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.

人力和企业品牌都越来越多地使用表情符号与消费者交流。当前的工作研究了这些象形文字是否以及如何塑造Twitter上的在线品牌参与度（例如，喜欢和转发）。为此，我们首先检查通过刮擦最受欢迎的名人品牌和最受欢迎的企业品牌的推文生成的数据集（研究1）。这项研究表明，表情符号的存在会增加与推文的互动，更多的表情符号会导致更多的喜欢和转发。然后进行两个对照实验，探讨感知的嬉戏在解释表情符号对订婚的影响中的作用（研究2和3）。我们发现，表情符号对品牌参与度的影响因表情符号和文字之间相互作用的性质以及这种相互作用对感知的嬉戏性的后续影响而异。