Durex asking public to campaign for a #CondomEmoji ahead of World AIDS Day

World AIDS Day is on the 1st of December, and this year, because – well, emojis are this year’s marketing go-to, aren’t they? – Durex is encouraging social media users to campaign for the creation of a condom emoji ‘to help young people communicate about safe sex’.

Here’s the campaign video, which asks people to use the hashtag #CondomEmoji so ‘the clever people that create the official emojis’ can see ‘just how much everyone wants one’:

As you can see here from Topsy, the hashtag has been used 1,158 times so far. I’ve no idea how many tweets there need to be, nor who exactly is being targeted:

I don’t normally tend to include quotes on here unless they add anything (let’s be honest with ourselves… they very often don’t), but Havas’ global creative officer Mark Whelan made me smile, beginning his quote with:

“With the Oxford dictionary having recently named an emoji as word of the year, it’s clear that the way we communicate has changed.”

I do like this campaign – it’s visual, topical and obviously for A Good Cause – but even more than that, I like how marketers are using other marketing campaigns to validate their own ideas now (because, for as oddly angry as people got about the Oxford dictionary including the crying face emoji as a ‘word’, it is an annual PR stunt intended to get people talking… calm your titties).

Involved agencies: Havas London and Shynola

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