What Happened
Following Coca-Cola’s debut of the first-ever branded emoji on Twitter last week, ABC is tapping into the marketing potential of emojis to promote the new season premiere of its Thursday night lineup. Fans of the three “TGIT” shows can tweet special hashtag-emoji combinations designated by ABC (Scandal, for example, asks for a combo of #Scandal and a wine glass emoji) to unlock exclusive video content from the corresponding shows via auto-generated private messages.
What Brands Should Do
Although it remains unclear if ABC actually paid twitter for this activation, since there’s no new emoji specifically created for this promotional efforts. Nevertheless, it provides an interesting new use case of how brands can innovatively tap into emoji’s unique marketing potential on social networks. The reward of exclusive previews incentivizes fans to engage with the campaign and help spread the message, a clever tactic that all brands with social marketing efforts could emulate and put to good use.
Source: Marketing Land
