Marcel Sydney launches global campaign with Tinder to fight for interracial couple emoji
CB Exclusive – There’s an emoji for everything these days. And everyone. Well, nearly everyone. Unicode, the company behind Emoji, offers emoji for people of many races and emoji for same-sex couples, but one group of people is still excluded from emoji representation: interracial couples.
The campaign asks the question: Isn’t it time all love was represented?
Together with Marcel Sydney, Tinder, one of the world’s most popular dating apps, has created a global campaign that leads people to a petition that aims to change this.
They might be small icons on a screen, but emoji have also become a universal language of this digital age. A recent study suggested that Tinder, and the popularity of dating apps today, is responsible for an increase in interracial marriages – so it’s high time that interracial pairs join the emoji party.
The new project, called #representlove, the interracial emoji couple project, will ask Unicode to give mobile phones the option to customize the skin tone of the couple with the heart emoji. In a statement, Tinder said: “No one should ever feel unrepresented or unseen. Love is universal, and it’s time for interracial couples to be represented in our universal language.”
The online film, directed by Tim Kindler through Heckler, highlights the fact that there are thousands of emoji for almost everything and everyone, but none that represent interracial couples.
The campaign also invites people to #representlove by uploading an image of themselves for a chance to be turned into their very own emoji. A team of designers will create bespoke emoji based on over 250 design combinations to match the couples. For the chance to receive their own couple emoji, couples simply upload a picture on Twitter or Instagram with #representlove. Hundreds of bespoke emoji have already been created.
The campaign has already drawn in celebrities in interracial relationships, such as Nicole Richie, and Alexis Ohanian, the founder of Reddit.
Says Wesley Hawes, creative lead at Marcel Sydney: “It’s exciting to work on a global campaign with such a positive message. And for a cool, global brand that people love. It’s an ambitious social project, but our army of designers from LA, Sydney, Germany and France, who are answering couples’ posts live, have been up to the task.”
The campaign has generated a lot of online abuse and racist commentary. So much so, a bespoke video response was created featuring all the couples who have taken part in the project, to personally answer trolls.
The campaign launched on 27th February in the US, and followed the time zones through to Australia. It has already been picked up by Vice, Wired, Fast Company, Vogue, High Snobiety, Mashable, The Independent, Hypebeast, and Newsweek, to name a few.
People can sign the Interracial Couples Emoji petition on change.org. The original signature goal was 1000. The petition stands at 9058 and counting.
This is part of Tinder’s core mission to create a more diverse and inclusive platform. Because interracial couples everywhere deserve a place on your keyboard. Click here for a full copy of the survey results.
Agency: Marcel Sydney
Production – Heckler
Director – Tim Kindler
Executive Producer – Will Alexander
Head of VFX – Jamie Watson
Live Action Producer – Charu Menon
Post Producer – Amy Jarman
Editor – Andrew Holmes
Colourist – Clement Bouchet
Illustrator – Fred Venet
Animators – Shaun Leong-Williams, Adrien Girault
Compositors – Maxence Peillon, Bertrand Polivka
Music Supervisor – Anton @ Trailer Media
11 Comments
Finally, someone tackling the big issues!
This is really nice! I didn’t think emoji ideas could still be a thing but I’m happily wrong.
What about short men? All these examples are people of the same height.
Oh, FFS.
hasn’t this been done enough.
Instead of fighting for the rights of various emoji why don’t we fight for original ideas?
Smells like Cannes around the corner and people need stuff to enter.
Amazing. I was only talking to my wife the other day about how there were no interracial emoji, Thanks for taking the time out of your lives to take on one of the biggest issues facing the world right now. Honestly work like this reassures me that as a race, we have hope. I almost feel guilty donating my time to far less worthy causes such as the homeless and the environment.
is this the same agency that did those cards against abuse or something a year back?
#YesWeCannes
@same same, is that you Roy?
No Cannes this year. Vous n’aurez pas de travail.
@That wasn’t Marcel,
Am I @same same?
No.
Who are you?
Love Roy.