Last week was World Emoji Day. If this blog post were a text message, my next sentence would look a little something like this:

These textable icons have taken on a life of their own in recent months, with Apple releasing multi-culturally diverse emojis in February, plus an announcement that 38 new additions are to be made to the emoji keyboard, including a clown face and an avocado, as a result of their increasing popularity.

They aren’t exactly new; emojis have been around since the dawn of the computer and Apple introduced them to the iPhone keyboard in 2011. However, 2015 has seen them make a marked integration in to everyday language and an incredible 8 in 10 people use them to communicate.  Six billion emojis are sent each day, so it’s no surprise that brands are chomping at the bit to demonstrate their fluency in the universal virtual language.

Brands were all over the social media conversation with #WorldEmojiDay trending by 9am. Some of the most emoji-tastic tweets included efforts by Pepsi
McDonald’s and
Google Play.

Social media platforms are also competing to master language Emoji: Twitter adopted them in recent trending campaigns such as the general election and wedding equality campaign, #LoveWins , while Snapchat has incorporated them in its user interface as a secret code for the status of a sent snap.

Suitably confused yet? Just wait. Our personal favourite emoji conundrum came from the Manchester Evening News, with its cryptic round up of popular food and drink venues in the city, listed – you guessed it – only in emojis. It was like a less sophisticated game of Pictionary at JAM towers, as we puzzled through the list! How many can you name?

A fun fact to leave you with: Emoji Day is celebrated on 17th July because that is the date depicted on the calendar emoji and is the is the date iCal was premiered by Apple at the MacWorld conference in 2002.