Our apparent obsession with emojis has taken a potentially huge leap forward, thanks to Norwegian Airlines.
The company has created a special URL advertising flights from Copenhagen to Las Vegas, made up almost entirely of emojis.
Replacing traditional characters with the cartoons that youngsters have become so enamoured with, the website consists of pictures of an aeroplane, a slot machine and money, followed by ‘.ws’.
This domain suffix represents Western Samoa, one of a handful of countries that allow the use of non-Latin characters in URLs.
Why has Norwegian Airlines done this? It says it’s trying to discover new ways to reach young people online, and emojis seem to have paid off. After being posted to Instagram, the website attracted 1,600 hits in a single day.
“We know that young people aged 18 to 34 are incredibly complex to market to,” Tina Fristrup, the senior marketing project manager at Norwegian Airlines told AdWeek. “Therefore we decided to take advantage of the target audience’s way of using emojis as well as the linear feed on Instagram to hype the destination.
“This part of the overall campaign … [will] capture the target audience’s curiosity, and communicate the message in an innovative and humorous way.”
However, this isn’t the first we’ve seen of an emoji-only URL. Coca-Cola and an Irish group campaigning for gay marriage have been down the same route before.
SEE ALSO: Selfies and avocados leading the latest emoji charge
Emojis seem to be everywhere right now. Recently hailed as the world’s fastest-growing language, they’ve also received the multi-cultural treatment from Apple, and can be used as hashtags on Instagram.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
