Using letters to get to the right website is so 2000-and-late. You use emoji to communicate your feelings on the daily. Why not just use them to navigate your way around the Interwebs too?
Well, Coca-Cola knows what's up. The company just launched a new campaign in Puerto Rico that features happy, little emoji smack-dab in the middle of web addresses on billboards.
And these domains actually work. Coca-Cola Puerto Rico registered URLs for every emoji that relates to happiness, according to AdFreak.
Look closely, and you'll notice that ".ws" comes at the end of these domains. That's actually the domain suffix for Samoa, but apparently, emoji don't work with .com, .net or .org web address endings, DDB Puerto Rico told AdFreak. The advertising firm also says that the ".ws" could stand for "We smile," which is very Coca-Cola-like indeed.
If you go to one of these emoji domains, you'll be redirected to the EmotiCoke landing page, where you can enter to win an emoji web address of your own. The domains include three emoji in various combinations that feature things like smiley faces, lipstick and an ice cream cone.
"The vast majority of our audience now visits our website via a mobile device. And since emojis have become a kind of second language for Coke's younger consumers, we felt this was a great opportunity to connect on a deeper level with our most important demographic," Coca-Cola Puerto Rico President Alejandro Gómez told AdFreak.
Happiness and world peace have always been at the core of Coca-Cola's messaging, so this campaign that uses joyful iconography to transcend language seems like a happy marriage. Coca-Cola has also been about promoting ways to use technology to make the world a better place these days. Unfortunately, the brand hasn't been as successful with that approach as of late, so here's hoping people get much more of a kick out of these emoji domains. It's working for me.
