Norwegian Airline Creates Emoji URL

In an effort to reach Millennials, Norwegian Airlines created an emoji-only URL to promote a cheap new flight.

Typing in the emojis for an airplane, a slot machine and a flying stack of money brings users to a new direct flight from Copenhagen to Las Vegas. The flight, which costs the equivalent of $235, was promoted on Instagram, but not by Norwegian Airlines. The carrier teamed up with eight popular influencers from Denmark, who posted the emoji sequences on their feeds. In less than a day, the posts generated more than 4,000 Instagram likes, leading to more than 1,600 hits to the website.

Part of the reason engagement was so high was because of the fun of decoding the message, but more than that, emojis have come to play a big role in modern communication, says Christian Brucculeri, chief executive (CEO) of Snaps, a company that creates emoji keyboards for brands like Burger King, Kraft and Kate Spade.

“Marketers like doing things that consumers enjoy, and I think there’s a general trend on the consumer side of communication of using visual language,” Brucculeri says. “Brands are trying to get into that conversation; they want to own a little piece of the visual lexicon.”

Brucculeri adds that one of his company’s brand partners, Food & Wine Magazine, has many readers who do food reviews entirely in emojis. According to recent Instagram research, 40 percent of posts include at least one.

“We see visually communication increasing and we see this as the beginning,” Brucculeri says. “Everyone is looking for an edge in creatively communicating.”

While Norwegian Airlines is an early adopter, the brand isn’t the first to utilize emoji URLs. In February, Coca-Cola Puerto Rico created websites with URLs made of smiley faces, while Yes Equality, an Irish group advocating marriage equality, had the same-sex hand-holder emojis redirect users to its site before Ireland’s recent vote on marriage equality.

Like Coca-Cola and Yes Equality, Norwegian Airlines’ URL ended in “.ws,” the Internet domain for Western Samoa. The .com, .net and .org domains don’t allow websites addresses to contain non-Latin characters; Western Samoa is one of the few countries that would allow an emoji URL.