It’s an essential copywriting practice to write like your target audience. The three-word taglines you see in popular campaigns weren’t written in one afternoon. They’re usually backed by exhaustive market research and strategy.
But what if your target audience is notoriously known for using emojis? What do you do?
Well, Partnership for Drug-Free Kids was once in this exact position.
In July 2015, they launched the #WeGotYou campaign—an anti-drug PSA campaign, featuring emoji-only ads. They believe that, in order to persuade teenagers, they need to speak like one. It was creative. I give them that.
But did they get their point across?
We’ll find out. Guess what this one meant.
Ok. There’s a high chance that you did not get that—at least, at first glance. I certainly didn’t. But you’re probably not the teenager they’re targeting.
So did the teens understand it?
It turns out that no one did get it. Partnership’s teenage audience mocked their cringe-inducing effort. Their campaign was seen as a futile attempt done by adults who clumsily try to keep up with kids.
It’s a common case of a brand misunderstanding their audience. They were completely off with how they structure their emojis (more about this later.)
If you’re wondering what the answer to the above riddle is, it’s “I’m tired of drinking to fit in.”
Make it make sense 🤷🏻♀️
The unwritten grammar rules of emojis
Unknown to many, grammar is an evolutionary trait. Through trial-and-error, we’ve created sets of rules that allow us to effectively communicate. Without it, we literally would not understand each other.
The emoji’s roots go way back to 1999 from its Japanese inventor, Shigetaka Kurita. His company, telecom giant NTT DoCoMo, wanted to make good use of their then 250 character-limit. In short, its first purpose was to produce ease of communication.
And eased it did.
Because this feature proved to be so valuable, it blew up and is now used by anyone with a mobile across the globe.
Little did we know, we have a new and unique language in the making.
A language Tyler Schnoebelen, linguist and data scientist, was so keen on studying, he analyzed 500,000 tweet sequences to discover 3 of the main unwritten grammar rules that govern its users.
Emojis are typically found at the end of sentences.
Sometimes, even replacing punctuation marks.
Punctuations and emojis serve the same purpose, in that they add emotions to an otherwise plain sentence. Your exclamation point (!) can be swapped with a surprised face (😮) emoji.
Another reason is that emojis at the end makes for a seamless conversation. Putting emoji’s midsentence turns a casual chat into a guessing game.
There are exceptions, of course, like the most used heart (❤️ ) emoji.
Emojis follow a linear timeline and action.
When you want to express a monkey wielding a toy gun, you use this:
It’s a typical subject-verb syntax where the subject goes first followed by the action. However, things take a different turn when you add an object a.k.a the receiver of the action. In this case, let’s show the monkey pointing a fake pistol towards the pig.
The direction of the fake pistol now affects the sequence.
On a related experiment done by behavioral scientist Dr. Rachael Tatman, she infers that emoji grammar is similar to ASL (Americal Sign Language) grammar where an agent-to-patient sequence (like the above) is observed.
Her experiment, however, concluded that there is no fixed sequence to emoji sentences.
This doesn’t mean they can be arranged randomly either. It depends on their context and spatial order. Most times, you need to be an active participant of the language to make sense of certain emoji strings—like how slangs are with fluent speakers.
Unless you’re a Gen Z (or in Tiktok), you wouldn’t get this -> 🐐
I’ll help you out, my fellow lost millennial. That’s a goat. Not the herbivore. This GOAT, an acronym for Greatest Of All Time.
Speaking of context clues, we have the next rule.
Your “stance” comes first.
Schloebelen found out that users prefer showing the attitude/emotion they want to convey first before typing the rest of the emojis.
People use this order often:
than this:
The “stance” sets the tone for the emojis that follow it. This links to how we deem it polite when we make our intentions clear and upfront first.
Emoji-less text messages come across as expressionless and are bound to be misunderstood.
This skit by Key and Peele shows two friends who are clearly not using emojis.
Yeah. Not good for people with trust issues 🙃
Conclusion
Now, you might think that adding “rules” to a fairly light-hearted phenomenon is of a prude’s doing. Well, I beg to differ. They’re there simply to strengthen the bases of our communication.
If grammar is not present, everything will be lost in translation.
There is a quote popularly attributed to Picasso, Dalai Lama XIV, and Alexandar McQueen.
“In order to break the rules, you must first master them.”
These guys were clearly masters of their craft. McQueen spent 5 years as a tailor apprentice, laying down a strong foundation of handiwork before he was able to break the very rules he learned.
If you learn how things function, you now have the option to maneuver new ways around their initial use. Basically, in order to think outside the box, you need to have the box.
This is the same reason why many get more creative when presented with a constraint.
So the next time you create an emoji ad campaign, take a page from Schnoebelen’s book or just ask a nearby Gen Z. When you get the hang of it, you’re permitted to go crazy.
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