I don’t know about everyone else, but I am kind of OBSESSED with my little mini me – avatar – produced through the app ‘Bitmoji’. When Snapchat acquired ‘Bitstrips’ for $100 million in March 2016 (McNamara, 2016), an opportunity for a new type of digital marketing presented itself.
Globally, brands find themselves with a chance to appeal to not just the consumer, but the consumer’s idealistic digital representation of themselves. Dressing our aesthetically pleasing avatars in real world brands such as Nike, and Forever21, in turn becomes an advertisement for the brand itself. Bitmoji brings the consumer to become PART OF THE AD. In this crazy digital age our Steve Madden boot wearing, Starbuck’s pumpkin spice latte drinking avatars, are a voluntarily, often unknowingly, personal brand advertisement.
Potentially the greatest opportunity that Bitmoji presents, is infiltration of the ‘dark social’ (Gilliland, 2016). That is, a way for brand advertisements to penetrate the private messages of users. With 74% of online sharing activity occurring in this way (Gilliland, 2016), marketers now have the opportunity to have online users willingly sending back and forth their avatar ‘stickers’ featuring branded virtual outfits and products.
Most recently, snapchat has allowed Bitmoji to delve into augmented reality. A recent update titled ‘3D Friendmoji Deluxe’ allows users to have their personal Bitmoji interact in AR with a friend’s Bitmoji. Acting out an array of different scenes, Bitmoji’s in AR shake and pop champagne, can blow kisses, give cards and ‘flirt’. Marketers that can harness this exciting new reality could find themselves with consumer’s not only obligatorily being involved in the advertisement of their products, but willing and eager to send their friends Bitmoji stickers in the newest, hip outfit, participating in the coolest new AR stunt.
Do you think marketers will be able to creatively harness the scope of opportunity Bitmoji presents?
Blogging off til next time
A blonde girl in a digital world 
Do people look at the bitmoji characters that closely to see branded content embedded within them? It seems to be a little too “subtle” to be effective. But maybe I’m not in that target market?
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