Emoji’s have become increasingly popular in 2015, especially evident as the ‘Face with tears of joy’ emoji was named Oxford dictionary Word of the Year 2015. They describe this emoji as the word that ‘best reflects our ethos, mood and preoccupation of 2015’. Emojis are a clever and popular way of showing emotion or tone through digital platforms such as a text or possibly even a quick Snapchat. They have been suggested to be an evolutionary way of communicating emotion through a small, simple picture. Yet, not only have they entered everyday vocabulary for regular smartphone users, but they have now infiltrated their way into the marketing world.
Although they may look silly and appear to be just a bit of fun, emoji’s are actually much more than that. How? Well, a picture is worth a thousand words don’t forget. You may just receive a smiley emoji at the end of your text or sneak it into your brand marketing but it does more than simply look pretty. This smiley conveys the overall tone of your message; it shows your emotion and can communicate your message across a variety of language barriers. Not too shabby for just a little sticker.
This is why we chose to use emojis for our Station Rd Christmas cards this year. We regularly use emojis for our social media and we find they’re a really effective way to increase audience engagement and they display the digitally ready culture in which we are living. All of us here at Station Rd, along with many of you we’re sure, use emojis in our daily lives to communicate around work, with friends or family. It has essentially become another language in which we communicate, and as marketers, we quite enjoy it.
Here’s what we think of emojis at Station Rd:
Lyanna: As hard as it may be to admit, emoji can be extremely addictive. While they’ve only been available on phones for just a few years, it is a wonder how we were able to communicate without them. I certainly don’t! My favourites (most used) are the smiley face with tears of joy, the double high five and the monkey covering his eyes….make of that what you will
Rachel: I don’t think I ever send texts anymore without including at least one emoji. I even use emojis next to names of contacts in my phone, usually chosen to reflect their personality. My most frequently used emojis are either the ‘face with tears of joy’ or the ‘information desk person’.
Jay: My favourite emoji is the grimacing face, mainly because I use this a lot in real life! Emoji’s have made the whole messaging process a hell of alot more visual and alot easier for me, to get a tone of a message across in the “correct way” which I have to admit sometimes gets translated incorrectly…If you meet me in person you’d understand!
However, it is important not to forget old school communication of using text to go along with your emoji message. Inside our cards, we used the key messages of what we hoped the people reading our cards would achieve over the festive season: “Eat, sleep, rest, be happy, repeat…” And of course, we’ve included a personal message to our recipients from all of us because we believe nothing can compare to the personal touch of a hand written message, especially around the holidays.
