If you are worried about some sort of alien invasion, you should be looking closer to home. We are being invaded and taken over. But not by space aliens or ‘big brother’ bureaucracy. The invader is of our own creation. And they are generally yellow, not green. Emoticons and emojis are making inroads in the written language, serving as a new sort of hieroglyphic language. Niall Horan and Arianna Grande are leading the army by releasing new apps for musical emojis.
At first, they were cute. Those little yellow faces easily summed up a feeling and saved us the bother of typing it out on our phones. But then they multiplied. Before we knew it, they’d evolved from emoticons to emojis and children were whinging and demanding their parents invest in all sorts of emoji accessories. Just when we adapted to cope with that, they released their own movie, sending children everywhere into an epic spiral of need.
There’s a lesson in there for online marketing. If you are relying on pester power, nothing you do is too annoying. Just look at the emoji paraphernalia everywhere you turn. In the blink of an eye, we’ve become a society where people gift wraps emoji excrement pillows with little faces. And if you receive one for Christmas, it is actually illegal to use it to smother the person who gave it to you.
Okay, there’s another marketing lesson in this. People like the ability to instantly communicate emotion in a way that soars over any language barrier. We respond more to images than to words. But we knew that, right? Alas, using emojis in your social media marketing could be effective. But please include actual words and photos too.
Curmudgeons among us can take some small comfort in imagining the shock of those growing up with emojis entering the Real World. Just wait until they go for their driving license photos. Probably some employers will eventually switch to cartoon emoji versions of their staff for employee ID badges, but that won’t fly with the bureaucrats issuing passports. Hopefully, teachers will hold the line firm or in a generation, kids could be summarizing Hamlet in a series of little dancing smiley faces.
At least the early emoticons were silent. Now pop stars such as Arianna Grande and Niall Horan have released their own musical emoji, convincing everyone over 40 that the end of the world is upon us. And worse still, that it isn’t coming with thundering hooves of apocalyptic horsemen or deafening explosions but with a catchy little pop jiggle that will lodge in our heads and leave us praying for the end to come swiftly.
By Irene Hislop
By Jeff Sheridan
By Matrix Internet