Olivia Parker
Jul 17, 2018

10 Asian brands celebrating World Emoji Day 2018 :D

Sadly we've yet to see a brand making creative use of our favourite aubergine emoji but we can applaud—and groan—at a few of these other creative efforts to celebrate World Emoji Day.

10 Asian brands celebrating World Emoji Day 2018 :D

July 17 was World Emoji Day. It's also the date shown on the 'calendar' emoji because, according to the New York Times, this was the date designated to celebrate emojis by the Australian emoji historian Jeremy Burge, who also founded the reference site emojipedia.org. (Fun fact: World Emoji Day falls three days after Burge's birthday on July 14). 

The team behind World Emoji Day encouraged fans to 'light up Twitter' by writing Tweets with their favourite 50 emojis and replying to anyone who messaged them — their child's school, their bank, their grandmother — using emoji-only responses. 

Apple got involved on July 16 by choosing to announce a range of new emojis coming later in the year, such as new hair options (bald, red, gray) for the people emojis, more expressive smileys and additional food and animal emojis including a kangaroo, a lobster, a mango and — in good news for Chinese users — a mooncake emoji. In a quirky touch, Apple also made its executive leadership team their own emojis to replace their profile photos. 

Here are a few other interesting emoji facts: 

  • There are currently 2,823 emojis in the Unicode Standard. Nearly 2,300 of these are used every day. 
  • The site emojitracker.com tracks real time emoji use on Twitter. The 'face with tears of joy' emoji is easily the most popular at the moment, with over 2 billion uses. This is also the top emoji used on Facebook
  • Emojipedia found that people were using the 'heart' emoji on Facebook twice as often in 2018 as in 2017. 
  • New Year's Eve typically sees more emojis sent than on any other day. 
  • The highest known sale price for an emoji domain was US$13,600, paid for ☁.com

How brands celebrated World Emoji Day on social media

1. Jetstar Airways
Keeping things simple, the Melbourne-based airline went for the classic 'what's your favourite' question but created an eye-catching graphic out of the aeroplane emoji as well.   

 

2. Goldilocks PH
This Filipino baking chain overlaid emoji faces on top of a bouncing cake. Job done. 

 

3. ANZ Australia
There's nothing like World Emoji Day to make a bank feel good about promoting another '-moji' thing. This post on Twitter announcing ANZ's forthcoming 'Spendmoji' product had received 49 likes at time of publication. However, one commenter responded with a cutting suggestion for a new emoji for ANZ: a smiley face in a burglar's beanie and mask, clutching a bag of cash. *Insert flushed face emoji here*. 

 

4. Security Bank Philippines
Another bank jumping on board with a factual, some might say blindingly obvious, but sweet post.    

 

5. ACC New Zealand
New Zealand's Accident Compensation Corporation invented a little guessing game for followers. 

 

6. WaghBakri India

This Indian tea brand also went for the guessing game. The answer is more obvious when you know that 'wagh' is Gujarati for 'tiger' and 'bakri' means 'goat', the idea being that all kinds of differences can be resolved over a cup of tea. 

 

7. Air New Zealand
Air New Zealand has form with emojis: it launched a competition to get people to describe their dream destination using emojis earlier this year. 

 

8. Collective Solutions Philippines
The Filipino branch of business process outsourcing firm Collective Solutions is celebrating World Emoji Day by matching employees' facial expressions with emojis. 

 

9. National Gallery of Victoria
Not so much a campaign as an enticement to come to an exhibition, but this trip through emoji history has been notching up the views on Facebook. 

 

10. Titan Watches India
India's leading watch producer ran this emoji time-themed competition, which took our crack codebreaking squad at Campaign Asia-Pacific approximately 0.8 seconds to solve. Ready, set, go!

Not from Asia but we liked it: 

E3D Online, which sells 3D printer parts, decided to spend World Emoji day by giving emojis a physical life beyond their digital selves. Finally, we can get that 3D aubergine we've always wanted. 

Source:
Campaign Asia

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