Emoji marketing: Toward a theory of brand paralinguistics

Emojis, or pictographs that supplement or replace written language, have become ubiquitous in contemporary communication, including emoji marketing. Drawing on insights from linguistics and sign theory, the current research proposes an emoji marketing framework in which emoji symbolism (symbolic vs. iconic emoji use) affects consumers’ message appraisals (perceived message intimacy and clarity), which in turn influence brand cultural relevance (propositions P1 and P2). Emoji syntax (i.e., whether emojis are supplemented with text or not) and marketer-consumer group relatedness (shared vs. unshared group membership) moderate the relationship between emoji symbolism and consumers’ message appraisals. The framework suggests that messages that use emojis as symbols, relative to no-emoji (text-only) marketing messages, evoke greater perceived message clarity (P3a) and greater perceived message intimacy (P4a) if those emojis are supplemented with text, as well as greater intimacy if group relatedness is shared (P5a). In contrast, if messages use emojis as icons, again relative to no-emoji (text-only) marketing messages, they produce greater perceived message clarity if emojis are not supplemented with text (P3b) and higher perceived message clarity and intimacy regardless of marketer-consumer group relatedness (P4b and P5b). The authors present several implications and pertinent avenues for research that can leverage this novel emoji marketing framework.