Brief:

• Avocados From Mexico, the marketing arm for the growers and importers of the fruit, partnered with Inmoji to create clickable, branded emoji icons as part of its digital campaign leading up to Super Bowl LII. The brand this year will return as a TV sponsor of the National Football League's championship game for the fourth straight year, per a report from Adweek.
• The Inmoji app lets users send clickable icons that can share information like movie times, concert tickets and a friend's location. Its "Picmoji" feature in the Avocados From Mexico campaign will let smartphone users combine a selfie picture with the avocado emoji.
• Tapping on the Inmojis opens the smartphone camera to pick a filter, snap a selfie and send it to friends through apps including iMessage, Facebook Messenger, Android, Kik and Inmoji. Digital agency Richards/Lerma and development agency Wealthy Mind helped develop the larger "Guacworld" digital campaign for the brand that will launch in the coming days.

Insight:

Avocados From Mexico's campaign with Inmoji is a solid way to reach a younger generation of consumers such as millennial fans of avocado toast. While the Super Bowl is the most-watched event of the year, its ratings may decline from a year earlier if current viewership trends persist to the final game of the season. That means brands need to supplement their TV campaigns with digital efforts like this one to reach a wider audience and drum up excitement ahead of the big game.

Marketers continue to experiment with emoji-based marketing campaigns as consumers of all ages find their appeal and technology evolves to make them easier for app marketers to deploy. Emojis are becoming a key part of the way people communicate on smartphones, and publishers are also getting in on their popularity to engage younger mobile consumers who are familiar with the icons. This comes as mobile technology is growing increasingly sophisticated, as iPhone X users can now create and send animated emojis.

For several years, marketers have begun to embrace emojis in their messaging to connect with young mobile users. News publishers are more likely to use emojis when they post headlines on Facebook, the social network with two billion users, according to a study by Newswhip. Happy-faced emojis were generally the most used. The "laughing with tears" emoji last year appeared in 38 of the top 100 Facebook posts with emoji.

Meanwhile, this year's Super Bowl ratings likely will be helped as the Super Bowl pits the reigning champion New England Patriots against the Philadelphia Eagles, both of which are big-market teams. Nielsen data rank Philadelphia as the 4th-largest designated market area with 2.9 million households, while Boston is 9th-biggest with 2.4 million households — but that figure doesn't include homes from all the surrounding Northeastern states that may support their nearest NFL team. In addition, the Patriots' star quarterback Tom Brady is seeking an unprecedented sixth Super Bowl victory, which may draw a larger audience who hope to witness a history-making game.