In the highly digital and visual world we live in today, it only makes sense that Oxford Dictionary has named the “Face with Tears of Joy” Emoji the word of 2015.

Since we are big proponents of using emojis as a source of communication here at Hype, we were inspired by Luxury Daily’s article; Emoji word of the year reflects importance of visual communication. The article goes on to discuss how marketers have begun tapping into consumers’ responses to visual marketing.

“Oxford’s choice of an emoji as its ‘word’ of the year shows a lot about how we interact in 2015,” said Joe Cecin, president and chief operating officer at Nervve. “When it comes to mobile, this holds even more true as we are granted an entire keyboard of images to display emotions, activities, gestures, locations, and loyalties.

“When texting and posting on social media through mobile devices, we want to communicate as quickly and accurately as possible, and we are finding we can accomplish this by incorporating images into our language,” he said. “As mobile moves toward becoming consumers’ most utilized device, we are also seeing a shift in how we choose to communicate with each other.”

A big push of visual marketing with the use of emojis was seen in this year’s Domino’s pizza delivery commercials where you can tweet the pizza emoji () and your Domino’s order will be on its way! The “tweet to order” advantage that Domino’s has created represents a faster delivery of service to consumers and people love it! These types of visual initiatives paired with digital aspects are taking the marketing industry by storm and we’re seeing it everywhere! Lets connect and see how Hype can help blend visual and digital marketing in your next promotional campaign.

In the meantime, we’ll leave you with the ultimate question- what’s your favorite emoji?!