The soft drinks manufacturer is the latest marketer to give the cultural phenomena its own branded moment, co-opting the language for its packaging.
Emojis, developed at Pepsi’s design centre, will run globally and locally to try and convince people to communicate with the brand’s packaging.
“Emojis are the language of today but no one has put them in the world like Pepsi will this year,” said PepsiCo chief executive Indra Nooyi at the Consumer Analyst Group of New York conference yesterday (18 February).
“With more than 70 global and locally uniquely designed emois printed on cans, bottles and cups throughout the world, you’re going to be able to ‘say it with a Pepsi’ all through the summer of 2016.”
She went on to explain how emojis and a emoji really come in handy; for example, “when you find yourself stuck at a train station in a foreign country” or at a “concert where it’s too loud to speak, you can user your emojis to communicate”.
The campaign will run in 100 markets over the summer.
It won’t be the first time the brand has used emojis in its marketing this year.
For the Super Bowl earlier this month, it reportedly spend $1m on a branded emoji on Twitter so that whenever someone used a certain hashtag, a can of the brand appeared with musical notes flying out of the top.
It also created the #PepsiMoji keyboard last year to mark #WorldEmojiDay.
Pepsi’s decision to make packaging core to its marketing echo rival Coca-Cola’s ‘Share a Coke’ campaign, whereby the brand’s logo was replaced with names so people could share the personalised bottles with friends and family.