In the late 1990s, mobile phone networks were struggling to cater for the tech’s soaring userbase. Not only were more people connecting to the networks, but the recent image messaging trend was threatening to bring the entire service crashing down. Images used several hundred times more processing ability than traditional text messages, and something needed to be done.
The providers turned to their engineers in search of a solution.
That solution was emojis: quaint, expressive images that could be transferred as a single image. The reduce on network strain was sizeable.
As time went on, and networks evolved, the need for emojis lessened. Sure, they were convenient if you wanted to tell someone the Cinderella story as quickly as possible, but beyond that, they were treated as little more than a gimmick.
All that changed in 2015. More than ever, advertisers were feeling the pinch of time. They needed to get their messages out hard and fast, while keeping them clear and simple.
Within 12 months, over 250 major brands had created their own emoji lines, and were using them to send tens of billions of messages to new and existing customers. The campaigns became so monumental that Oxford Dictionary even named an emoji Word of the Year.
Not the word emoji. An actual emoji.
The campaigns took many forms. Here are some of the most defining:
MENTOS
Mentos noticed that a lot of the more colloquial terms used by younger generations to express themselves were not represented in traditional emojis, and so they designed their own ementicons.
The incorporation of the product into the design was subtle…the rest of the campaign, not so much. Mentos launched a website highlighting each of the emojis through short, hilarious clips, such as this one for Cute-Crazed.
https://youtu.be/diwXaCVeJf8
BROAD CITY
To celebrate the launch of the second season of its web-series turned TV show Broad City, Comedy Central launched a series celebrating some of the series’ most beloved jokes.
It seems unlikely that most of those who downloaded the app would be frequent users of it, but the emoji were a truly innovative way to remind viewers to tune in.
DUREX
Not all emoji use is about joking around.
After leading a study that found 80% of people aged 16 to 25 had an easier time expressing themselves through emojis, Durex launched a campaign to have a condom emoji produced. Of course, there are myriad ways to infer sex through existing emoji, but none that make a point about the importance of safe sex.
To give people the ability to broach the topic of sex sex through an image rather than what they might find to be an awkward conversation might help change the statistic that finds half of the world’s new STD cases each year are made up of people under the age of 24.
https://youtu.be/O7iKgKpkWfU
DOMINO’S
Feeling like a Domino’s pizza but too lazy to go through the entire ordering process? Well now you can simply send a pizza emoji to a designated number, and your nearest franchise will deliver your favourite type ASAP!
“We know our customers. We know who they are. They are the gamers who don’t want to be far from their keyboards, the busy corporate workers, the social and the time poor parents. It’s important we fit into their lives and we make it as easy and simple for them to order,” said CEO and Managing Director Don Meij.
Considering the pizza slice is a default emoji on most devices, the system’s ease of use could very likely make it a staple of the industry going forward.
By the end of Q1 2016, pundits were claiming that the emoji trend was at an end, even with groups like Appboy announcing a 775% year-over-year rise of emoji use. Whether they are right remains to be seen, but news from this year’s World Emoji Day that the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee have vowed to take greater action to enforce gender equity and greater representation of those of different races and physical abilities through a new range of designs suggests we may be witnessing an emoji revolution, as we look for new ways to connect, engage, and explore.
Either way, I’m 
for what comes next.