Limited spots remain:

Join us Dec. 1-3 in Nashville for the Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit

REGISTER

No condom, but the emoji overlords give us arm-taking selfie, avocado and pancakes emojis

Nothing represents the zeitgeist more than a newly approved selfie emoji.

The selfie emoji.
The selfie emoji.

Unicode Consortium released 77 new emojis yesterday, including the highly anticipated avocado emoji, two strips of bacon, a (very topical) gorilla and an arm taking a selfie. Also included a handshake, pancakes, a green salad and a drooling face.

However, the new emojis doesn’t include a condom, as Durex petitioned for in an effort to promote safe sex, or 13 “true-to-life representations of professional women” emojis that Google proposed.

The new emoji package, called Unicode 9.0, is a culmination of a week-long meeting among members of the non-profit organization that ensures emoji consistency among phone operating systems. Perhaps not coincidentally, Facebook Messenger also today released 1,500 new emojis for Messenger, which doesn’t abide by Unicode Consortium rules since it is its own chat app.

Pancake and bacon emojis.
Pancake and bacon emojis.

“There’s a huge opportunity for brands that have direct ties to specific emoji or those that can contain multiple meanings,” said Travis Montaque, a Unicode Consortium member and Emogi CEO. For example, IHOP and the new pancake emoji and Planter’s with the new peanuts emoji.

Developers can begin using them this month, but normal people won’t see them until mid-2017 because of Apple’s and Android’s lengthy design process.

Banner photo via Emojipedia. 

More in Marketing

In graphic detail: Six thousand brands later, ChatGPT ads still have a conversion problem

OpenAI has ambitious ad revenue targets, which depend on advertiser demand, measurement and monetisation.

Agencies find AI overuse is leading to brief bloat

Agencies and marketers now frequently use AI tools to create media and creative briefs. But the practice could be a canary in the coalmine for AI overuse in advertising.

Retail media strategies

After DoorDash’s Instacart bid, here’s the case for and against consolidation in commerce media

The DoorDash-Instacart deal could accelerate commerce media consolidation, promising scale but risking higher prices and lock-in.