped would describe every human emotion. In 2010, emojis were adopted into Unicode, which allows us now to share them on different devices. Since then, these little guys have taken the digital world by storm.
It wasn’t until recently that marketers began to catch on that these little faces might be more than just little faces. Emogi, an emotional intelligence platform that decodes sentiment, recently conducted a study regarding consumers’ use of emojis. The company asked consumers to look at digital ads and then rate them using different emojis. They found that almost everyone uses emojis (92% of the online population to be exact), and it’s not just teenagers either! They also found that women tend to use emojis slightly more often than men. Statistics such as these show that emojis may have the power to do a little more than just express an emotion in a text message to a friend.
Companies are already taking advantage of this new tool. Adweek.com explains that Burger King has already made an emoji to promote its chicken fries, and IHOP recently changed to a new emoji-esque logo. Since the numbers show that emojis are a natural part of online life, it would be smart for marketers to begin to add a simple smiley face to a tweet or even create a new emoji-appealing logo. The digital world may be shifting from words to pictures, but it’s safe to say that emojis are no longer just for fun. They may just be a part of your next business plan.
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