Holiday Inn Express is edging out hotel competition on mobile by rolling out its first emoji keyboard to celebrate the brand?s Express Start breakfast bar, featuring food-themed characters such as cinnamon rolls and oatmeal.

The hospitality marketer?s Breakfa-moji keyboard is now available for iOS and Android devices. Breakfast fans across the nation can download the keyboard, which is the first of its type for any hotel company, and communicate with friends via a slew of breakfast-themed characters, ranging from the Holiday Inn Express one-touch pancake machine to sausage and eggs.

?We know that for our Holiday Inn Express target guest, breakfast is one of the most influential factors when choosing where to stay,? said Jennifer Gribble, vice president of Holiday Inn Express brand at Americas, Intercontinental Hotel Group. ?With that in mind, we focused our 2015 Stay Smart campaign on our Express Start breakfast bar.

?We also know that emojis are the fastest growing language in history and are used by 92 percent of the online population, so we couldn?t think of a better way to highlight the variety of breakfast options available to our guests than through a keyboard of 25 unique breakfast emoji characters, including our one-touch pancake machine and dancing bacon strips!?

Serving up emojis
An increasing number of brands are sitting up and taking notice of the sheer popularity of emojis, especially among millennials and younger mobile users. Consumers are no longer satisfied with the basic emoji keyboards provided on their iOS or Android devices; instead, they enjoy turning to their favorite brands for use of themed characters to send in text messages or post on social media.

Holiday Inn Express?s Breakfa-emoji keyboard includes 25 characters, stickers and GIFs for customers to enjoy. Users can share in their love for morning meals by sending each other dancing strips of bacon, steaming bowls of oatmeal and cheerful caricatures of cinnamon rolls.

The brand has been placing a big focus on breakfast this year, bolstered in part by the release of its one-touch pancake machine. Consumers have responded positively to the breakfast gadget, prompting Holiday Inn Express to introduce a celebratory emoji keyboard to boost mobile efforts even higher.

?Our target guest is what we call the Smart Traveler,? Ms. Gribble said. ?They are always on-the-go and generally travel with at least four devices.

?Mobile is incredibly important to them, and therefore it?s important that we connect with them via mobile. With our Breakfa-mojis, we can engage with our target guest in a fun and differentiating way where we know they consume most of their media ? on their mobile devices.?

In September, Holiday Inn Express went mobile in more ways than one by hitting the road with a Pancake Selfie Express vehicle that enabled flapjack enthusiasts to print a selfie on a pancake as part of the hospitality brand?s efforts to advertise its Express Start breakfast (see story).

Holiday Inn Express also referenced the 2015 Emoji Report, which claims that the mobile characters are used by 92 percent of consumers who are active online. A plethora of individuals believe that emojis and GIFs are able to articulate their feelings better than words.

To support the rollout of the keyboard, the hotel marketer teamed up with actor and comedian Rob Riggle to post humorous breakfast combinations and images on social media each day. One of Mr. Riggle?s favorites is a scene featuring animated bacon and eggs that acts as a take on the popular Paleo diet, titled The Paleo-No-You-Didn?t.

Spreading brand awareness
Holiday Inn Express will likely experience enhanced brand awareness and audience outreach with the release of the emoji keyboard. The brand is urging fans to share their own breakfast mash-up ideas by posting them on Twitter or Facebook.

The keyboard may be downloaded from the iTunes App Store or Google Play.

Holiday Inn Express is not the only major company leveraging emojis to boost conversation on social media.

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).

?Even with the latest emoji release, there is a distinct lack of breakfast emojis available to breakfast fanatics,? Ms. Gribble said. ?There are actually online petitions to create pancake and bacon emojis, so we are just giving the people what they want!

?We believe that this keyboard technology will not only help drive awareness for the Holiday Inn Express brand through the personal experience each consumer will have, but also serve as a great tool to encourage social media conversation about the brand and our breakfast technology.?

Final Take
Alex Samuely, staff writer on Mobile Marketer, New York