The brand hopes to be able to reach young adults in the popular and often-used messaging channel with content that is humorous and conversational. Wall's is the first Unilever brand to launch a keyboard to feature emojis, stickers and GIFs.

?Wall's is aiming to connect with a Gen-Z and Millennial customer base, and this target demographic is extremely active across the mobile messaging landscape,? said Christian Brucculeri, CEO of Snaps. 

?Messaging is the number one way teens communicate with one another on mobile, so it makes perfect strategic sense for Wall's to insert themselves into conversations in a way that adds to the conversation,? he said. 

?A Wall's emoji keyboard allows young adults to share Wall's content that is humorous and conversational on a peer-to-peer level - driving deeper brand affinity.?

The Wall?s keyboard is part of the Goodbye Serious campaign and includes more than 50 emojis, stickers and GIFs featuring the brand?s ice cream flavors and phrases popular on messaging apps, such as LOL and YOLO. The keyboard also incorporates lines from the brand campaign, such as ?Mind the Toes? and "You're Making Me Melt." 

In the European market, Wall?s will be using its keyboard to engage with younger audiences during the back-to-school season. 

In Latin America, Wall's will be encouraging peer-to-peer sharing on messaging applications to make ice cream top-of-mind as the weather warms up for summer. 

The keyboard can be found on the Apple App Store or Google Play.

?Wall's will be the first ice cream brand to launch a branded content campaign in mobile messaging, so this is a great way for the brand to stay innovative and ahead of the curve,? Mr. Brucculeri said. 

Consumer packaged goods brands are increasingly gravitating toward emojis to reach the younger consumers who have embraced the form of mobile shorthand for quick and easy conversations. 

With these consumers spending a significant amount of time on messaging applications, these brand marketers are searching for the most effective ways to reach users despite challenges such as minimal screen space.

As evidence of messaging?s importance to reaching younger consumers, Snaps points to recent research from the Pew Research Center that found 55 percent of teens in the United States use text messages every day to communicate with friends and 27 percent use Instant Messaging.

Because the strategy is focused on symbols and images that are often understood across multiple languages, the emoji strategy enables Wall?s, a brand that is available in a number of countries, to reach consumers in a widely understood language. 

The effort is an example of how Unilever is partnering with start-ups through its Unilever Foundry program. 

With this news, Unilever becomes the latest major brand marketer to embrace emojis. 

Coca-Cola recently became the first brand to use a paid emoji on Twitter in a branded content campaign that combined a custom icon of two soda bottles with the #ShareaCoke hashtag (see story). 

Ford recently launched a branded sticker keyboard through mobile messaging applications while GE developed science lessons incorporating emojis (see story). 

?Branded emojis can play a huge roll in driving one-to one, organic conversations between family and friends in the trusted environment,? Mr. Brucculeri said. ?That interaction is extremely powerful because people interact in messaging much differently than they do across other channels. 

?Also content that a peer shares has been found to be much more influential than a paid placement such as banners, television commercials, or print media,? he said. 

?Additionally, branded emoji keyboards can be leveraged to forge deeper relationships between consumers and brands. We're working on tying some keyboards to CRM platforms for some brands.  In this case, brands will be able to personalize content and reward consumers for specific actions.?