The Year of the … Mermaid Emoji?
Have you seen the new emoji for 2017 yet? I have to say that on the whole they’re a bit weird. Many of them are also exactly what the world needs right now.
You thought you had all the emoji you’d ever need to properly communicate, didn’t you? Well, you were wrong. Sixty-nine more emoji (plus skin tone variations) are coming your way this summer! Earlier this week, Unicode, who is responsible for approving and standardizing emoji worldwide, published the final list of emoji that will be in the Unicode 10 release this June. Check them all out below.
My initial thoughts after seeing these?
- There can never be enough dinosaurs so thank you for the T-Rex and Sauropod icons.
- There are some truly terrifying smileys I hope never to use (e.g. the barfing person and the “mind-blown” face that looks more like a chef’s hat).
- More food and drink options are always welcome.
- That’s an awful lot of fantasy-themed creatures…
- That bearded man is going to get a lot of use, to represent our favorite hipster and/or lumberjack.
- Zebras, giraffes, and hedgehogs, oh my!
- Does the brain look like a piece of raw meat to anybody else? Good thing we’re also getting a piece of meat emoji.
- It is very likely that the “shush” emoji (face with finger covering closed lips) will be used time and time again.
- The alien space ship, sled, and fortune cookie are cute and random but a curling stone?
Emoji are our primary mode of personal communication. (The ‘tears of joy’ face is still the most used, fyi.) Research also confirms that brands are using emoji more than ever in advertising. As long as Unicode keeps releasing new emoji, marketers will keep on enjoying new opportunities to promote their companies.
Just how might a brand utilize emoji in their online marketing efforts? Well, emoji doesn’t have to be a literal representation of your products. (Unless you are a restaurant of some sort you likely didn’t benefit from last year’s addition of taco, avocado, bacon, and pancake emoji.) Many brands have actually found marketing success in using the same emoji everyone else uses. Speaking the language of your audience isn’t all that hard when you’ve got 1,034 emoji to pick from! The difference between individual emoji use and brand use is that the latter have been using more than just the face emoji that frequent individual’s tweets. Brands can choose the emoji that evoke emotion and the ones that are particularly eye-catching (I’m thinking of that mermaid) to grab attention and communicate more with less.
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While I don’t think this selection is nearly as exciting as last year’s list (with the highly anticipated addition of an avocado) and I’m still left wondering where the the fingers-crossed emoji is (or what about a flamingo?), I am excited about a few of the new emoji and am very glad to see gender-neutral variations.
Hooray for emoji diversity! Which of the new emoji do you think you’ll be using the most?
