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Journal of Interactive Marketing 53 (2021) 96 – 110
www.elsevier.com/locate/intmar

Emoji, Playfulness, and Brand Engagement on Twitter

Lindsay McShane a,⁎& Ethan Pancer b & Maxwell Poole c & Qi Deng d
a
Sprott School of Business, Carleton University, 1125 Colonel By Drive, 918 Dunton Tower, Ottawa, ON K1S 5B6, Canada
b
Sobey School of Business, Saint Mary's University, 923 Robie Street, SB 147, Halifax, NS B3H 3C3, Canada
c
Sobey School of Business, Saint Mary's University, 923 Robie Street, Sobey 150, Halifax, NS B3H 3C3, Canada
d
Rowe School of Business, Dalhousie University, 6100 University Ave, PO Box 15000, Halifax, NS B3H 4R2, Canada

Abstract

Brands, both human and corporate, are increasingly communicating with their consumers using emojis. The current work examines if and how
these pictographs shape online brand engagement on Twitter (i.e., likes & retweets). To do so, we first examine datasets generated by scraping the
tweets of the most popular celebrity brands and most popular corporate brands (Study 1). This study demonstrates that emoji presence increases
engagement with tweets, with more emoji leading to more likes and retweets. Two controlled experiments then explore the role of perceived
playfulness in explaining this effect of emojis on engagement (Studies 2 and 3). We find that the effect of emojis on brand engagement varies
depending on the nature of the interplay between emojis and text, and the subsequent effect of this interplay on perceived playfulness. Theoretical
contributions and social media practitioner implications are also addressed.
© 2020 Direct Marketing Educational Foundation, Inc. dba Marketing EDGE. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Emoji; Brand engagement; Social media; Playfulness; Twitter; Consumers

Emojis, which are pictographs that represent facial expres-
sions, people, places, or things (e.g.,❤), are becoming a
mainstream form of communication. Ninety-two percent of
consumers online use some form of emoji in their communica-
tions (Emogi Research Team, 2015). It is estimated that there are
700 million emojis used every day on Facebook posts alone
(Buchholz, 2019). The Oxford Dictionary went so far as to
declare the “face with tears of joy” emoji as the word of the year
in 2015 (Steinmetz, 2015), and the Telegraph noted emojis as
“Britain's fastest-growing language” (Emogi Research Team,
2015; Telegraph, 2015).
This trend is not limited to consumer interactions, but rather is
becoming a dominant form of expression in brand communica-
tions. Well-known brands such as Sony, Chevron, Coke, Burger
King, and Taco Bell have all embedded emojis into their
marketing communications, with many having developed
customized brand emoji as well. In fact, the number of tweets
⁎ Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: lindsay.mcshane@carleton.ca (L. McShane),
ethan.pancer@smu.ca (E. Pancer), Qi.Deng@dal.ca (Q. Deng).
with both an emoji and a brand name has grown by 49% since
2015 (Agnew, 2017). Despite the prevalence of emojis in
brand communications, empirical research in the domain is
limited, especially with regard to consumer responses. In the
current work, we examine how emoji use in both human and
corporate brand communications influences brand engagement
on social media.
Social media is now a dominant channel of communication
between consumers and brands. These platforms have been
noted as an effective way to strengthen the quality of the brand–
consumer relationships, with many associated benefits such as
increased satisfaction, loyalty, and word-of-mouth intentions
(Clark & Melancon, 2013). However, to date, much of our
understanding of the linguistic content of such communications
remains both isolated from the digital environment, specifically
with regard to social media, and focused on text-based
communications. This includes works highlighting how
different types of words (e.g., explanatory, refusal, assertive:
Kronrod & Danziger, 2013; Moore, 2012; Patrick & Hagtvedt,
2012), word sounds (vowel sounds: Lowrey & Shrum, 2007),

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intmar.2020.06.002
1094-9968© 2020 Direct Marketing Educational Foundation, Inc. dba Marketing EDGE. All rights reserved.
 L. McShane et al. / Journal of Interactive Marketing 53 (2021) 96–110
and typographics (written brand name: Doyle & Bottomley,
2011) influence the consumption experience. In contrast, by
looking at how emoji use influences brand engagement on
social media, we aim to extend the brand linguistic analysis to
the online arena and to broaden the emphasis from basic textual
content to include emojis as an important visual element of the
message.
We develop hypotheses and test them across one field study
and two lab experiments. Study 1 examines consumers'
engagement (captured through likes and shares) with both
leading celebrity brands and leading corporate brands. We find
that consumers like and share tweets more when an emoji is
present, and that this effect strengthens as the volume of emojis
increases. From there, in studies 2 and 3, we run controlled lab
experiments to test how engagement with tweets varies
depending how emojis are used within a message. We focus
specifically on how variations in emoji–text interplay influence
engagement via their effect on perceived playfulness.
We now turn to review the relevant literature on online
brand communications, non-text-based linguistic content, and
playfulness to develop hypotheses regarding how emojis can
influence brand engagement. We then present the results from
our three studies and discuss the theoretical and managerial
implications of this work.
Conceptual Development
Emoji in Brand Communications
As digital communications evolve, both consumers and
brands are discovering new ways of imbuing online interactions
with meaningful non-textual cues such as emojis or vocaliza-
tions (e.g., *chuckle*). Recent work by Luangrath, Peck, and
Barger (2017, p. 1) refers to such cues as textual paralanguage,
defined as the “written manifestations of nonverbal audible,
tactile, and visual elements that supplement or replace written
language.” Luangrath et al. (2017) lay out a framework for
categorizing the array of cues that online consumers use, where
emojis are categorized as a form of visual textual paralanguage
that can impact brand perceptions, the consumer experience, and
the brand–consumer relationship. Building on this work, we aim
to further our understanding of the influence of visual textual
paralanguage, in the form of emojis, on brand engagement in the
social media environment.
To date, there is relatively limited research on emoji use in
digital brand communications. Recent work has focused on
consumer motives for using emojis as a sender of social media
messages. This work highlights that consumers believe that
using emojis helps them to be better understood, to create a
personal connection, to strengthen their message, and to
express emotion (Agnew, 2017; Derks, Fischer, & Bos, 2008;
Emogi Research Team, 2015; Willoughby & Liu, 2018). On
the receiver side, research has examined neural responses to
visual textual paralanguage, demonstrating that our brains
react to a face-based emoticon in the same way as they do to
with face-to-face engagement (Churches, Nicholls, Thiessen,
97
Kohler, & Keage, 2014). Emojis have been found to have the
potential to reduce misinterpretations, convey emotion, and
clarify intention (Kaye, Wall, & Malone, 2016; Riordan,
2017). Yet, Willoughby and Liu (2018) find that messages
with emoji can be perceived as less credible and elicit lower
levels of elaboration than those without emoji, and Miller et
al. (2016) identify various misinterpretations of emoji. With
regard to brands more specifically, the research is limited.
There is, however, speculation that emoji use can help brands
foster perceptions of warmth, build a personal connection with
consumers, and evoke emotions (Agnew, 2017; Kelly &
Watts, 2015; Luangrath et al., 2017).
Evident here is a gap in our understanding of emoji,
particularly with regard to its role in digital brand communi-
cations. Consideration for how these cues influence consumers
is largely absent. The literature that does exist focuses on
general sender–receiver communications rather than brand–
consumer relationships and has yielded mixed results on emoji
effectiveness. The current work takes initial steps to understand
the role of emoji in brand–consumer digital communications.
We argue that emojis can have a meaningful influence on how
consumers engage with a brand's social media content via their
effect on perceptions of playfulness.
Brand–Consumer Relationships, Perceptions of Playfulness
and Engagement
Brands are increasingly relying on social media as a priority
channel for building strong relationships with consumers
(Agnew, 2017). Social media provides a rich network for a
variety of relationship-oriented activities such as building
brand–consumer communities (Scarpi, 2010), sharing brand–
consumer stories (Gensler, Völckner, Liu-Thompkins, &
Wiertz, 2013), and reinforcing relationships (Labrecque,
2014). This emphasis on relationship-building goals via social
media offers a valuable lens for understanding the potential
role of emojis in social media messaging. Specifically, we
draw on extant work establishing playfulness as an important
factor in fostering stable and healthy relationships and explore
the idea of emojis as a useful relationship-building tool to
enhance engagement through its positive effects on perceived
playfulness.
Perceptions of Playfulness and Engagement
The concept of playfulness has received scant attention in
the marketing literature, and yet has been more widely studied
in areas of social psychology and human–computer interaction.
It has been put forth as a potentially central tenet of human
social interactions (Hsieh & Tseng, 2017). It revolves around
the central idea of play, which we refer to as a behavior or
activity pursued with the goal of amusement, enjoyment, and
fun (Bundy, 1993; Van Vleet & Feeney, 2015). Playfulness has
been characterized as “the extent to which the individual is
curious regarding an interaction and finds an interaction
enjoyable and interesting” (Moon & Kim, 2001, p. 219). This
approach, in particular, highlights the centrality of interaction to
the concept of playfulness. Extending from here, perceptions of
98 L. McShane et al. / Journal of Interactive Marketing 53 (2021) 96–110
playfulness reflect rather the perception of whether an
interaction encapsulates the key elements of play.
In the field of social psychology, researchers have explored
the role of playfulness in adulthood and found its importance to
well-being and relationship health (Glynn & Webster, 1992;
Van Vleet & Feeney, 2015). This work consistently shows that
playfulness is important to relationships, creating a sense of
security and stability that fosters relationship strength (Van
Vleet & Feeney, 2015). While this work examines primarily
person–person relationships, applying these ideas to digital
brand–consumer relationships highlights a potentially impor-
tant role of playfulness in branded social media content.
We now turn to work on playfulness in the field of human–
computer interaction. Although less focused on the role of
playfulness in relationships, this work addresses the significant
influence of playfulness on consumers' acceptance of technology.
The emphasis here has been primarily on understanding the
influence of playfulness on individuals' reactions to various
technological platforms such as websites (Ahn, Ryu, & Han,
2007; Lin, Wu, & Tsai, 2005), digital advertising (Gao, Rau, &
Salvendy, 2009), social media (Sledgianowski & Kulviwat,
2009). This work finds positive outcomes associated with
perceptions of playfulness such as greater likelihood of using a
certain social media platforms (Sledgianowski & Kulviwat,
2009), of using a certain retailer website (Ahn et al., 2007), and
of achieving high levels of customer satisfaction (Hsu, Chang, &
Chen, 2012). Perhaps most relevant, Hsieh and Tseng (2017) find
that emoticons in person–person text messaging enhance social
interactions via perceptions of playfulness. Although not
specifically focused on playfulness, related research also shows
that the entertainment value of social media brand posts can
positively influence engagement (Luarn, Lin, & Chiu, 2015).
Taken together, this discussion identifies playfulness as an
important construct in relationship-building that can yield
significant positive outcomes.
Applying these ideas to digital brand–consumer communi-
cations, we expect that perceptions of playfulness in brand–
consumer social media messaging will lead to greater levels of
engagement. The missing piece, then, is how emojis can
enhance these perceptions of playfulness and, in turn, drive
engagement. We now turn to explore how emojis may engender
greater perceptions of playfulness in brand–consumer social
media communications.
Emojis, Playfulness, and Engagement
Emojis are commonly used by consumers as a relational
tool. Extant research finds that consumers perceived emojis as a
means to add personality to their messages, enhance media
richness, reciprocate emotion, and to convey both emotion and
intention (Agnew, 2017; Desta, 2014; Hsieh & Tseng, 2017;
Thompson & Filik, 2016). They are perceived as a way to
enhance digital communications by, in some ways, capturing
the non-verbal communication cues that we rely on in face-to-
face communications (Derks, Bos, & Von Grumbkow, 2007).
One of the ways in which they appear to foster relationship
health is through their positive effects on feelings of enjoyment
(Huang, Yen, & Zhang, 2008; Riordan, 2017), which is central
to the experience of play. As such, extending this logic to
brand–consumer relationships and integrating it with the earlier
discussion on playfulness, we predict that:
H1. The presence of an emoji will increase brand engagement
(likes, shares).
H2. The presence of an emoji will increase perceived
playfulness.
H3. The positive effect of emojis on engagement will be
mediated by perceived playfulness.
Emoji Variations, Perceived Playfulness, and Engagement
In hypothesis 3, we predict that the positive effects of emojis
on brand engagement will be mediated by perceptions of
playfulness. This prediction raises the question then of whether
certain emojis convey greater playfulness than others, and if so,
whether these variations have the predicted corresponding
effect on engagement. Specifically, it opens the door to consider
that consumers may differentially engage with messages that
include emojis depending on the playfulness conveyed by the
emoji(s). The way in which emojis are used in social messaging
can vary greatly, from the more obvious examples of which
emoji is used (there are currently 3,019 different emojis:
Buchholz, 2019), to more nuanced variations in the way in
which the emojis interact with the text. We explore the latter.
Extant research on image–text integration demonstrates that
an individual's reaction to messaging varies depending on the
way in which the image interacts with the text (Cohn, 2013;
Cohn, Roijackers, Schaap, & Engelen, 2018). Cohn et al.'s
emerging body of work on emojis specifically as a form of
multimodal communication examines how an individual's
processing and understanding of emojis vary depending on
factors such as emoji sequencing, emoji location in the
message, and whether the emoji substitutes or reinforces a
word that is either a noun or verb (Cohn et al., 2018; Cohn,
Engelen, & Schilperoord, 2019). His most recent work finds a
lack of grammatical complexity in our use of emoji, and so
highlights that individuals tend to rely on text (vs. emoji) to
convey message meaning in this form of multimodal commu-
nications (Cohn et al., 2019).
Although this extant work focuses primarily on outcomes
such as processing times and message comprehension, we
believe these variations in emoji–text combinations influence
playfulness perceptions and, subsequently, engagement. Spe-
cifically, we draw on the idea that emojis play a supporting role
in the message whereas written text provides meaning.
Extending these ideas to brand–consumer social media
communications, we anticipate that emojis that interplay with
text will be perceived as more playful, and so elicit greater
engagement than those that do not interplay with text. Here,
interplay refers to emojis and text co-existing together to
convey certain specific meaning. The logic here is that, in such
cases of emoji–text interplay, emojis provide visual intrigue for
the message and the text serves to satisfy the intrigue by
providing concrete meaning. In a sense, we expect that such
emoji–text interplay temporarily arouses one's curiosity about
 L. McShane et al. / Journal of Interactive Marketing 53 (2021) 96–110
message meaning, a key element of playful interactions (Moon
& Kim, 2001). Specifically, we predict:
H4a. Emoji–text interplay will lead to greater brand engage-
ment than when no such interplay is present.
H4b. The effect of H4a will be mediated by perceived
playfulness.
The previous hypothesis speaks to situations in which
emojis are shown with no corresponding textual support.
However, pushing the idea of emoji–text interplay further raises
questions about the nature and degree of emoji–text interplay
and how this might influence engagement via playfulness. One
previously noted variation in emoji–text interplay is whether
the emoji is placed before or after the text (Cohn et al., 2018;
Cohn et al., 2019). Applying the same logic as above, we
expect this variation in emoji–text interplay (i.e., the location of
the emoji relative to the text) to significantly influence
perceptions of playfulness, and in turn, brand engagement.
Consider the earlier argument that a key element of emoji–text
interplay is that emojis provide visual intrigue and text is used
to provide meaning. We thus expect that emojis located prior to
the corresponding text will provide arouse greater curiosity and
intrigue because the text has not yet provided the specific
meaning. In cases where emojis follow text, the emojis may be
considered somewhat redundant because the text has already
established meaning.
We do, however, expect this effect to be moderated by the
extent to which the emojis are directly related to the text. The
logic here is that it is only in cases where the emojis are directly
related to the text that emojis can serve as an intriguing prelude
for the message meaning. As such, we expect the effects of
placing the emoji before to the text to be attenuated in cases
where emojis are less directly related to the textual meaning.
Specifically, we predict:
H5a. Emojis located before the text will lead to greater
engagement than those that are placed after the text.
H5b. The positive effects of placing emojis prior to the text will
be moderated by the extent to which the emojis are directly
related to the text, where low emoji relatedness will attenuate
the effects.
H5c. The effect of H5a and H5b will be mediated by perceived
playfulness.
Overview of the Studies
We now examine these predictions across three studies,
focusing on message content from Twitter. Twitter is one of the
most dominant social media platforms with 330 million active
monthly users and is used by consumers and brands alike.
According to Statista (2019), Twitter users' average session
duration is 3.34 minutes. Brandwatch's 2017 Emoji Report
states that there are on average 250 million emojis used on
Twitter per month (Agnew, 2017).
In Study 1, we focused on how emojis influence brand
engagement with the tweets of leading brands. To do so, we
99
scraped the Twitter feeds of top celebrity brands and corporate
brands and then compared messages with emojis to those
without emojis to understand the relationship between emojis
on engagement. In studies 2 and 3, however, we then ran
controlled lab experiments to examine how variations in the use
of emojis within tweets influenced engagement via the
proposed playfulness mechanism.
Study 1
The aim of this study was to examine the relationship
between emojis and engagement using the actual Twitter feeds
of leading celebrity and corporate brands. To do so, we
conducted a field study where we created a unique dataset
based on the scraped tweets of these brands. We included both
celebrity and corporate brands in a single study to help mitigate
potential motive variances between celebrities and companies.
Celebrity brands were attractive in that they have high levels of
both emoji use and interaction. Celebrities are active users of
emoji in their social media content, to the point where certain
celebrities have customized their own emoji (e.g., Kim
Kardashian and Kimojis). Top celebrities also have high levels
of active followers (e.g., Katy Perry has the most Twitter
followers with 93 M). Similarly, corporate brands are increas-
ingly engaging with consumers via social media, striving to
build relationships with consumers (Agnew, 2017). We drew
specifically on some of the most followed corporate brands to
supply a high volume of tweets and interactions. Combining
celebrity and corporate brands also helped to ensure that our
sample had a high degree of emoji use and brand–consumer
interaction.
TwitterCounter, an analytics service that provides descrip-
tive statistics on Twitter, tracks the most followed accounts on
the platform. We used this ranking to determine the top 15
celebrity brand accounts, ranked by number of followers (see
Table 1 for account descriptives): Katy Perry, Justin Bieber,
Taylor Swift, Barack Obama, Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Ellen
DeGeneres, Justin Timberlake, Kim Kardashian West, Britney
Spears, Cristiano Ronaldo, Selena Gomez, Jimmy Fallon,
Ariana Grande, and Shakira. We should note that celebrity
accounts tend to be the most followed on Twitter (including
humans & organizations). Only three accounts not run by an
individual would have made the Top 15 (YouTube, Twitter,
and CNN Breaking News).
We then, again using TwitterCounter to sort, identified the
most followed corporate brands and added another 13 accounts
to the field study (refer again to Table 1 for account
descriptives): YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, ESPN, NBA,
Real Madrid FC, NFL, FC Barcelona, Vine, Google, Apple
Music, H&M, and Disney Pixar. These organizations operate in
different domains (i.e., social media, sports, entertainment, and
clothing), which help mitigate concerns that effects are driven
by a particular industry.
Examining accounts with the greatest number of followers
had several benefits. First, mining multiple accounts allowed us
to create a corpus of sufficient size for analysis, this was critical
considering that emoji effects could be smaller based on the
100 L. McShane et al. / Journal of Interactive Marketing 53 (2021) 96–110

Table 1
Emoji presence frequencies by Twitter account.
Account Followers Tweets # Tweets with emoji # Tweets without emoji Total
AppleMusic 8,681,807 26,075 604 (46.5%) 696 (46.5%) 1,300
ArianaGrande 42,315,211 39,481 397 (23.5%) 1,293 (76.5%) 1,690
BarackObama 78,089,364 15,372 11 (0.7%) 1,574 (99.3%) 1,585
britneyspears 48,211,881 4,901 487 (30.7%) 1,101 (69.3%) 1,588
Cristiano 47,523,858 2,690 163 (10.6%) 1,372 (89.4%) 1,535
DisneyPixar 7,566,075 4,868 160 (11.0%) 1,294 (89.0%) 1,454
espn 29,818,100 81,137 34 (2.3%) 1,430 (97.7%) 1,464
FCBarcelona 18,753,102 80,603 692 (39.8%) 1,045 (60.2%) 1,737
google 16,044,410 20,785 8 (7.1%) 105 (92.9%) 113
hm 8,156,745 10,089 60 (3.6%) 1,602 (96.4%) 1,662
instagram 40,347,878 9,601 473 (32.3%) 992 (67.7%) 1,465
jimmyfallon 43,092,544 9,290 18 (1.0%) 1,725 (99.0%) 1,743
jtimberlake 56,821,914 3,488 256 (19.9%) 1,028 (80.1%) 1,284
justinbieber 88,910,140 30,570 26 (2.4%) 1,066 (97.6%) 1,092
katyperry 93,532,264 7,397 695 (44.9%) 852 (55.1%) 1,547
KimKardashian 48,526,572 22,470 117 (7.3%) 1,481 (92.7%) 1,598
ladygaga 64,103,475 7,763 382 (30.8%) 860 (69.2%) 1,242
NBA 23,428,527 143,730 81 (12.4%) 570 (87.6%) 651
NFL 20,351,195 127,054 378 (30.2%) 872 (69.8%) 1,250
realmadrid 20,900,202 53,527 1,433 (81.5%) 325 (18.5%) 1,758
rihanna 66,717,251 9,885 74 (4.6%) 1,550 (95.4%) 1,624
selenagomez 45,972,659 4,201 390 (24.7%) 1,191 (75.3%) 1,581
shakira 40,644,258 4,230 57 (4.6%) 1,181 (95.4%) 1,238
taylorswift13 81,272,395 4,146 64 (6.1%) 978 (93.9%) 1,042
TheEllenShow 62,744,308 12,963 21 (1.2%) 1,736 (98.8%) 1,757
twitter 57,211,607 3,285 217 (19.1%) 918 (80.9%) 1,135
vine 16,902,141 3,521 949 (76.2%) 297 (23.8%) 1,246
YouTube 64,418,145 17,797 214 (12.7%) 1,465 (87.3%) 1,679
Total 1,241,058,028 760,919 8,461 (21.7%) 30,599 (78.3%) 39,060
Source: www.twittercounter.com/pages/100

frequency of use. Second, by looking at celebrity and corporate
brands in heterogeneous domains (i.e., musicians, talk show
hosts, pop culture icons, a sports star, a sitting U.S. president,
clothing companies, social media, etc.), we could mitigate
concerns that these effects are driven by a particular type of
celebrity or industry involvement and balance our sampling.
Third, popular accounts have more followers, which provides
sufficient variance in engagement to more easily distinguish
liking and sharing behaviors of individual tweets. It is important
to note that, in this study, we explicitly excluded replies from the
dataset. Replies are not visible to followers unless users follow
both parties, and so including replies artificially depresses
audience opportunities to engage with content.
Having established our sample, we then scraped the most
recent 1,800 statuses (less retweets) from each of the 15
celebrity accounts' timelines (22,186 total tweets) as of August
15, 2016—this was the maximum allowable limit for
downloading tweets using the public Twitter application
program interface (API) at the time. Updates to our search
practices after collecting the celebrity data allowed us to
scrape up to 3,200 (less retweets) of the most recent tweets
from each of the 13 corporate accounts (26,955 total tweets) as
of September 23, 2016 using Facepager. This created a total
corpus of 41,141 tweets.
A power analysis revealed that to detect small-sized effects
(Cohen's f = 0.02) on likes and retweets, given 32 predictors
(2 emoji variables and 30 control variables), would only
require 1,842 tweets. Tweets were downloaded using
Facepager, a tool developed for fetching publicly available
data from Facebook, Twitter, and other APIs. All data were
scraped within a three-hour window on August 15, 2016.
Facepager interfaces directly with the public Twitter API,
which allowed us to extract the full tweet, like and retweet
count, as well as the date and time of post.
Measures
Main Variables
Emoji Presence and Emoji Counts. We coded the tweets on
several dimensions. First and foremost was our key variable
interest—the presence or absence of an emoji in a tweet. To
code for this variable, we adopted the Unicode Full Emoji Data
v3.0 as our list for coding emoji. Unicode, which is the
computing industry consortium responsible for the encoding
and handling of computer text characters, maintains a repertoire
of universal emoji available for use across platforms and
devices. As of 2016, there were 1,791 unique emoji in the
Unicode dataset. We should note here that new emojis can be
added every year, with new emoji character candidates
reviewed and approved by the Unicode Technical Committee.
 L. McShane et al. / Journal of Interactive Marketing 53 (2021) 96–110
Using the Kutools plugin for Excel, we were able to strip out
all characters (e.g., alphanumeric, punctuation) from each tweet
that were not emoji as classified by the Unicode emoji dataset.
We verified that the remaining characters were only emoji by
converting them to their U + hex roots and running a
VLOOKUP function in Excel based on the Full Emoji Dataset
from Unicode. Each tweet with an emoji was also visually
confirmed by two members of the research team. Tweets were
then coded for whether they contained an emoji (emoji
presence), as well as how many emoji characters they contained
(emoji count).
Brand Engagement (Likes and Retweets). Brand engagement
was measured using the like and retweet count of each tweet,
both of which were downloaded with Facepager. These
variables are frequently used as important indicators of brand
engagement on social media, and generally positive responses
to brand messaging (Murdough, 2009; Vargo, 2016).
Control Variables. There are many factors that could
influence the social media audience to like and share tweets,
so we controlled for a series of other variables in our
hierarchical regression analysis.
Text Positivity. Prior work suggests that positive content is
shared more based on its ability to inspire arousing emotions
(Berger & Milkman, 2012). It was thus important to control for
the valence of the message. We analyzed the tweet using
automated sentiment analysis from the Readability Score. The
analysis uses language processing, text analytics, and compu-
tational linguistics to detect the valence associated with specific
words, entities, and concepts. It then aggregates these valences
to form a global polarity score for the entire text. Scores ranged
from either negative, moderately negative, slightly negative,
neutral, slightly positive, moderately positive, and positive. All
tweets were able to be categorized into a single polarity.
Text Readability. We also control for writing complexity. The
ease of reading text can also impact how people feel about it,
especially when people are processing information quickly as
in a social media context (Oppenheimer, 2006). The preference
for reading simpler texts, commonly referred to as linguistic
fluency, has been demonstrated to lead to more favorable
evaluations of messages (Alter & Oppenheimer, 2009). We also
analyzed the text of the tweet for readability using both the
SMOG index (McLaughlin, 1969) and the Dale-Chall read-
ability formula (Chall & Dale, 1995; Dale & Chall, 1948). The
SMOG index estimates the years of education needed to
understand a piece of writing based on the number of
polysyllabic words present in the text. The Dale-Chall formula
also assesses comprehension difficulty but is based on word
familiarity instead of word length. SMOG and Dale-Chall are
both commonly used in the linguistics literature to measure
one's ability to understand contents. We include both in our
analysis to control for variance associated with word familiarity
and word length as proxies for reading difficulty.
101
Twitter Content Dummies. We added several controls for the
presence of additional features of the Twitter message,
including tags and external links. The mere presence of Twitter
hashtags, website links, and user mentions have been
demonstrated to influence tweet liking and sharing (Pancer &
Poole, 2016). We coded each tweet for the presence of tags and
links, including hashtags, user mentions, website links,
embedded media (i.e., image or video), and retweets using
customized formulas in Excel. Based on Twitter protocol,
hashtags were coded and counted for each time the (#) symbol
began an alphanumeric string in the tweet. User mentions were
similarly coded based on each time the (@) symbol started an
alphanumeric string in the tweet. Facepager extracted whether
an external website link was included in the post. Using this
information, we were able to compute if the tweet featured
embedded media.
Account Dummies. Because the tweets originated from 1 of
28 different accounts, we added dummy controls for the
account the tweet was sent from. This helps ensure that our
results are not driven by the tastes of particular celebrities
whose messages are more inclined to be liked and shared as
well as the unique audience profiles for each celebrity brands
(i.e., Justin Bieber vs. Barack Obama). These dummies also
inherently capture the effects of author gender and their domain
of cultural influence.
Word and Character Counts. We also control for the tweet's
length in both words and characters. Even though Twitter
already constrains posts to 140 characters or less, prior research
has found that longer articles are more likely to be shared as
they contain more information and enough detail to elicit
arousal (Berger & Milkman, 2012). Word counts and character
counts per tweet were calculated using Excel formulae.
Timing Controls. To control for the possibility that tweets
made on certain days and times of the year could influence the
attention they receive, we added five timing controls based on
when the post went online. Prior research has identified the
optimal timing for tweet attention to be on the weekend
(Cooper, 2014). We added controls for the day of the week, day
of the year, the month, weekend or weekday, and the year of the
tweet.
Results and Discussion
Preliminary Analysis
A preliminary look at our dataset revealed that a very small
number of tweets generated a disproportionately high number
of likes and retweets, which positively skewed our data. To
account for the positive skewness, our first step was to calculate
the natural logarithm of both likes and retweets for use as
dependent variables in our analysis. To explain the dependent
variables (the natural logarithm of the number of likes or
retweets), we use an Ordinary Least Square method to estimate
the following equation:
102 L. McShane et al. / Journal of Interactive Marketing 53 (2021) 96–110

ln(dependent variable) = b1 + [b2 × Emoji Presence] +
[b3 × Text Characteristics] + [b4 × Tweet Characteristics] +
[b5 × Celebrity Account Dummies] + [b6 × Timing] + cX.
As we are estimating two related dependent variables, we
could use a seemingly unrelated regression setting. However,
since we are explaining both dependent variables using the
same independent variables, using this would not improve
efficiency beyond OLS.
Next, we examined the frequency with which emoji was
used for each celebrity account. Based on our sample, 21.8% of
all tweets contained emoji. There were significant differences
between the various accounts with regard to their emoji use
(Table 1). An ANOVA revealed a main effect of account on
Emoji Presence (F(1, 26,831) = 242.88, p < .05). Several
accounts used emoji in over 25% of their messages (Britney
Spears, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, AppleMusic, FCBarcelona,
NFL, realmadrid) while others used them less than 2% of the
time (Barack Obama, Jimmy Fallon, Justin Bieber, Ellen
DeGeneres, espn). We kept all 28 accounts for inclusion in our
regression analysis.
Main Analyses
The Effect of Emoji Presence and Emoji Count on Likes. We
then conducted our main analyses—hierarchical regression
analyses (Aiken, West, & Reno, 1991) to examine the effect of
emoji on likes and retweets (H1). We focused first on the
influence of emoji presence on likes. The results indicate that
the mere presence of having an emoji in a tweet significantly
increased likes (Table 2, Model 1). This was consistent with
H1. Our effect persists even when controlling for a battery of
other content characteristics, including both text valence and
complexity (see Table 2, Model 2 for a full list). This is
important to our analysis in that controlling for text valence,
despite finding that positive tweets tend to be liked more,
enables us to conclude that our findings are not simply driven
by positive wording. In the case of text complexity, where we
expectedly find that more complex tweets are liked less, we can
similarly see that our effects cannot be solely explained by
message readability metrics.
The emoji result also persists when accounting for other
features inherent in Twitter posts. This demonstrates that liking
is not simply driven by hashtags, user mentions, images, or
videos—all features that are designed to increase the attention
paid to and the exposure received by a message. Emoji
influences liking in a way that is not captured by these tagging
tools. The results are also robust to controlling for the brand
itself, indicating that our findings are not an artifact of
messages from a specific brand being liked more than another.
Similar to Berger and Milkman's (2012) viral content analysis,
the inclusion of topic dummy variables allowed us to
conservatively test our hypothesis – the observed relationship

Table 2
The “liking” and “retweeting” of tweets as a function of emoji presence and other content characteristics.
Emoji Presence - Including Controls - Including Emoji Count - Emoji Presence - Including Controls - Including Emoji Count -
ln(Likes) (1) ln(Likes) (2) ln(Likes) (3) ln(Retweets) (4) ln(Retweets) (5) ln(Retweets) (6)
Emoji present 0.067 ⁎⁎⁎ 0.111 ⁎⁎⁎ 0.049 ⁎⁎⁎ 0.023 0.115 ⁎⁎⁎ 0.040 ⁎⁎
(0.000) (0.000) (0.001) (0.277) (0.000) (0.025)
Emoji count 0.037 ⁎⁎⁎ 0.044 ⁎⁎⁎
(0.000) (0.000)

Text positivity 0.015 ⁎⁎⁎ 0.015 ⁎⁎⁎ 0.007 ⁎ 0.008 ⁎

SMOG index − 0.032 ⁎⁎⁎ − 0.031 ⁎⁎⁎ − 0.034 ⁎⁎⁎ − 0.033 ⁎⁎⁎
Dale-Chall score − 0.010 ⁎⁎⁎ − 0.010 ⁎⁎⁎ − 0.008 ⁎⁎⁎ − 0.008 ⁎⁎⁎
Links − 0.244 ⁎⁎⁎ − 0.236 ⁎⁎⁎ − 0.291 ⁎⁎⁎ − 0.282 ⁎⁎⁎
Hashtags 0.035 ⁎⁎⁎ 0.036 ⁎⁎⁎ 0.095 ⁎⁎⁎ 0.097 ⁎⁎⁎
User mentions − 0.015 ⁎ − 0.014 ⁎ − 0.013 − 0.013
Character count − 0.001 ⁎⁎⁎ − 0.002 ⁎⁎⁎ − 0.001 ⁎⁎⁎ − 0.002 ⁎⁎⁎
Word count 0.016 ⁎⁎⁎ 0.019 ⁎⁎⁎ 0.014 ⁎⁎⁎ 0.017 ⁎⁎⁎
Day of year 0.001 ⁎⁎⁎ 0.001 ⁎⁎⁎ 0.001 0.001
Day of week − 0.017 ⁎⁎⁎ − 0.017 ⁎⁎⁎ − 0.015 ⁎⁎⁎ − 0.015 ⁎⁎⁎
Weekend of year 0.082 ⁎⁎⁎ 0.082 ⁎⁎⁎ 0.075 ⁎⁎⁎ 0.075 ⁎⁎⁎
Month of year − 0.037 ⁎⁎⁎ − 0.037 ⁎⁎⁎ − 0.044 ⁎⁎⁎ − 0.043 ⁎⁎⁎
Year 0.495 ⁎⁎⁎ 0.496 ⁎⁎⁎ 0.107 ⁎⁎⁎ 0.108 ⁎⁎⁎
Account X X X X
dummies (28)

N 39,059 38,970 38,970 39,059 38,970 38,970

r2 0.000 0.777 0.778 0.000 0.741 0.741
p values in parentheses.
⁎ p < .10.
⁎⁎ p < .05.
⁎⁎⁎ p < .01.
 L. McShane et al. / Journal of Interactive Marketing 53 (2021) 96–110
between emoji and likes holds not only across topics but within
them. Lastly, our results hold when accounting other robustness
checks, including word and character counts and release timing
variables.
Table 2, Model 3 is the same as Model 2, but it adds the
emoji count variable to the regression analysis. We find that the
more emoji in a tweet, the more popular it was. The inclusion of
the emoji count variable also decreased the effect of the emoji
presence variable.
The Effect of Emoji Presence and Emoji Count on Retweets.
We performed the same hierarchical regression analyses on
retweets as another form of engagement (Table 2; Models 4–6).
Retweets provide more exposure than likes because they share
another user's story with their own followers, leading to a
higher number of observations for retweeted content. Consis-
tent with the models on liking, the presence of emoji increased
the sharing of a tweet (consistent with H1) (Table 2, Model 5).
Notably, this effect was significant only when controls were
included in the analysis. When we added the emoji count
variable to the analysis, the presence effect disappeared
(Table 2, Model 6). This is not surprising considering that the
presence variable is fundamentally rolled into the emoji count,
which manages to explain more variance. The more emoji
contained in a tweet, the more it was shared and retweeted.
The results of this first study provide robust support for the
idea that emoji is positively related to brand engagement, and
that more emoji can further enhance engagement. The study, in
using real tweets, offers the advantage of examining the actual
relationship between emoji use and brand engagement and
offers clear, immediate, and applicable implications for
managers. However, because it focuses on examining actual
tweets, we are both limited to only correlational data and
constrained in our ability to examine some of the nuanced
effects of emoji on engagement, particularly with regard to
perceptions of playfulness. To address this gap, we now turn to
conduct two lab studies to better examine the proposed
underlying mechanism. To do so, we focus on tweets that
include emojis and look at variations of emoji use within those
messages.
Study 2
This study aims to take initial steps to examine the proposed
role of playfulness in driving the effect of emojis on
engagement, focusing specifically on the basic presence of
emoji-text interplay (H2, H3, H4a, H4b). In doing so, it aims to
take a more nuanced look at how the way in which emojis are
used within message impact engagement.
Method
One hundred and four (54% male) undergraduate students
participated in a three-level (Emoji-Text Interplay, No Emoji-
Text Interplay, Text Only) between-subjects experiment. All
participants were shown a tweet purported to be sent by The
Roasted Bean Coffeehouse leading up to the December holiday
103
season. In actual fact, this was a fictional tweet sent by a
fictional coffeehouse for whom we created a Twitter account.
In the Emoji–Text Interplay condition, participants read the
following “Friends + coffee + chocolate + Christmas = tears of
joy. Come join us at the #RoastedBean for all of your favorite
things. #CoffeeShopHappiness.” These participants also saw
five emojis (friends, coffee, chocolate, Christmas, and tears of
joy), each one corresponding to one of the first five words in
the written text, above the written text (see Fig. 1). The basic
premise here is that the emojis serve as intriguing visual prelude
of which the specific meaning is then clarified by the text. The
No Emoji–Text Interplay condition was identical except that it
replaced the first five words (friends, coffee, chocolate,
Christmas, and tears of joy) with the corresponding emojis. In
this case, there is no textual meaning supporting the emojis.
The control condition included the same text, but no emojis
were shown to the participants in the control condition (see
Fig. 1). Here, the Emoji–Text Interplay condition is expected to
elicit greater levels of perceived playfulness than when the
emojis simply substitute for the words in the No Emoji–Text
Interplay conditions.
Following exposure to the tweet, all participants responded
to a series of related questions. These items were designed to
capture perceived playfulness and intentions to engage. We
also included several downstream measures including happi-
ness, perceptions of brand warmth, perceptions of brand
competence, and perceptions of brand playfulness. Although
the primary downstream variable of interest is engagement
across studies, we were also interested in measuring feelings of
happiness and certain brand-level perceptions. These variables
have been previously associated with emoji use (Agnew, 2017;
Kelly & Watts, 2015; Luangrath et al., 2017), yet not explicitly
tested and so we have included them to examine if they, like
engagement, are influenced by emoji use via perceptions of
playfulness.
Measures
All items were measured using 7-point scales. To capture
playfulness, participants were asked to indicate the extent to
which they found the post playful (not at all/very much so), as
well as to indicate the extent to which they agreed or disagreed
with the following statements: “I enjoyed reading this tweet”;
“It was fun to read this tweet”; “I found this tweet entertaining”
(α = 0.91). To capture intentions to engage, participants were
asked how likely they would be to engage with and like the
tweet (r = 0.78). We also asked participants the extent to which
the tweet made them feel happy. Finally, we also measured
perceptions of brand warmth, competence, and playfulness.
Perceptions of brand warmth were captured using a 3-item
scale asking participants the extent to which they perceived the
Roasted Bean Coffeehouse as likeable, approachable, and
warm (α = 0.90). Perceptions of brand competence were
captured by asking participants the extent to which they
perceived the Roasted Bean Coffeehouse as competent, expert,
professional, and capable (α = 0.89). Perceptions of brand
playfulness were captured by asking participants the extent to
104 L. McShane et al. / Journal of Interactive Marketing 53 (2021) 96–110
Condition
Emoji-Text Interplay
No Emoji-Text Interplay
Text Only
Fig. 1. Stimuli for Study 2.
which they perceived the coffeehouse as playful, clever, smart,
fun, and creative (α = 0.94)
Results and Discussion
Main Analyses
ANOVAs on each dependent variable (playfulness, engage-
ment, happiness, brand warmth, brand competence, brand
playfulness) showed significant effects of the experimental
manipulation (F(2,101) = 8.70, 3.35, 8.56, 5.41, 4.89, 9.23,
ps < 0.05, ƞ p2 = 0.13, 0.04, 0.15, 0.10, 0.09, 0.14).
First, we engaged in a comparison of the Emoji–Text
Interplay condition to the No Emoji–Text Interplay condition.
Least significant difference post-hoc analyses showed that the
Emoji–Text Interplay condition led to significantly greater
perceptions of playfulness, greater intentions to engage, greater
happiness, and more positive brand perceptions than the No
Emoji–Text Interplay condition (Playfulness: Ms = 5.41 vs.
4.55, p < .01, ƞp2 = 0.07; Intentions to Engage: Ms = 3.79 vs.
3.01, p < .05, ƞp2 = 0.02; Happiness: Ms = 5.59 vs. 4.35,
p < .001, ƞp2 = 0.11; Brand Playfulness: Ms = 5.46 vs. 4.35,
p < .001, ƞp2 = 0.12; Brand Warmth: Ms = 5.28 vs. 4.25,
p < .001, ƞp2 = 0.11; Brand Competence: Ms = 5.36 vs. 4.71,
Stimuli
p < .05, ƞp2 = 0.07). (See Table 3 for summary representation
of means across conditions.)
Next, we compared the Emoji–Text Interplay condition to
the Text-Only condition. Consistent with predictions, we found
a similar pattern of results. Least significant difference post-hoc
analyses showed that the Emoji–Text Interplay condition led to
greater perceived playfulness, greater intentions to engage,
greater happiness, and more positive brand perceptions than
Text Only messages (Playfulness: Ms = 5.41 vs. 4.01, p < .01,
ƞp2 = 0.03; Intentions to Engage: Ms = 3.79 vs. 2.43, p < .01,
ƞp2 = 0.01; Happiness: Ms = 5.59 vs. 4.00, p < .001, ƞp2 =
0.01; Brand Playfulness: Ms = 5.46 vs. 4.17, p < .01, ƞp2 =
0.01; Brand Warmth: Ms = 5.58 vs. 4.62, p < .001, ƞp2 =
0.004; Brand Competence: Ms = 4.37 vs. 3.63, p < .01, ƞp2 =
0.01). Finally, we compared the No Emoji–Text Interplay to the
Text-Only conditions, and there were no significant differences
in participant responses.
Mediation Analysis
We conducted a mediation analysis to test the role of emoji
on engagement via perceived playfulness. Specifically, we
simultaneously tested: (i) whether the path from emoji (both
Emoji–Text Interplay and No Emoji–Text Interplay) versus no
 L. McShane et al. / Journal of Interactive Marketing 53 (2021) 96–110
Table 3
Study 2 means.
Conditions Perceived Intentions to
playfulness engage
Emoji-text interplay 5.41ab 3.79ab
No emoji-text 4.55a 3.01a
Interplay
Text only 4.01b 2.43b
Different subscripts indicate significant differences in means across conditions with regard to that particular variable at p < .05. For instance, for the perceived
playfulness variable, the subscript ‘a’ indicates a significant difference between the Emoji-Text Interplay condition and the No Emoji-Text Interplay condition and the
subscript ‘b’ indicates a significant difference between the Emoji-Text Interplay condition and the Text Only condition. The lack of a common subscript across No
Emoji-Text Interplay and Text Only conditions indicates that there is no significant difference.
emoji (Text Only) to brand engagement was mediated by
perceived playfulness, and (ii) whether the effect of Emoji–
Text Interplay (vs. No Emoji–Text Interplay and Text Only) on
engagement is mediated by playfulness. To do so, we used
Process v3, Model 4 with the three conditions captured using a
multicategorical predictor variable. Consistent with Hayes
(2017), we set participants in the Emoji–Text Interplay
condition to 1 and others to 0 for our first dummy variable
(D1). For our second dummy variable (D2) we had participants
in the No Emoji–Text Interplay condition set to 1 and others to
0, thus making the Text-Only condition the reference group.
We first examined the confidence intervals around the
indirect path from D1 (Emoji–Text Interplay vs. No Emoji–
Text Interplay and Text-Only) to engagement via playfulness
(using a bootstrap analysis with 5,000 resamples) (Preacher &
Hayes, 2008; Zhao, Lynch, & Chen, 2010). The confidence
interval did not span zero (CI95%: 0.332–1.666), consistent
with mediation. The regression coefficient of the direct effect of
the independent variable on engagement (i.e., the unmediated
effect of the independent variable) was not significant (b =
− 0.059, t(98) = − 0.139, p > .80), indicating indirect-only
mediation (Zhao et al., 2010). These results suggest that the
difference in engagement between the Emoji–Text Interplay
and the non-interplay conditions is entirely attributable to
perceived playfulness. In contrast, the confidence intervals
surrounding the path from D2 (both emoji conditions vs. the no
emoji condition) to engagement via playfulness did span zero
(CI95%: − 0.818 to 0.563).
Discussion
Taken together, the results of this study are consistent with
the prediction that emoji–text interplay enhances engagement
significantly more than emojis that do not interplay with
text (H4a). Consistent with expectations, this difference in
Emoji–Text Interplay also led to significant positive effects on
feelings of happiness, and brand perceptions. The results also
support the prediction that the positive effects of emoji–text
interplay on engagement are mediated by perceptions of
playfulness (H4b)
It is worth noting, however, that it was somewhat unexpected
to see no significant differences in participant responses across
the No Emoji–Text Interplay and Text-Only conditions (hence
only partial support for H2 and H3). Our predictions would
suggest that the presence of an emoji in the No Emoji–Text
105
Happiness Perceived brand Perceived brand Perceived brand
playfulness warmth competence
5.59ab 5.46ab 5.28ab 5.36ab
4.35a 4.35a 4.25a 4.71a
4.00b 4.17b 4.45b 4.57b
Interplay should still yield more positive responses than the
control condition, simply not as great an effect as one with
emoji–text interplay. This result raises an interesting possibil-
ity that only emojis that elicit sufficient levels of perceived
playfulness will generate greater engagement and other
positive responses. In the absence of sufficient playfulness,
emojis may not engender positive results beyond a text-only
message. At a more general level it indicates that the effects of
emoji on engagement are quite nuanced. We endeavor to
explore these nuances further in Study 3.
Study 3
The primary purpose of Study 3 was to take initial steps
to examine how a specific type of emoji–text interplay
(i.e., location of the emoji relative to text) influences
engagement. We focus specifically on: (i) testing the prediction
that emojis placed before the text are expected to enhance
engagement via playfulness more than those after (H5a, H5c)
and (ii) testing the proposed moderating effect of emoji–text
relatedness (H5b). To do so, we designed a fully crossed,
between-subjects experiment varying both the emojis' location
relative to the text and the extent to which it directly related to
the text. Third, in this study we also sought to extend the
generalizability of the results by using Amazon Mechanical
Turk to recruit from the general population rather than a sample
of university students as in the previous study.
Method
Two-hundred and eighteen (61% male) participants were
recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk to participate in this 2
(Location: Before vs. After) × 2 (Emoji–Text Relatedness: High
vs. Low) between-subjects experiment. All participants were
shown a tweet supposedly from the Roasted Bean Coffeehouse
(a fictional coffeehouse) promoting their seasonal products, as in
the previous study. Across all conditions, participants read the
following text “Celebrating the season with our chocolate cherry
cookies available now through February. What can be more
welcoming than a warmed-up mouthful of chocolate cherry
cookie. #ChocolateCherryGoodness.” Across conditions, we
varied both Location and Emoji–Text Relatedness. Across
Location conditions, participants either saw the emoji prior to
or after the relevant text. Across Relatedness conditions, we
106 L. McShane et al. / Journal of Interactive Marketing 53 (2021) 96–110
varied whether the emojis were directly related to the text or
not. In the High Relatedness condition, all tweets included the
same three emoji—a chocolate bar, cherries, and a cookie—
that mapped on exactly to the stated text (e.g., chocolate
cherry cookie). In the Low Relatedness conditions, the tweets
included three emojis related to sentiment of the tweet but not
directly linked to the text—a snowman, star, and happy face
(see Fig. 2).
In this study, we expected that Location (Before vs. After)
and Relatedness (High vs. Low) would interact to differentially
influence message playfulness and, subsequently, engagement.
Within Before conditions, we expected low relatedness emojis
to attenuate perceptions of playfulness and engagement
relative. In contrast, we did not expect such effects within the
After conditions given that the text establishes meaning prior to
the emoji being seen in both cases, and so the relatedness of the
emoji is less relevant.
After reading the tweet, all participants responded to a series
of questions designed to capture the primary variables of
interest. These included playfulness measures to flesh out the
proposed mediating process and engagement intentions mea-
sures to capture the predicted downstream response. Having
established the link to brand-level perceptions in the prior
study, we do not focus on these downstream measures in this
study. To capture playfulness, we used the same measure as in
the previous study (α = 0.83). To capture engagement inten-
tions more comprehensively, we adjusted the measure to
include four-items. Specifically, we asked participants to
indicate the extent to which they were likely to engage with
the tweet, like the tweet, share the tweet, and comment on the
tweet. The resulting measure was more robust than the one used
in study 2 (α = 0.94).
Results and Discussion
Main Analyses
Initial analysis revealed an interaction effect of Location and
Relatedness and on both playfulness and engagement intentions
(Fs(1, 214) = 4.48 and 4.83, ps < 0.05, ƞ p2 = 0.021 and
0.022). No main effects were significant. Follow-up analyses
showed that, within the Before conditions, participants
indicated greater intentions to engage with the tweet when the
emojis were highly related to the text (F(1, 214) = 6.38, Ms =
3.58 vs. 2.69 p < .05, ƞ p2 = 0.053), consistent with H5a. A
similar pattern followed with playfulness. Specifically, the
tweet was perceived as more playful when the emoji was more
directly related to the emoji (F(1, 214) = 4.45, M = 5.21 vs.
4.77 p < .05, ƞ p2 = 0.038). There were no significant
differences within After conditions across levels of Relatedness
(ps > 0.25). See Table 4 for summary representation of means
across conditions.
Mediation Analysis
We then conducted a mediation analysis to test whether
perceived playfulness could explain the differential effects of
emoji across conditions. To do so, we used the moderated-
mediation design of Model 7 in PROCESS (5,000 bootstrap)
(Preacher & Hayes, 2008). Results showed that the confidence
intervals surrounding the conditional indirect effects of
Location on engagement intentions via playfulness varied
across levels of Relatedness. In High Relatedness conditions,
the confidence intervals did not span zero (CI95% = − 0.848 to
− 0.058). In contrast, in Low Relatedness conditions, the
confidence intervals did span zero (CI95% = − 0.254 to
0.600). Consistent with expectations, these results support the
idea that playfulness mediates the effect of Location on
engagement only when the emoji is highly related to the text
(H5a, H5b, H5c). Notably, there was no significant direct effect
of Location on engagement intentions once the effect of
Relatedness had been taken into account (b = − 0.226, t
(214) = − 1.00, p > .30), consistent with indirect-only media-
tion (Zhao et al., 2010).
Discussion
Overall, these results showed the predicted path from
Location to engagement via perceived playfulness. Tweets
with emojis placed before the relevant text were perceived as
more playful, and so elicited greater engagement, than those
placed after the relevant text but only in cases where the emojis
were directly related to the text.
These results also help to address the somewhat surprising
result in Study 2 where we found no significant difference in
engagement, and other downstream effects, between the No
Emoji–Text Interplay and Text-Only condition. Specifically, it
suggests that simply including an emoji in the message does not
necessarily result in greater engagement. Rather, emojis may
lead to differential effects on playfulness and so yield varying
levels of engagement. More generally, it speaks to the need for
brands to strategically integrate emojis into their messaging.
Finally, the design of this study also serves to address a
potential limitation in the previous study. In Study 2, we find
that emojis that are directly reinforced by text generate greater
engagement and that this occurs via perceptions of playfulness.
One alternative explanation, however, is that the message is
simply stronger when the emoji is reinforced by the text versus
when it is not. Our measurement of playfulness and corre-
sponding mediation analysis enhances our confidence in the
proposed playfulness mechanism, but it does not rule out a
corresponding message strength process. The design of Study
3, however, does address this issue as the manipulations lead to
different predictions regarding these two variables (i.e.,
message strength vs. playfulness). A playfulness lens predicts
the interaction effect that we find—a direct emoji that precedes
the text will lead to greatest engagement. A message strength
approach, however, would simply predict a main effect of
Relatedness regardless of the level of emoji–text interplay as in
both cases the emoji and text work together to enhance message
strength.
General Discussion
Brands frequently use emoji in their social media commu-
nications. Yet, perhaps because of their rapid integration into
computer-mediated communication platforms, we have little
 L. McShane et al. / Journal of Interactive Marketing 53 (2021) 96–110 107

Condition Stimuli

High Relatedness Emoji Before Text

High Relatedness Emoji After Text

Low Relatedness Emoji Before Text

Low Relatedness Emoji After Text

Fig. 2. Stimuli for Study 3.

understanding of how emojis influence brand–consumer
relationships. The current work takes steps to address an initial
key piece: how does emoji use influence brand engagement?
Our field study results demonstrate that the mere presence of an
emoji in brand tweets increases the extent to which consumers
like and share content and that more emoji within a message
amplify this effect further. Our two subsequent lab studies
highlight nuances in this relationship between emojis and
engagement, showing that emojis enhance engagement primar-
ily when they precede highly related text in that they convey
greater playfulness. This mixed-method approach, analyzing
both actual tweets and lab experiment data, enabled us to
generate unique insights into emoji use in social media
messaging.
108 L. McShane et al. / Journal of Interactive Marketing 53 (2021) 96–110
Table 4
Study 3: Differential effects of emojis on engagement intentions and
playfulness as a function of location and relatedness.
Emoji location Emoji relatedness
Engagement intentions High relatedness Low relatedness
Before 3.58abc 2.69b
After 2.62a 2.89c
Perceived playfulness
Before 5.21a 4.77
After 4.66a 4.97
Notes. Different subscripts indicate significant differences in means across
conditions with regard to that particular variable at p < .05. For instance, for the
engagement intentions variable, the subscript ‘a’ indicates a significant
difference between the Before with High Relatedness condition and the After
with High Relatedness condition. The subscript ‘b’ indicates a significant
difference between the Before with High Relatedness condition and the Before
with Low Relatedness condition. And, so on for the ‘c’ subscript. The lack of a
common subscript, for instance in the case of comparing the means of After
with High Relatedness and After with Low Relatedness, indicates that the
difference between means is not significant.
Theoretical Contributions
The current work contributes to the social media messaging
literature by identifying emojis as an important factor in digital
brand engagement, and by highlighting the nuanced role of
emojis in such messaging. It also provides an initial empirical
examination of the phenomenon of textual paralanguage
(Luangrath et al., 2017). Luangrath et al. (2017) develop a
conceptual framework for examining the mediating role of
textual paralanguage in shaping the relationship between the
antecedents of brand factors, platform factors and target
audience factors, and key outcome variables (i.e., brand
perceptions, brand–consumer relationships, consumer effects).
While their proposed framework will require examination
across a wide variety of studies, the current research is, to our
knowledge, the first to empirically test the proposed link
between textual paralanguage (in this case, visual textual
paralanguage in the form of emoji) and one of the proposed
outcomes (engagement).
The current work also contributes to the debate on optimal
diffusion strategies. This word-of-mouth literature highlights
that an ongoing challenge with forecasting social media
interactions, and more specifically the virality of online content,
is the lack of evidence-based policy regarding message content
(Berger & Milkman, 2012). Our playfulness-based conceptu-
alization of how emoji might influence engagement speaks to
this issue. It suggests, for instance, that emojis might have the
capacity to influence the virality of online content and, more
generally, that playfulness may enhance the virality of content.
This research also, perhaps most notably, identifies playful-
ness as an important construct in brand messaging via social
media. This works highlights the potential importance of
playfulness in fostering rich online interactions and, more
broadly, developing strong brand–consumer relationships. This
is a ripe area for future research that might further extend
beyond computer-mediated communications to examine the
role of playfulness more generally in shaping the relationships
between consumers and brands.
Practitioner Implications
Brands are continuously searching to optimize their brand
communication strategies in the face of ongoing challenges
(e.g., new media, changing behaviors, divided consumer
attention: Batra & Keller, 2016). Our research identifies emojis
as one important and easy-to-implement tool that managers can
strategically use in face of these challenges. Specifically, to the
extent that emojis can enable brands to convey playfulness,
brands stand to gain from greater levels of engagement as well
as several other benefits of playful content. We find that one
specific way in which brands can convey playfulness is to place
emojis before the focal text and to ensure that the emojis are
highly related to the text that immediately follows.
Limitations and Future Research
The current work by no means claims to be an exhaustive
examination of the influence of emoji on brand communica-
tions. Rather, it aims to take important first steps in empirically
demonstrating the promise of emoji, as a useful non-textual cue
in digital brand communications. As such, the research has
certain limitations, particularly with regard to generalizability.
Specifically, all studies focus on Twitter content and both lab
studies focus on tweets from a fictional coffeehouse.
With regard to social media platforms, it is possible that the
differences across the content and user profiles of various
platforms yield some meaningful differences in brand engage-
ment. For instance, users might respond to the same emojis in
different ways given research showing variations in individuals'
responses to emojis (Chen & Siu, 2017; Marengo, Giannotta, &
Settanni, 2017; Tossell et al., 2012; Wall, Kaye, & Malone,
2016).
Similarly, it is possible that certain brands are better
positioned to use emojis to enhance engagement via playful-
ness than others. B2B and B2C brands might, for instance, have
been shown to receive different consumer reactions when
incorporating emoji in their posts on social media (Deng,
2019). Furthermore, it is possible that even across B2C brands,
consumers reactions to emojis will vary depending on the
brand's personality, the nature of the relationship, (e.g.,
exchange vs. communal) or perhaps even depending on the
goal of the consumer in consuming the content. With regard to
the latter, Barcelos, Dantas, and Sénécal (2018) show that a
more human voice engenders more positive outcomes when the
receiver holds more hedonic goals (vs. utilitarian). Applying
this work to the current research, it is possible that the found
effects of emoji on engagement via playfulness are contextu-
ally-bound to social media messaging that is consumer for
hedonic purposes. Taken together, this discussion identifies
rich avenues for future research examining the effects of both
emoji and playfulness on brand–consumer relationships in
different contexts.
 L. McShane et al. / Journal of Interactive Marketing 53 (2021) 96–110
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