It is per­haps safe to say emo­jis are hav­ing their cul­tur­al moment: Not only did the March 30 issue of the New York­er fea­ture Hillary Clin­ton emo­jis on the cov­er, Apple is report­ed­ly going to release new, more diverse emo­jis in its iOS 8.3 update, art and tech­nol­o­gy stu­dio Disk Cac­tus has a Kick­starter cam­paign for an emo­ji key­board cov­er and retail cloth­ing com­pa­ny Betabrand is sell­ing shirts, dress­es, and shoes fes­tooned with the poo emo­ji. And mar­keters have cer­tain­ly tak­en note, giv­ing emo­jis their brand­ed moment as well.

After a year or so with a hand­ful of exam­ples from a few pio­neer­ing brands like JCPen­ney, Bud Light, AT&T and GE, who were among the first to dip their toes into the emo­ji waters, we’re now see­ing brand­ed efforts pos­i­tive­ly snow­ball. Let’s look back at how 16 brands have used emo­jis.

The Timeline

March 2014: PETA

Almost exact­ly a year ago, ani­mal rights orga­ni­za­tion PETA released a video, Cru­el­ty Beyond Words, which incor­po­rat­ed emo­jis and asked con­sumers to text a heart emo­ji to help pre­vent ani­mal cru­el­ty.

July 2014: Bud Light, JCPenney

For Inde­pen­dence Day 2014, Bud Light post­ed an Amer­i­can flag emo­ji tweet, fea­tur­ing fire­works, flags and beer. To date, the tweet has more than 152,000 retweets and more than 113,000 favorites.

For back to school 2014, retail­er JCPen­ney fol­lowed with a dig­i­tal expe­ri­ence, Express Your­selfie, in which it invit­ed cus­tomers to vis­it its back to school hub to cre­ate per­son­al­ized emo­jis that resem­bled them­selves. The brand enabled users to cus­tomize their emo­jis with acces­sories and hair­styles and to post their emo­jis along­side self­ies to share with friends as well as in the brand’s online gallery. Each user was also able to view shop­ping sug­ges­tions based on their per­son­al style, the brand said in a release.

October 2014: The White House

Then, in Octo­ber, the White House released an info­graph­ic about mil­len­ni­als – “where they are, where they’re going, and what Pres­i­dent Oba­ma is doing to ensure their suc­cess” – that includ­ed emo­jis.

November 2014: Taco Bell

For its part, Taco Bell has sold taco emo­ji t‑shirts to pro­mote its cam­paign for a taco emo­ji, in which it actu­al­ly sub­mit­ted a Change.org peti­tion. In the peti­tion, Taco Bell notes Uni­code Con­sor­tium, a non­prof­it that reg­u­lates the cod­ing stan­dards for writ­ten com­put­er text that includes emo­jis, announced it had accept­ed 37 new emo­ji char­ac­ters – includ­ing a taco emo­ji — as can­di­dates for Uni­code 8.0, which is sched­uled for mid-2015.

“We need your help con­vinc­ing them THE TACO EMOJI NEEDS TO HAPPEN,” Taco Bell writes. “Why do piz­za and ham­burg­er lovers get an emo­ji but taco lovers don’t? Here’s a bet­ter ques­tion: why do we need four dif­fer­ent types of mail­box­es? Or 25 dif­fer­ent types of clocks? Or a VCR tape and flop­py disk emo­ji? No one even uses those things any­more.”

As of this writ­ing, the peti­tion has more than 30,000 sig­na­tures.

December 2014: GE, AT&T

In ear­ly Decem­ber, GE cre­at­ed a peri­od­ic table of the ele­ments with emo­jis in its Emo­ji Sci­ence effort.

For the three-day acti­va­tion, the brand asked fans to join it on Snapchat and send in an emo­ji. In exchange, the brand sent back a sci­ence exper­i­ment inspired by the emo­ji key­board, which Syd­ney Lestrud, man­ag­er of glob­al mar­ket­ing at GE, said was “our way of respond­ing with sci­ence in a real­ly fun and hope­ful­ly relat­able way.”

As a result, the brand turned the peri­od­ic table of the ele­ments into the afore­men­tioned emo­ji table of exper­i­ments by replac­ing each ele­ment with an emo­ji.

“That was part of our con­tent we put out there to let peo­ple know…there’s sci­ence in every­thing, even the emo­ji,” Lestrud said.

As a result, the brand saw a lot of con­sumers not only send­ing emo­jis, but talk­ing on oth­er plat­forms, Lestrud said. That includes edu­ca­tors who, she said, “were respond­ing very pos­i­tive­ly to what we were doing – mak­ing sci­ence fun, acces­si­ble and relat­able through a lan­guage our younger audi­ence is using.”

In addi­tion, the brand will expand the cam­paign on the Emo­ji Sci­ence web­site and will “revamp it to be a bit more of a dynam­ic expe­ri­ence for our fans,” Lestrud said.

“There’s a com­mon theme at GE that we think about in all of our sto­ry­telling, which is try­ing to help make sci­ence and inno­va­tion more acces­si­ble,” Lestrud said. “This cam­paign in par­tic­u­lar was sort of lean­ing in to two cul­tur­al zeit­geist phe­nom­e­na that we’ve been see­ing: the growth of Snapchat has been phe­nom­e­nal and see­ing it from the ear­ly days to what it has become, as well as emo­ji.”

In addi­tion, Lestrud said it was real­ly about think­ing about how the brand’s younger tar­get audi­ence is using Snapchat and how GE can “launch onto that plat­form in a way that feels rel­e­vant, inter­est­ing and relat­able.”

That younger demo­graph­ic is an impor­tant one for GE as it includes “the future busi­ness deci­sion mak­ers or investors or tal­ent that might want to work at GE some­day,” she said.

“Emo­jis are a mech­a­nism that are already in our target’s ver­nac­u­lar. It’s how they com­mu­ni­cate with one anoth­er,” Lestrud said. “GE is real­ly lean­ing in to that behav­ior to talk about sci­ence and research…and it was real­ly where we felt like we could break through in terms of talk­ing about what we’re doing. Again, we’re real­ly just using the lan­guage that’s already out there and using the lan­guage that’s already hap­pen­ing between our audi­ence to con­nect with them in a new way…and talk­ing about sci­ence so we’re able to hope­ful­ly inspire and excite them to want to learn more about who GE is.”

Aside from GE’s effort, for the hol­i­days, AT&T worked with BBDO to release Emo­ji Car­ols, in which it record­ed six clas­sic hol­i­day songs and ani­mat­ed them with emo­jis to cre­ate “fun and share­able music videos,” as well as a mobile-first site where users could cre­ate their own so-called Emo­jiMe to star in videos. Per BBDO, there were 123,391 unique vis­i­tors to the site and more than 14,000 videos cre­at­ed.

January 2015: ‘Broad City’

Pri­or to the debut of the sec­ond sea­son of the Com­e­dy Cen­tral series “Broad City”, the net­work teamed up with devel­op­er Snaps to cre­ate a “Broad City” key­board with char­ac­ters and themes from the show.

Said Com­e­dy Cen­tral: “‘The Broad City’ key­board, designed for iOS 8 and Android, has you bb’s cov­ered with emo­jis, stick­ers, and GIFs from all of our fav’ Broad City moments. CHYEAH!”

Com­e­dy Cen­tral want­ed to enhance con­nec­tions between fans and the show and to cre­ate engage­ment in “unex­pect­ed places,” accord­ing to Snaps, adding that it launched the “Broad City” brand­ed emo­ji key­board so fans “could share moments from the show as part of their con­ver­sa­tions.”

In addi­tion, Snaps notes that in eight weeks, the key­board result­ed in more than 55,000 installs with no paid pro­mo­tion. It also result­ed in 1 mil­lion images sent, 3.2 mil­lion key­board uses and was a trend­ing search in the App Store for three days, accord­ing to Snaps.

The app has between 1,000 and 5,000 down­loads on Google Play.

February 2015: Mentos, IKEA, Coca-Cola, NBC Entertainment

Mint brand Men­tos, long known for its catchy jin­gle, released its own so-called Emen­ti­cons, which it calls “a fresh new way to express your­self.”

Each face is itself on a Men­tos can­dy. Options include Awk­ward, Cute Crazed, FOMO and Bad Hap­py.

The brand also released a series of videos to get the word out about its emo­jis and explain each emo­tion.

In addi­tion, Ikea Nether­lands released a video announc­ing Ikea emoti­cons to “[improve] com­mu­ni­ca­tion at home.”

Ikea emoti­con options include fur­ni­ture, pets, and Swedish meat­balls.

“Men and women have always found dif­fi­cul­ty in com­mu­ni­ca­tion. In the home sit­u­a­tion mis­un­der­stand­ings occur most around clut­ter. And that is why Ikea intro­duces Emoti­cons: a com­mu­ni­ca­tion tool to ensure uni­ver­sal love and under­stand­ing in your home,” the video descrip­tion says. “All your hints, desires and ques­tions will be under­stood right away. Give it a try. Start spread­ing hap­pi­ness.”

As of this writ­ing, it has near­ly 600,000 views.

Avail­able for iPhone and Android, the Ikea Emoti­cons app has between 10,000 and 50,000 down­loads on Google Play.

Coca-Cola Puer­to Rico was also report­ed­ly putting smi­ley face emo­jis in web address­es, which redi­rect to the brand’s Emoti­coke web­site.

Also, in cel­e­bra­tion of Sat­ur­day Night Live’s 40th anniver­sary, NBC Enter­tain­ment released its first SNL app, which includes a library of 5,500 clips, as well as a cus­tom SNL emo­ji key­board with 60 “clas­sic and cur­rent” SNL emo­jis, includ­ing Cone­head, Dick in a Box, and Land­shark.

“Why not, right?” said Michael Sco­gin, vice pres­i­dent of late night at NBC Enter­tain­ment Dig­i­tal. “First of all, I think they’re super-fun, every­one loves them and is obvi­ous­ly using them.”

Sco­gin said the brand start­ed with a list of 250 pos­si­ble emo­jis based on icon­ic peo­ple, places and things from the show’s 40 sea­sons. He also notes NBC was inspired by the Sein­feld emo­ji, which was an inde­pen­dent effort, but the net­work then actu­al­ly sought out the Sein­feld emo­ji illus­tra­tor to work on the SNL project.

“It’s pri­mar­i­ly a video-based app, but we want­ed some­thing fun to allow peo­ple to use char­ac­ters from the show over the var­i­ous decades and be able to con­nect in a dif­fer­ent way,” Sco­gin said. “And for the app, it adds some­thing. We want to add new emo­jis. We’ve already had so many requests, like, ‘Where’s the Church Lady?’”

Sco­gin also said that releas­ing new emo­jis from time to time is a good way to keep view­ers return­ing to the app.

“It’s fun, the show and the cre­ative and the char­ac­ters real­ly lend them­selves to it and that’s real­ly why we decid­ed to do it,” Sco­gin said.

In addi­tion, he said he thinks the emo­jis will appeal to view­ers of all ages.

“One thing we know about SNL – and [cre­ator and exec­u­tive pro­duc­er] Lorne Michaels has spo­ken about it is that every­one has a gold­en era of the show, which is usu­al­ly tied to when they were in high school,”

Sco­gin said. “So I do think [the emo­jis work] for an old­er audi­ence, but a younger audi­ence as well.” Sco­gin said NBC want­ed fans to be able to con­nect with the con­tent and share it and cre­ate com­mu­ni­ty.

“We didn’t want to do [emo­jis] just to be doing them. We want­ed to have util­i­ty and to be able to use them in con­ver­sa­tions, like reg­u­lar emo­jis, so we chose char­ac­ters, things, objects, places and words from the show,” he said. “We real­ly put a lot of thought into ‘How would I use this in a text mes­sage con­ver­sa­tion?’ We didn’t want to do it just to do it or because it’s nov­el right now.”

Now that the app is out, Sco­gin said he has received texts with SNL emo­jis in new ways that make sense in the flow of con­ver­sa­tion but that he hadn’t antic­i­pat­ed.

“It’s not just a nov­el idea,” he said. “We can use these icon­ic char­ac­ters and sketch­es and things to add val­ue to the con­ver­sa­tions peo­ple are already hav­ing.”

March 2015: Miracle-Gro, Washington Post, Goldman Sachs, Burger King

In a blog post from 360i, the agency says its client Mir­a­cle-Gro want­ed to cel­e­brate the first day of spring with a first-of-its-kind #Spring­mo­ji gar­den, “designed to get con­sumers excit­ed about plant­i­ng, regard­less of their cur­rent weath­er con­di­tions.”

The brand is ask­ing con­sumers to tweet one of the 12 spring gar­den emo­jis – which include tulips, ros­es, egg­plants, toma­toes, corn and sun­flow­ers – using the hash­tag #spring­mo­ji, which then pop­u­lates a vir­tu­al emo­ji gar­den on the #Spring­mo­ji web­site.

“The effort will enable fans to help Mir­a­cle-Gro cre­ate the world’s biggest crowd­sourced com­mu­ni­ty gar­den built entire­ly from plant and flower emo­jis,” accord­ing to 360i.

Near­ly 1.6 mil­lion #Spring­mo­ji had been plant­ed as of this writ­ing, accord­ing to a run­ning counter on the site.

For its part, the Wash­ing­ton Post cre­at­ed its own emo­jis for each team mas­cot in the NCAA men’s bas­ket­ball tour­na­ment.

“Show your March Mad­ness spir­it with these mas­cot emo­ji. Find your favorite team, save the emo­ji to your phone and text it to your friends, the brand says. “Because nobody uses their words any­more.”

In addi­tion, the Wash­ing­ton Post says it used the NCAA brack­et to pair off the emo­ji into matchups and is ask­ing fans to vote for their favorites.

“So just to be clear: The pair­ings are the same as in the actu­al NCAA tour­na­ment, but again, we only want you to advance teams based off emo­ji,” the Wash­ing­ton Post says. “Not like, skill lev­el and junk like that. Deal with it, Ken­tucky.”

Even invest­ment bank­ing firm Gold­man Sachs trot­ted out emo­jis in a tweet meant to push its own info­graph­ic about Mil­len­ni­als.

And then there’s Burg­er King, which is cel­e­brat­ing the addi­tion of its Chick­en Fries prod­uct as a per­ma­nent menu item with a Chick­en Fries emo­ji key­board, which, the brand says, allows users to “say all of the things with none of the words” with var­i­ous chick­en faces on chick­en fries pack­ag­ing, as well as chick­en-fries-themed stick­ers.

“While Chick­en Fries may be time­less, it is 2015 and who uses words any­more?” the brand said in a release. “Emo­jis rule the roost today, espe­cial­ly for Chick­en Fries fanat­ics.”

Burg­er King’s Chick­en Fries emo­ji key­board is avail­able from iTunes and Google Play and, per Google Play, it had between 100 and 500 down­loads as of this writ­ing.

“Per­son­al­ly, I think that emo­jis are a huge missed oppor­tu­ni­ty for brands. We’ve only seen a few companies…use them so far, but they’re an ide­al method for com­mu­ni­cat­ing a mar­ket­ing mes­sage to young con­sumers,” said Tes­sa Wegert, com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor at inter­ac­tive mar­ket­ing firm Enlight­en. “They’re visu­al, they’re mem­o­rable, and they have a ton of poten­tial to go viral. Brands should be explor­ing ways to make their own, but also work­ing them into their social media posts.”

So how exact­ly do brands do that?

Our next post, Emo­ji Mar­ket­ing: What Brands Need to Know, will exam­ine how the prac­tice of emo­ji mar­ket­ing is evolv­ing, what brands need to con­sid­er and what dan­gers – and poten­tial ROI – emo­jis present.

What do you think of emo­ji mar­ket­ing? Is it a relat­able way for brands to inter­act with con­sumers? Or is it flash in the pan?