Emerging Facebook trend: Emote / Avatar Tagging… a marketing opportunity?
Since it first launched Facebook’s photo tagging tool has often been used for in ways other than tagging who is in a photo. Sometimes you’d see tags of people who missed an event, other times objects tagged as people, or people tagged as other people all in the name of a joke, fun or to make a point. But lately a new trend has emerged that’s spreading like wildfire through networks — emote or pictorial tagging.
Emotes, avatars, small pictures or whatever else you like to call them have been a part of the internet for almost as long as the internet has been open to the public. But by taking a mass of these icons and putting them into a single picture users are able to tag people in their network that they identify with each emote either seriously or as a joke. As more users participate the trend has grown exponentially as users pull more and more people in their network in. And while it may seem like a one time tool different icon sets, battles and jokes have kept people engaged with comments flying around.
The big question of course is can a business participate in this? While the simple anwer may seem to be a no as there’s no network, no place for an ad and no shortage of emote images I think there is a play for the right brand with the right team. As with most free imagery on the web there’s a struggle to find a truly good set of images and most of what’s circulating now while funny could be improved upon. I think that for a younger, fun brand there’s a great play in releasing a set of relevant images and personalities with a branded feel. Nothing too over the top in terms of ads, no product images and certainly no swapping personality titles with brand terms but a message at the top, a good color scheme and some well done images could be a huge hit and get very, very viral.
Of course the trend may be dead in days or weeks as users get sick of tagging each other but it’s big today and marks yet another example of something done in the confines of a network but without any revenue attached, any feature development or market research. It’s just pure viral. Had a brand figured this out before someone started using avaliable avatars this would have been one heck of a social marketing story…
