Secure your place at the Digiday Publishing Summit in Vail, March 23-25
Versace is bringing the emoji keyboard to the 1 percent.
Yesterday, the luxury clothier debuted an emoji app for iOS and Android that lets people customize the instantly recognizable Medusa logo with absurd-sounding filters (“luxe” or “glam”), a variety of emoji expressions, customizable text, and flashy bling that’s shareable on social media.
Its cost, however, is at a very un-Versace price point: Free.
Versace timed the release of the app with Valentine’s Day this weekend, describing it in a statement as something that “lets everyone in the world express themselves and share their feelings.” That sounds lovely, but the app is a marketing gimmick aimed to promote the brand’s new emoji T-shirts that cost upwards of $700 each.
Rolling out custom emojis is so last season, though.“2015 potentially saw an overload of poor emoji integrations that didn’t add much value — I do think it was a bit of an overload,” said John Ohara, svp of strategy at Giant Spoon, told Digiday last month. The very idea of an emoji keyboard is more original to the brand then to users, who don’t download them.
But Versace might have an advantage because of its logo.
“To be successful, a brand needs to have iconic imagery, which Versace has,” Doug Rozen, chief innovation officer at content-led digital agency MXM told Digiday. “It also requires aspirational desires, which Versace also has. So, for a small audience it might yield very high engagement.”
Still, don’t tell designer Donatella Versace, who excitedly shared this on Instagram:
More in Marketing
In graphic detail: How Anthropic’s Pentagon refusal is paying off in downloads, brand trust and enterprise deals
OpenAI’s Pentagon deal seemed to spark uproar among its users, many of whom were against it. Anthropic’s refusal to agree to the terms was seen by users as the more trustworthy alternative.
How AI could disrupt retail media’s $38 billion search ad market
ChatGPT and other AI chatbots could divert shoppers from retailer sites, putting the $38B retail search market at risk.
‘Brand safety is moving from fear to curiosity’: Zefr’s Raddon on content-level accreditation – and what it exposes about the industry
The threat is no longer a discrete piece of bad content that a keyword list or a domain block can catch. Its volume.