The trend for emoji-related intellectual properties becoming available for licensing, which started to gain traction a year or more ago, initially focused on newly created brands. Examples included those with roots as emojis, such as LINE Friends from Japan, Tuzki from China, or The Emoji Company’s Emoji trademark, as well as those inspired by emojis, such as Saban’s Emojiville or the U.K. art brand Animaru, which consists of a set of emoji-like animal icons.
A newer twist is the pairing of existing properties with emojis, either graphically or as a marketing theme. This is true not only when the properties translate visually, but also, and more importantly, when their core brand positioning has a real connection to emotions or self-expression, making them a natural fit with emoji iconography. Examples include:
- Smiley, which was at the forefront of the emoji craze when the Smiley Company back in 1997 began to create a dictionary of more than 1,000 Smiley-based icons to replace text emoticons. The brand’s association with emotions is highlighted in its new Smiley Kids TV show, which centers on emotional intelligence.
- Mr. Men, which encourages fans to relate to one of the many characters, from Mr. Strong to Little Miss Scatterbrain, using a “Which one are you?” positioning.
- Care Bears, in which each of the bears has a name—Tenderheart, Share Bear, Cheer Bear, Grumpy Bear, and so on—and a “tummy symbol” that represents a specific characteristic or emotion.
- Purple Ronnie, an edgy U.K. social expressions brand featuring stick figures with expressive, emoji-like faces depicting the emotions of daily life in a humorous way.
- Barbapapa, a family of shape-shifting, cotton candy-like blobs with different personalities, which originated in France. The characters’ overriding state is happiness, but some tend to show other emotions, such as wariness or annoyance.
The last three—notably Care Bears with an entire wall—were highlighted with property-as-emoji themes in their licensors’ booth designs at Brand Licensing Europe.
Unlike the emoji-themed properties that have launched from scratch, these classics use the emoji imagery as just one element to refresh and contemporize an ongoing franchise. The emoji graphics simply represent a new way to portray the themes that are inherent to the property.
Licensors may tie the characters to emojis in marketing displays or materials to reflect current trends, or integrate emoji themes into product design. And of course, virtually all have been licensed for actual emojis.
In some cases the association may not even be overt; the property itself may simply fit the emoji trend and find a larger following among consumers who like emojis and can see the property’s innate connection to them.
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