One of the things I love most about this job is I’m constantly learning new things.
Recently I learned, albeit two years late, that the most popular word in the English language in 2014, according to the Global Language Monitor, was the heart emoji.
I would’ve guessed it was the smiley face, but what do I know?
The other thing I learned is that while 92 percent of all people online use emojis, only the cream of the crop actually get their own. That’s right. Think Kim Kardashian, Justin Bieber and Stephen Curry, all of whom have their own emoji apps that are available for purchase through an app store.
This is according to Patrick Mulford, chief creative officer of theAudience, a social media publishing company based in Los Angeles, who says personalized celebrity emojis are all the rage right now because they allow the biggest among them to work at the epicenter of pop culture.
“Every time someone sends a picture of Stephen Curry engulfed in flames, they’re using his mannerisms to communicate to their network,” Mulford said. “As an intermediary between friends, Steph gets free marketing, a lucrative app licensing deal, and an even stronger emotional bond with his fanbase.”
I’ve always thought of emojis as a kind of twice abbreviated Hallmark card that puts words to our feelings in a way the average person can’t.
Curry and other celebrities are getting their own, Mulford said, because “they are like the most popular kids on the playground.”
“People gravitate towards them and are influenced by what they do and say,” he said. “Certain celebrities know that their fans use emojis as one of their primary forms of communication, and so, by providing a set of self-styled emojis, it lends extra cultural kudos to the fans’ communications.
“If I know you’re also a fan of that star, and I send you their winking face, it reflects favorably on me. The celebrity becomes a valuable form of social currency.”
Mulford said that as celebrity emojis are generally made available in the form of a paid app, this has the potential to generate a great deal of revenue for the celebrity — and providing such a service also appeals to their ego. That would exclude Pope Francis, of course.
Mulford said celebrities tend to provide three different types of emojis:
1. Emojis that replicate the most popular emoji characters — but featuring the celebrity.
2. Emojis that add new (often irreverent) gestures and sentiments to your keyboard.
3. Emojis that feature the most famous/infamous poses and trademarks of the celebrity.
It’s worth pointing out that celebrity emojis are not technically emojis at all. The set of baked-in emojis that we find on our phones are an international standard, agreed on by the Unicode Commission, and they are regularly updated in our phone’s operating system, Mulford said.
“Celebrity emojis tend to be bigger than real emojis so that you can see their features and they are simply images that are cut and pasted into communications from a third-party app.”
In case you didn’t know, you can already make your own custom emojis using apps such as Emoji Me Face Maker and Bitmoji.
They work in a similar way to Kimoji (Kim Kardashian’s emoji app), Mulford said, but you probably won’t receive the same level of universal adoption, unless you manage to build a fan base of tens of millions of followers.
If you’re like me, you might be wondering what does all this mean and why should the rest of us care?
First, it shows how emojis have become one of the dominant forms of communication, especially for young folks crafting a sophisticated vocabulary with entirely new meanings from the ones originally intended for emojis.
“Whilst emojis currently lack the grammatical structure associated with speech, there is no reason to believe that emojis won’t eventually become the first universally understood language,” he said.
Second, it shows just how much power and influence major stars command in popular culture, both in their ability to sell merchandise, and also to raise the cultural kudos of a particular message.
Mulford believes emojis have already changed our world for the better because in today’s society, words just aren’t enough. As someone who makes a living writing, I’m not so sure.
But all this got me wondering if I might have a little star power, so I created my own emoji. Please let me know what you think.😊
