Emoji in Advertising

Abstract

Emoji have become an ipso facto universal language that fit in perfectly with informal routine digital communications, especially on mobile devices and on social media. Marketers and advertisers have taken notice of this communicative phenomenon and have started tapping into the emotive power of the emoji code since at least 2010. But is emoji advertising truly effective? Almost no study exists to examine this question. This article thus has a two-fold purpose. First, it looks at the use of emoji in advertising generally and then it presents a pilot study that aims to assay if such advertising is indeed effective. The overall conclusion is that effectiveness relates to the increase in interpretations, or connotations, that emoji ads seem to generate. The use of emoji in advertising is, thus, a field laboratory for gauging where emoji writing is heading and what it entails more broadly for communication.