Emojis are apparently the fastest growing language in the world. So much so that Oxford Dictionaries have named the Tears of Joy emoji as their word of the year… We’re not even joking.
Over the past month alone, we have seen personalised Emjois making an appearance on the likes of Twitter. #Halo5 had one, Starbucks had one for their #RedCups campaign, and Coca-Cola was one of the first brands to receive a custom Emoji.
It’s official, @CocaCola are the first brand to get a custom emoji. What do you think? #ShareaCokehttps://t.co/4JDPUBBb8y
— Wolf Experience (@WolfBExp) November 9, 2015
This in itself shows how not only is social media having more of an influence over our every day lives, but also our very language which I am sure even the legendary Susie Dent (hero) could have predicted.
Brands have been playing around with Emojis since 2014 and this year there was a ‘World Emoji Day‘ to celebrate the growing communication method. Brands such as Miller Lite absolutely nailed this tongue in cheek marketing opportunity and nearly 300,000 tweets were sent in one day. Doing things like this and jumping onto a trend that is actually relevant rather than any given hashtag gives a brand a personality and emotion that users will want to engage with rather than purely tweeting to complain (one of the main uses of social media, if we’re honest).
In a way, it’s no surprise that Tears of Joy has been named word of the year. Even some of us here in the office admit that we occasionally use empojis more than words iin some conversations, with Tears of Joy definitely the most popular. It may be a controversial move by Oxford Dictionaries and may even make some linguists brains hurt but it’s something people will never forget. They have embranced a ‘growing language’ and by doing so it may even be possible to use Emojis on Countdown one day… A girl can dream anyway.