Candy Crush gets in on the emoji craze with global Twitter campaign

The campaign follows in the foosteps of Coca-Cola, which last September became the first brand to pay for an emoji on Twitter with a picture of two Coke bottles clinking generating whenever somebody typed #shareacoke.

Using a similar mechanism, users who type #JellyQueen into Twitter will create an emoji featuring the lead character from the new ‘Candy Crush Jelly Saga’ game.

UK-based developer King has partnered with Twitter on a wider multimedia campaign to support the new mobile game’s release. Along with the emoji, the activity features shareable GIFs and Twitter polls.

The GIFs make use of ‘ScratchReels’, the latest interactive GIF format from Twitter. It will let users spread jelly across their screen by dragging their finger across their smartphone screen.

The Twitter-based campaign, which launches on Sunday (24 January) will also automatically send out personalised messages from the game’s lead ‘Jelly Queen’ character whenever a user tweets @CandyCrushJelly or uses the hashtag #JellyQueen.

Dara Nasr, Twitter UK’s managing director, told Marketing Week: “There’s a real crossover with gamers and Twitter, and King has embraced some of our most innovative ideas to make the most of that.

“It’s also a tribute to everyone involved that such an creative campaign born out of the UK will be rolled out across the world.”

Richard Hocking, VP of performance marketing at King says Twitter has allowed the gaming brand to produce a unique way of marketing.

“We wanted to celebrate the launch with a campaign that reflects the fun of the game and highlights the new features and challenges the game brings to our players,” he added.

“Working with Twitter we’ve been able to find a really exciting and creative way to bring the game to life.”

Emojis are becoming more and more popular as ad units among marketers. Last year alone, the likes of animal charity WWF, Pepsi and Ikea each made emojis a focal point of their respective campaigns.