HASHMOJIS
Creating hashtag emojis, or hashmojis, were an effective way for @TwitterSports to drive conversation around particular moments. We could anticipate high conversation volume around a big game or athlete’s retirement and create a hashmoji for it, or create ones in real-time to respond to big news.
Developing hashmojis was always a big cross-functional effort, and we’d work alongside Engineering, Talent & Brand Partnerships, Studio, and Legal to bring them to life.
Simone Biles: The Olympic GOAT
During the 2021 Olympics in Tokyo, Talent & Brand Partnerships came to my team and said they were creating a hashmoji for Simone Biles since it would be her last Olympics. We were immediately interested in collaborating since we knew Biles drove a ton of conversation. We got with our Studio team to create animation to showcase the hashmoji and our work was featured in The New York Times.
What started as a hashmoji to celebrate one of our best living athletes eventually evolved into conversations around athletes and their mental health and our work was part of that.
Champions League Final: Real-time Hashmojis
The 2022 Champions League final was gonna be massive, and we wanted to capitalize on that high conversation volume with a first-of-its-kind hashmoji in real-time.
We worked to develop art that featured the iconic UCL trophy that would activate after either Real Madrid or Liverpool won that day. It required alignment from the engineers that would turn on the hashmoji on a Saturday afternoon, UEFA who owned the rights to the trophy, the clubs themselves, and our Studio team that created the art.
Serena Williams Retirement
Serena Williams’ announcement that the 2022 US Open would be her last professional tournament was easy for us to identify as a potentially huge moment on Twitter, and her career was so dominant and iconic that there was no doubt it warranted its own hashmoji. Quickly we had the art made with Studio, got the approval from Talent & Brand Partnerships, and it was up to my team to determine the optimal time for it to go live. We thought the morning of her opening round match would be best, and we got the hashmoji activated and the @TwitterSports profile flipped to celebrate #Serena.
As she continued her run, use of the hashtags continue to grow, from fans and other high profile athletes, and we got word from our Marketing Insights & Analytics team that she was the most Tweeted about female athlete ever. We determined that fact also deserved its own piece of content and got a short video published following her last match.
Tom Brady Retirement I: #ThankYouTom
When Adam Schefter first reported that Tom Brady was set to retire, we knew it’d be a giant moment on Twitter once Brady finally said it himself. With little to no lead time, we developed artwork with our Studio team, aligned with Talent & Brand Partnerships on the hashtags that would be accompany the art, and that we had both Brady and the NFL’s sign off. And at 7am on a Tuesday, when Brady finally said “Yes, I’m retiring” (albeit for 40 days), we were able to activate the hashmoji and get a Tweet from @TwitterSports out as well.