Now that we can see that the custom emojis on Twitter are an ad unit, there are a few more interesting things to point out about the campaign with Coke.
It appears that the company has leveraged stars of its acquired video platform, Vine, with a lot of them tweeting/vining to their vast number of followers about it. The campaign, while a bit murky, seems to be an attempt to break a goofy (probably non-existent) world record:
https://twitter.com/twitter/status/644541644939882500
Here are some Viners:
https://twitter.com/robbyjayala/status/644541843120615424
https://twitter.com/Cody/status/644560517915213825
DM'ing as many people as I can who tweet #ShareACoke to set a new record. There's also a dope little emoji that comes with the tweet šš #sp
ā Grayson Dolan (@GraysonDolan) September 17, 2015
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These folks are in on it, too:
my friends at @cocacola are aiming to set a new world record but need ur help! Tweet using #ShareaCoke today and see what happens⦠#AD
ā Ryan Seacrest (@RyanSeacrest) September 17, 2015
Check it out @cocacola is about to set a new record for largest cheers! Just tweet using #ShareaCoke. I will be retweeting you guys! #sp
ā kevin jonas (@kevinjonas) September 17, 2015
Coke is just trying to get the hashtag and emoji combo for #ShareACoke as much reach as possible. Like any ad. Or any other campaign. The custom emojis are just native contentā¦albeit cooler than other native content we get thrown in our faces. Plus, I donāt think thereās going to be an EmojiĀ Ad blocker anytime soon.
@drew š«
ā Kayvon Beykpour (@kayvz) September 17, 2015
This particular campaign is also something driven by Niche, the company Twitter acquired earlier this year. The team is now a part of the brand strategy group at Twitter. That companyās focus was to put advertisers in touch with social media celebrities. Lots of moving parts here, all in-house though for Twitter. Which is huge. All we need now is some Periscope action and this one will go down as a ārun of networkā campaign. I mean, they just launched web profiles, so Iām sure theyāre collecting who their big stars will and could be.
Is it working? I suppose. The #ShareACoke hashtag has been a worldwide trending topic for the past few hours. Itās actually nice to see that Coke didnāt also buy the top trending ad position, they let this one bubble up āorganically.ā I mean, as organically as it can be with paid celebs tweeting about it.
Twitter + Vine + Niche = Happy #Brands
In other words, the ad group is firing on all cylinders with this one.