NewsThe Spin Cycle

Merry Christmas, Spin Cycle Style! Here’s The Top 10 Emoji Campaigns Of The Year

By December 25, 2015 No Comments

Happy Holidays, and Merry Christmas to all across the land, Spin Cycle style! May your time with family and friends be merry, peaceful and full of joy and wonder!

 

In true Spin Cycle style, as we bid Saint Nick a safe trip back to the North Pole and feast on the festivities, we bring you the Top 10 emoji campaigns of the year, as rated by Ad Age. Pass the cranberry sauce, y’all, and enjoy these moments:

 

Emojis emerged as a campaign trend in 2014 and, while some argue the use of smiley faces and pizza slices to express complex ideas has already bloomed, it became a relevant part of the current marketing innovations in 2015. Here’s the Top 10 emoji marketing efforts of the year:

 

  1. Domino’s Pizza Emoji

 

The pizza purveyor turned a popular emoji image, the simple pepperoni slice, into a revolutionary transactional model. Domino’s told Ad Age in October that, among those using its text-to-order system, people used the pizza emoji to call in their food requests four times more often than texting the phrase “Easy Order.”

 

  1. Coca-Cola’s #ShareaCoke

 

Working in conjunction with Twitter, Coca-Cola created a custom hashtag in September that automatically generates a branded emoji recognized the world over. The brand reported #ShareaCoke was used over 170,500 times globally in the first day.

 

  1. Taco Bell Pushes for Official Taco Emoji

 

Nearly 33,000 people signed a virtual petition created by Taco Bell this year, pushing for a taco to be included in the latest round of emoji characters accepted for Apple and Android operating systems by the Unicode Consortium. In July 2015, the taco got the nod, along with other foods like the burrito and hot dog. Taco Bell celebrated with a Twitter #TacoEmojiEngine that generated hundreds of taco-related images or sounds, and offered a limited edition “Doritos Locos Taco holster inspired by the taco emoji.”

 

  1. The Bud Light Fourth of July Emoji Flag

 

Unlike other emoji efforts in 2015, this Bud Light initiative was single tweet, but it generated tons of interest on social media. The brewer created an American flag image built from an American flag emoji, a fireworks emoji, and an emoji depicting clinking beer mugs. It was a one-day thing but got a substantial number of retweets — 146,000 — reminding many that drinking beer, preferably Bud Light, is a Fourth of July tradition.

 

  1. BK Chicken Fries Emoji

 

When Burger King made its quirky Chicken Fries part of its permanent menu earlier this year, the company celebrated with the launch of a Chicken Fries emoji keyboard featuring an array of cartoon Chicken Fries boxes adorned with silly chicken faces. How else to praise the permanent addition of Chicken Fries on the BK menu but with the Tears of Joy Chicken Fries emoji?

 

  1. Chevy Cruz Emoji Launch with Norm MacDonald

 

In June, Chevrolet hinted at its launch of the 2016 Chevy Cruz with a video and Twitter campaign featuring comedian Norm McDonald. “I am excited to translate an emoji announcement on behalf of Chevrolet,” declared the former “Saturday Night Live” Weekend Update anchor and recent iteration of KFC’s Colonel Sanders, who went on to paraphrase tiny icons that popped up on a TV screen behind him.

 

  1. “Star Wars” Awakens the Force with Emojis

 

Disney and Lucasfilm worked with Twitter to develop hashtag-generating emojis to promote a movie that seemed to have reached maximum promotion already. Three emojis were designed to appear when people used the character-related tags #C3PO, #Stormtrooper or #BB8 on Twitter.com.

 

  1. Chicago’s Superdawg Helps Score Hot Dog Emoji

 

Like Taco Bell, lesser-known Chicago hot dog emporium Superdawg petitioned the Unicode Consortium to create an official hot dog emoji. It happened, and in true Chicago dog fashion, the hot dog icon is slathered in mustard.

 

  1. Ford Focus Says “Let’s Go” with Stickers

 

“Let’s Go!” and “Drive Safe!” were among the messages included in Ford Motor Company’s virtual sticker collection promoting Ford Focus automobiles. Created in conjunction with Swyft Media, the automaker generated 25,000 downloads of its Ford Focus digital stickers each day for 10 days in September. Those downloads led to 40,000 shares of those branded images via messaging platforms each day, totaling more than 1 million impressions, according to Swyft.

 

  1. “SNL” Hypes 40th Anniversary with Character Emojis

 

The Coneheads, Debbie Downer and Matt Foley (the motivational speaker who lived in a van down by the river) are all featured in NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” app, introduced to celebrate the show’s 40th birthday earlier this year. Yes, Toonces the Driving Cat made an appearance, too.

 

  • Twitter Widens Advertising Net With New Promoted Tweets Initiative

 

It’s been over a year since Twitter first said it planned to monetize logged-out users – that is, make money off the 500 million or so people who dip in and read Tweets without being signed in or even registered. Now it’s coming good on the plan, and the leading social media platform is running a test showing promoted tweets to Twitter users without an account.

 

The private beta is starting first in the U.S., UK, Japan and Australia before rolling out elsewhere. The first promoted tweet tests will be desktop only and will appear in two places: profile pages and Tweet detail pages (when you see a single Tweet on the page). Also, Twitter says the initial focus will be on campaigns to drive website clicks and conversions, as well as video views.

 

Twitter is starting with this limited run but will let advertisers control the promoted tweets in the same way they do today for logged-in users. “By letting marketers scale their campaigns and tap into the total Twitter audience, they will be able to speak to more people in new places using the same targeting, ad creative, and measurement tools,” said Deepak Rao, a revenue product manager at the company. “Marketers can now maximize the opportunities they have to connect with that audience.”

 

Jedi Mic | Star Wars: The Force Awakens Takes Box Office To New Galaxy, Shatters Record

 

“Star Wars: The Force Awakens” shattered box office records with an estimated $517 million in worldwide ticket sales in the opening weekend, a staggering debut that re-established the celebrated space saga as a global phenomenon under Walt Disney Co.

The first “Star Wars” film in a decade recorded the biggest domestic opening in Hollywood’s history, collecting $238 million over the weekend in the United States and Canada. It also set records in Britain, Australia, Russia and elsewhere as fans embraced a new chapter in the galactic battle between good and evil.

Thousands joined a mock light saber battle in Los Angeles, where an Australian couple married in line for the film. President Obama ended a news conference on Friday saying he needed to head to a White House screening of the movie, and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton closed Saturday’s Democratic debate saying, “May the Force be with you.”

The Star Wars brand has certainly vaulted at light speed to a new far, far away galaxy – and has ushered in a new era of movie magic, touching a whole new generation while igniting a passion for all of us. During this season of magic, Star Wars takes a red-hot glowing Jedi Mic!