Emoji Analysis: 5 Ways to Crack the Consumer Code

With emojis, there’s the good

Why is emoji analysis important?

Emojis are everywhere. They’re on T-shirts, mugs, and keyrings. Even having their own (terrible) movie.

In 2015, 92% of the online community used emojis in their conversations. And that number is growing. We detected 13% more posts containing emojis in March 2018 than March 2017.

Emojis are a part of your consumers’ language, and whether you’re already using social media listening or not, it’s essential for you to use emoji analysis to fully understand what consumers are saying.

Take this tweet, for example…

oh, happy #NationalGirlfriendsDay btw .. 😒

😐

— Colby (@ColbyBrock) August 1, 2017

At first, you’d think this was a positive, celebratory tweet. But the addition of the 

Using emoji analysis, you will get a better understanding of what consumers are really saying, whether that’s about a topic, a trend, or your brand.

Just take a look at what we discovered by analyzing the emoji history of Trump’s first 100 days.

The history of emojis

To understand emojis, it’s worth knowing a little about their history. They originated as ‘emoticons’ in 1982 when Scott Fahlman used 🙂 to help explain when something was a joke. Their popularity grew in the 90’s and 2000’s due to the character restrictions of text messaging (160) and Twitter (180), as they added useful emotional context in limited space. As technology developed, they became pictorial, rather than text-based, with Shigetaka Kurita leading the way. Finally, in October 2010, the modern emojis were incorporated into Unicode 6.0, offering a consistent standard used across all systems and devices. As of the 2017 Unicode 10, there are now 2,666 emojis available, with an extra 157 due in 2018.

What you can do with emoji analysis

Brand interaction and buyer intent

Emojis are also useful to get a quick overview of your consumers’ perceptions of your brand, and what they associate with it.

Our emoji cloud gives you an overview of the emojis related to the Apple HomePod.

It appears quite positive, with lots of happy emojis (

It’s interesting that the second most used emoji was 

The thinking face (

Just think what could have happened here if Apple, Amazon or Google had engaged this tweet with an offer…

oh, happy #NationalGirlfriendsDay btw .. 😒

😐

— Colby (@ColbyBrock) August 1, 2017

Find hidden mentions

When considering the topic you’re searching for, think about searching for emojis, too.

In the last 13 months, there were 70.2 million mentions of pizza. But the emoji (without any mentions of the keyword pizza) had an extra 13.3 million mentions. By using the search “pizza OR ” as your topic, you would find an extra 18.9% mentions around “pizza.”

Not only do the number of mentions change, but the conversation does, too. For just pizza mentions, the most mentioned brands are Pizza Hut, Papa John’s and Domino’s, with Papa John’s receiving 12.4% more mentions than Domino’s. But when you monitor mentions of “pizza OR,” the order stays the same, but this time Papa John’s only has 10.7% more mentions.

It may only seem a small change, but if you’re measuring pizza consumer trends on a global scale, it matters. It also means Papa John’s consumers engage with the  emoji more than those of Domino’s, so Papa John’s should use it more to boost brand engagement (see later on).

Just had my first Papa John’s.

Unbelievable!🤤🍕

— Kurtis Norman (@KurtisNorman_) July 8, 2017

Brand association

Another emoji analysis technique is to look at what brands consumers associate with specific emojis. This gives you a picture of your consumers’ top of mind. It’s like one big Rorschach test. If the wider population associates a specific brand with certain emojis, it demonstrates how well that brand has diffused into the consumer psyche.

McDonald’s will be pleased to know both 

BMW is the brand most linked to 

The Philadelphia Eagles are the most common team related to 

If you want to see where your brand sits in people’s top of mind, look for the most common emojis associated with your brand, then look for where your brand ranks for those emojis.

McDonald’s know how highly people associate the burger emoji with their brand.

McDonald’s knows how to have good times 🍔🍟 #advertising #creative #marketing #printads #havegoodtimes #goodtimes #mcdonalds pic.twitter.com/mCnvoi5UAO

— Ad World Masters (@adworldmasters) March 19, 2018

Add extra insights to your sentiment analysis

Sentiment analysis is an additional process that helps you understand your brand mentions, by defining whether they are positive, negative, or neutral. That way, you get a better understanding of your brand perception. The algorithm that Talkwalker uses to categorize sentiment, measures a variety of factors from posts, like the global context and emoji usage. But you can use emoji analysis to add extra context to that sentiment.

In the last 13 months, Netflix received over 15 million negative mentions (around 19% overall). But that only highlights them as negative, without any emotional context. By looking at the emojis included in those mentions, we can get a better idea what negative emotion is driving those conversations.

All I want to do is watch One Tree Hill why did Netflix remove it 😭

— Hunter Wolfe (@hunterdestin) December 31, 2017

The angry 

Whichever BROKE weirdo thinks it’s okay to keep using my Netflix ITS NOT 😡 it’s literally £6 a month

— elese (@EleseKilgariff) January 5, 2018

Though not in the top 50 emojis, three of the ones related to sickness (

Emoji analysis gives you an extra level of depth to your sentiment analysis.

Trend analysis for brand engagement

Another use of emoji analysis is for seeing what conversations your audience is engaging with. This is useful for boosting your brand engagement.

Say you want to engage with vegetarians more. One of the most commonly used emojis in conversations around vegetarian or vegetarianism is the green heart 

We dump a garbage truck full of plastic into the ocean every MINUTE and it’s expected to double by 2030. By 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in our oceans. Please reduce your use of plastic. 🐟♻️🌎💚 The Earth will thank you. Here are a few every day tips:

— 𝓓 𝓸 𝓵 𝓵 𝓯 𝓪 𝓬 𝓮 (@soyamacchiato) February 26, 2018

This blog was originally posted on Talkwalker.com.