Words, images, emojis

Throughout history people have always spoken about the power of words. Language is a form of communication that brings the human race together, as well as identifying people as individuals.

Language makes us smarter and allows us to move forward but, above all, it allows us to relate to one another. But what would be the word without the image?

Related to this question there are different points of view. What was first, image or word? The egg or the chicken? For every image there is a word but, is there a picture for each word?

In my opinion, what we can affirm is that the image counts as an instrument of length or permanence at the memory. The image remains in our memory, short-term but also in the long term.

Dominos EmojisBecause of that, the use of the word has given way to the use of pictures. Politics, press and especially advertising. Images have becoming the bargaining chip of engagement in the modern communication world, especially in which we find, the world of Social Media.

This is a trend started successfully by Pinterest, but today covers the majority of platforms 2.0, with its greatest advocate, Instagram. But, what are the reasons for this power that has acquired the visual and attracts us inevitably?

To begin with, we are biologically visual beings. There is no more than refer to the cave paintings as the first form of communications that we can find. In fact, some studies claim that 90% of the information we convey to our brain is visual. But also our brain is able to process more and better the visual information.

coca colaIf we export this to our world, it is easily perceptible. Online content including images generate better results and gain more traffic, more clicks, more shares, more likes… The formula is simple: if content is valuable and a picture is worth more than thousand words, giving images to content we will get an optimal content marketing.

But, what if we go a step further? What if we use the power of the image giving it a simple, close and friendly character? Welcome to the Emoji´s era!

We all know these nice emoticons that today surround us wherever we are. Although they have evolved since that visionary Japanese began to use them in the late 90s (in the wake of the original emoticon), today we all know the wonderful Emoji´s world. How not to know the flamenca of the whatsapp!!!

Such is their social recognition today that brands try to introduce this new form of communication to build their campaigns, in their attempts to target millennial generation.Emojis essentially work well today on two fronts. Firstly, it takes simplistic messages to a whole new level. However, secondly, this simplicity builds in a playful ‘puzzle’ of curiosity, inducing people to engagement, virality and sharing.

For example, Coca-cola has become the first brand to pay for an emoji on Twitter, with a picture of two Cokes bottles clinking. But they were not the first ones: McDonald´s, Domino´s or Ikea already used it…

IKEA Emoji

 

So we can see that online sharing is evolving quickly and new languages are appearing all of the time as newer generations continue to express themselves through technology.

Words, images, emojis… What´s next? We´ll see! 😉 😉

Ideagoras Social Media

By Ideagoras Social Media