Just when you thought Snapchat outdid everyone with its new update (creepy masks over your face, rainbows exploding from your mouth, and popping eyeballs…oh my!), Twitter and Coca-Cola teamed up and took the cake on this one… at least, in my emoji-obsessed opinion. For the first time, Twitter has created a branded emoji for advertising partner Coca-Cola.
Twitter has designed custom emojis in the past for big events such as MTV’s Video Music Awards, the “Star Wars” release, and major sporting events, but unlike these, this new partnership is part of a paid advertising deal and its a first for Twitter.
Now if you include #shareacoke in your tweet, an image of two Coke bottles clinking together automatically appears demonstrating a joyous cheers. Coca-Cola successfully created the world’s largest cheers with more 170,500 tweets.
Better yet, depending on the success of this advertisement driven emoji, there’s the possibility for future advertisers to collaborate with Twitter, and who wouldn’t want their own emoji?
According to Senior Director of Global Brand Strategy at Twitter Ross Hoffman, “Coca-Cola is a massive global partner of Twitter and they have been pushing us for some time on building a custom emoji (along with the creative agency of W+K).” He continued by saying, “We know that people love using emojis and usage has been significantly increasing over time on our platform. This was a perfect opportunity to work with a nimble and smart marketer to make this happen.”
Twitter, however, is not releasing any financial details about this arrangement.
Emojis, which have continued to take over the digital communication world, play a huge role in Twitter where you only have 140 characters to express how you are feeling at that exact moment. For example, there is an emoji to represent countless emotions, modes of travel, holidays and more. Emojis have created the opportunity for people to say more by writing less.
We all know how successful Coke was with #shareacoke personalized cans so it was only a matter of time it created something new, and I, for one, love that it’s on social media.
—McKenzie Farquharson, Intern, Team Joanna
