In today’s fast-changing business world, companies and marketers worldwide face numerous challenges, many of which are unprecedented. Consequently, companies must discover new approaches to operate, and marketers must cross novel and challenging terrains to promote products and services. In this evolving business landscape, creativity in marketing communications has become more crucial than ever before. From bespoke marketing materials to unique advertising campaigns, creativity may help a company's marketing communication efforts to stand out from the competition and grab the attention of its customers and the target audience. In addition, marketers have recognized the necessity to be noticeable from the crowd by incorporating emotions into marketing communications to stimulate the purchasing decision of their customers and the target audience.
In most instances, businesses have some angry, frustrated, or demanding customers. Even in circumstances where there will be many happy customers, there will always be a handful of unhappy customers. However, it is challenging for businesses to capture the emotions of their customers and the target audience as human emotions are inherently difficult to read. Moreover, there is frequently a misalignment between what people say and what they genuinely feel.
Since visual images are considered to have a greater emotional appeal than words alone, in the context of social media, the use of emojis in a company’s marketing communication campaigns enables the company to create an emotional bond with its customers.
With the rise of the Internet and social media, there are several accessible yet authentic ways to track customer emotions that help a company to boost its sales. For example, there is a widely believed phenomenon that a picture is worth a thousand words. Since visual images are considered to have a greater emotional appeal than words alone, in the context of social media, the use of emojis in a company’s marketing communication campaigns enables the company to create an emotional bond with its customers.
The evolution of emojis
Originated from smileys and later evolved into emoticons, emojis have come a long way by redefining communications in a new way. Smiley, a yellow face with two dots for eyes and a wide grin printed on t-shirts and hats, is recognized as the first expression symbol, debuting in the 1960s. This symbol had become renowned as an indelible element of western popular culture by the early 1980s.
Emoticons were first introduced in 1982 and used ordinary punctuation marks from a standard computer keyboard to portray a face with a specific expression. They are a type of paralinguistic element that is frequently used at the end of a sentence. Before the advent of emoji, users of instant messaging were often accustomed to utilizing emoticons. Emoticons, similar to nonverbal cues in face-to-face communication, can assist in clarifying intentions in unclear circumstances, express emotions, and improve communication efficiency. Besides, emoticons can help the receivers understand the sender's emotions and attitudes without meaning distortions, bring enjoyment, and foster interactions. In practice, it has also been understood that emoticons can be used in real-life situations, for instance, in fields such as sociology and psychology, consumer behaviour, and marketing communications.
Shigetaka Kurita, a Japanese interface designer, designed the first set of emojis, which were released in 1999. Emojis being a transcription of a Japanese term, stands for e=picture, mo=write, and ji=character. They are graphical symbols with predefined names and codes, representing facial expressions, emotions/feelings, gestures/ body expressions, activities, and a wide range of objects, including animals, plants, and food. Emojis owe similar neurological responses to face-to-face communication, thus add extra emotional and contextual value to communication. Moreover, emojis assist in conversation management by enriching the attractiveness of the message and fostering interpersonal relationships. In addition, as a visual language, emoji transcends the language barriers, making it easier for non-English speakers to use English dominant social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
Emojis have now become an indispensable element of modern culture. The cute smiley faces are already transforming how people interact, with messaging apps replacing predictive text with emojis.
Use of emojis in marketing communications
For marketers, images and iconography have always been a fundamental component of marketing communication campaigns, but this has been intensified with the rising popularity of social media such as Instagram and Pinterest. The last two decades have also witnessed the burgeoning popularity of emojis, which has taken the globe by storm. Believe it or not, today, emojis are increasingly gaining acceptance in marketing communications because nearly all Internet users now utilize emojis in their everyday communications. As a result, new emojis and symbols are being developed regularly. Moreover, many of the most recent smartphone technologies now have an AR emoji or Animoji function that allows users to design unique emojis to use on their phones.
What makes emojis more significant for marketing communications is their ability to create more visually appealing content to attract customers’ attention, something many companies admit to struggling. For example, emails with an emoji in the subject line have better click-through rates, and social media posts with emojis have more responses. In addition, customers are more likely to respond positively to familiar images, for example, images with smiling faces that portray emotions they can easily relate to their lives. Consequently, emojis enable companies to change the rigid, formal framework of conventional marketing communication campaigns by making content attractive and straightforward without jeopardizing quality. Further, emojis complement the content of a marketing communication campaign by adding a personal touch to the content, consequently making the product/service more memorable and unique in the longer run.
Figure 4: Emails with an emoji in the subject line
Figure 5: Social media posts with emojis
Despite the language differences, emojis provide customers a broader vocabulary to express their feelings, helping businesses get a more profound sense of what types of content are more effective. In addition, these emotional icons do have the power to break down communication barriers by enabling companies to engage with customers in a humanized communication on a more personal level. Consequently, emojis have gone from being considered relatively immature to being considered an authentic approach to build and nurture customer relationships in recent years. Furthermore, using emojis can help companies build mutual trust by providing a communication medium where customers feel comfortable and free to voice their ideas.
Adding emojis to the content of a marketing communication campaign can boost customer engagement, primarily when used in social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram. Marketers can also use emojis to promote a call to action, clutching customers’ attention and giving companies more space to engage with their customers. In addition, companies can encourage customers to interact with them through emoji responses, thus fostering customer engagement organically. Moreover, companies can grab their customers’ attention by integrating emojis into promotional content, requesting them to share and respond to exclusive offers whenever they release a new product or celebrate a milestone.
To sum up, emojis in marketing communications provide businesses with a novel, unconventional, and more engaging manner of approaching their target audience. Therefore, understanding the role of emojis in marketing communications and how they manifest themselves in marketing communications is vital to all businesses looking to engage in more creative and emotional communications with their customers.