Decoding Emojis: An Examination of The Missing Brand Element

My intrigue with brand usage of emojis has grown into a bit of an obsession over the past few years. Emojis are a modern symbolic reflection of society, so it's only natural brands take advantage of them.After much curiosity, I'm finally diving deeper into exploring the potential of these visual cues for brands.

?? From visual interest, to brand reinforcement, to plain old formatting, here’s how your brand can harness the power of emojis.

Some brands go over the top with emojis in email, social, website, even job descriptions. But others have tastefully - and quietly - adopted their own single emoji, or strategic combination of a few. Not as a logo or a brand mark, but as a third thing. An identifiable symbol. A branded emoji.

No, not a custom emoji (though you can pay our friend Elon a cool $1m for that) but the unicode emojis you see every day on your iPhone keyboard.

I’ve yet to come across a brand book with a proper embedded emoji strategy. (But I know they must exist - see examples below). In the meantime, this emoji brand guide is a good alternative if you’d like to see how to implement emojis in your own brand.

?? Borrowing Affinity from Emojis

The goal of emojis are akin to great partner marketing - borrow from established brand affinity and leverage their brand attributes to reflect on your own. But in the case of emojis, you’re borrowing from existing themes, ideas, and assumptions around emojis, not brands.

So how can you use emojis in your branding?

1?? A Product Modeled After an Emoji

Choose one (or more) relevant emojis to associate with your brand in social and other digital copy.

The Outdoor Voices blue hat is a great example. Legend has it that the hat was modeled after the emoji, so it would be easier to market. And it worked. The blue hat became the symbol for OV in the early days (and it still sticks around).

2?? Emojis as a Social Media Brand Mark

When it comes to branded emojis, I usually advise brands to choose something rare. Perhaps the cloud, or the blue swirl, or the teapot.?

MorningBrew took the riskier route, and adopted one of the most-used food emojis: the coffee cup. ? Although risky, it worked. If you’re a tech bro, the coffee cup on Twitter marks a new update from morning brew. It’s relevant, it’s familiar, and most of all, it reinforces the purpose of the brand through a familiar concept: coffee.?

Coffee = morning, reading, starting day, habits, knowledge, productivity.

ProductHunt is another great example of my favorite "mark" emoji brands.

Logo = cat.

Branded emoji = cat.

Cat = ProductHunt

Simple is that, right? They sprinkle cat emojis throughout social, email, and even their website.

3?? Emojis as Brand (Look + Feel) Reinforcement

Notion’s branding is slick, and they don't miss a single detail. So of course, their emojis match. You won't see much color on their social media pages - they over index on black and white emojis, feeding into their #organizationporn ? aesthetic ?.

Cron’s emojis are interesting, too - they only use orange emojis. They also use orange filters on all of their photos. Leads to quite an interesting (and consistent, and beautiful) brand experience on social.??

4?? Emojis as a Personal Brand Indicator

Emojis are way more common for personal brands than company brands. It really brings home your value prop and / or your unique personality. You can have fun with it. Here are some examples I love.

My Challenge to You:?

Take a look at your brand guide and find at least one creative way to implement emojis.

Your social media manager, email marketing manager, or blog writer is probably using them, anyways. Time to get everyone on the same page.

Questions to get you started when adding emojis to your brand guide.

• Will we use emojis?
• What emojis are closely related to your brand?
• What emojis will you “own?”
• On what platforms will we / won't we use emojis?
• What color emoji/s?
• What emojis are off limits?
• What emojis are OK?
• What part of the sentence will we use emojis? Where will we put them in relation to punctuation?
• What emojis are used as a CTA?
• Will we use a single emoji or a combination?

Emoji Writing Style Guide:

https://blog.lightboard.io/blog/emoji-style-guide/

Would love to include a brand guide that has emojis, but I can't find one! Pls send one my way if you have one, I'd love to have an example!