It’s World Emoji Day 2020 and a happy World Emoji Day to you all, a day on which not only the Emoji Company itself, but the hundreds upon thousands of emoji users the world over celebrate the global popularity of those little icons that have been helping people spread their messages, and finding their way into the modern day lexicon and communication on a daily basis.
But today isn’t just about celebrating the estimated six billion emoticons used everyday as the world finds a universal language in emojis and emoji stickers, but also a day to celebrate the global success of the official Emoji brand – an award-winning lifestyle brand that spans the global licensing scene from retail partnerships, to making new waves in gifts, collectables, and more.
Over the past two weeks, Licensing.biz has been catching up with just some of the leading licensees of the Emoji brand in a series of video snippets talking to the strength of a brand that has continued to keep conversation going, even throughout the world’s ‘Great Pause’ throughout these testing times. And it all culminates with today’s celebration.
Licensing.biz catches up with Marco Huesges, CEO and founder of the Emoji company to talk about the international appeal of the brand.
Firstly Marco, Happy World Emoji Day to you. How are you celebrating World Emoji Day this year? What makes this such an important day in the calendar for you?
World Emoji Day is the day of celebrating the global popularity of icons and how they enable us to spread unmistakably messages and to connect with people from all over the world.
For us as emoji company, creator and owner of the Emoji® brand, it is also the day to celebrate the global success of the brand together with our license and agents whose ambitious and enduring brand support is the fundament for our success story and that motivates us every day to develop new concepts, style guides and emotional consumer product strategies.
We’ve seen from the video series you’ve been running with Licensing.biz that there is a great energy from licensees across the globe for the Emoji brand. What is it about the Emoji brand that unifies licensees, retailers, and consumers in this way?
Licensing is an emotional business. In an overloaded, fast moving consumer product world each company constantly seeks to find the perfect way to connect with their target audience. The Emoji® brand offers the ideal foundation to do exactly that. Our brand truly connects products and people; it builds inevitable relationships and helps to deliver understandable consumer messages.
The video series also highlights the real breadth of partnerships you have in place for Emoji. What’s the key to maintaining such a far-reaching portfolio of partners?
The universal character of the brand, its depth, its popular content variety and diversity allows us to work with partners from any industry sector which leads to our broad portfolio of licensing partners which come from so many diverse areas, such as consumer product, entertainment services or the marketing and advertisement space.
Can you talk us through some of the biggest campaigns/biggest success stories for the Emoji brand this year? What have been some of the break-through categories for you guys?
The year 2020 started with some great initiatives. We launched a very successful direct to retail program with the leading discounter LIDL in multiple countries. All through 2020 we continue to work with Ferrero for KinderJoy in various territories and Burger King will be launching a QSR program with collectable Emoji® plush toys in various countries.
Our brand collaboration program Emoji® by Britto has seen some great new partnerships with Goebel Porzellan GmbH for Europe that includes bags, spectacle cases, umbrellas, coaster and cups and that has recently launched.
In short we will be able to announce some new digital licensing as deals, some loyalty programs in South East Asia as well as some exciting international apparel brand collaborations very soon.
How does this position you for the coming months and years? Looking ahead, you’ve dropped hints of some pretty major partnerships coming, what have you got in store for us in the coming months?
Despite the Covid-19 situation we have partnered with lots of new licensee since the beginning of 2020 and continued existing partnerships. 2021 will see some exciting loyalty programs happening in Europe and the opening of more Emoji® apparel stores in Mainland China will continue.
We entered into various direct to retail partnerships with leading retailers from various countries and entered into some serious licensing deals in the digital space which will increase global brand visibility.
For now, we really want to wish everyone, all our partners, licensees, agents, and friends to stay healthy and hope to see them soon in person!
