Emojis – love ‘em or hate ‘em, they are imbedded forever into our written communication and, I, for one, am an emoji aficionado who can barely get through a sentence without inserting one 😄 or even answering without words 😉 Emojis Rule! In fact, according to a new survey, using emojis means you think more about sex than people who don’t. 👄🍆 So, I guess everyone loves emojis 💓
In the emoji wine world, there’s a huge void in one’s ability to properly express oneself for both red wine🍷 and white wine. As you can see, to my great chagrin, there is no white wine emoji 😢 Who are these people who decided that only red wine deserved an emoji? They obviously aren’t wine drinkers or such a omission would never have happened. Well, fortunately for us, there are people who care and who are in the process of dealing with getting a white wine emoji. It’s not a simple as you think. You just can’t draw a glass of white wine and stick it in the emoji pile. No, emojis are serious business and you have to submit an emoji proposal to the folks at unicode.org Here, from the submission page, is a little of what it takes to submit a proposal:
Please read this entire page before preparing a proposal. In particular:
* Scan the list of Emoji Requests to see whether your proposed emoji have already been submitted.
* If the status is Declined, it may not be worth the effort to make a proposal.
* Make sure you understand this whole document, especially the Selection Factors.
* Read the Limitations on Emoji Encoding section of Emoji Encoding Principles.
* Read the Emoji Submission FAQ for common questions and answers.
* Review some Example Submissions to see how previous proposals were constructed.
Daunting you say? Yes, it is but a couple if wineries have made it their mission to finally right this wrong and get us a white wine emoji for heavens sake.
Flora Springs winery has dedicated a campaign to the white wine emoji: “We are relying on you to get behind this campaign and share your posts on Instagram and Facebook. You can also regram or share, but be sure to include #whitewineemoji and tag @FloraSprings.”
Kendall-Jackson is the big gun presenting the white wine emoji proposal at the next Unicode meeting in Washington, July 23-26. Want to get involved? Check out this page: Help Create the World’s First #WhiteWineEmoji
“The Kendall-Jackson team submitted the White Wine Emoji proposal last spring, and to our excitement it was chosen to be forwarded to the Unicode Technical Committee (UTC). Normally an emoji takes roughly 2 years to come to life, and many never get approved. You have to have the right mix of global need, background and technical data to be successful in an emoji proposal followed by a strong presentation at the UTC vote to the 12 voting members of Unicode. The White Wine Emoji proposal is 15 pages. We are hopeful to represent the white wine emoji at the July UTC vote which is hosted at the Microsoft Campus in WA state. If approved, the White Wine Emoji could begin to hit phones as soon as platforms such as Apple, Samsung, etc pick it up, but this varies by platform. Could be spring through fall 2020.”
I know. This is a lot to think about so I asked Kendall-Jackson a few questions about the process. Here are their answers:
How long was the submission process? When did it start? What was the impetus and conversation around it…must be some funny stories?
For many years across the Kendall-Jackson social media channels, there have been asks for the white wine emoji. This is due to Kendall-Jackson proudly produces the #1 selling Chardonnay in the USA, and white wine fans like to offer cheers, and toasts, but sadly have only been able to use the red wine glass in their efforts. Last spring, our team finally decided to do something about it, and began researching what it would take to bring the white wine emoji to life. Boy were we surprised at the task-at-hand! Who would have thought that these fun little emojis would require often 2 years of waiting, research, presentations at tech campuses, etc. It’s been quite the process, but we can taste victory if all proves successful in the vote.
The fun part of this whole process has been in seeing the wine community globally come together. Just search the #whitewineemoji to see the global posts. We are also grateful to the many partners who have added their logo to www.whitewineemoji.net. The energy still needs to continue though, as the more usage of #whitewineemoji across social channels, the better as the Kendall-Jackson team will use these stats at the UTC vote.
What are some of the key points in that 15 page proposal?!
The key points of the proposal track global need and usage of white wine. The White Wine Emoji proposal is in its 3rd revision now. The most recent revisions were based on Unicode updating what is required in an emoji proposal. Most notable is that you have to benchmark against a reference emoji, where you are asked to prove out expected usage using Bing and Google search results. For example, we can compare search results for white wine, vs an existing emoji such as hamburger, necktie or elephant. White Wine when searched in Google (data pulled 3/27/19) returns 1,570,000,000 results, while necktie returns 43,100,000. We can also compare # usage on Instagram, and we have seen #whitewineemoji grow from 400 uses last May, to over 2700 uses today.
How many people were involved in creating the presentation?
The Kendall-Jackson marketing team was the team to work on the proposal. Roughly 6 people have played a role in research, development and formatting the white wine emoji proposal.
Who is against this white wine emoji? What’s been the pushback?
We haven’t experienced much of any pushback from the public, and most people when they think about it, are behind the effort. When you see that beer has 2 emojis, and champaign has 2 emojis, its rightly time to get white wine added to the keyboard. This might be a first world problem, but most people also see the fun aspect of the wine world coming together for this missing piece of communication.
Who else will be presenting for what emojis?
Though not confirmed, we have heard that polar bear is up to bat at the July vote.
And, coming up, time to celebrate! World Emoji Day / July 17 YAY!!!