Chevy's Emoji Press Release: Did it Hit the Mark?

Last week while browsing Twitter, I found that Chevy had released an emoji press release. The entire release was typed using emojis. At first I was a little confused. While I consider myself an avid emoji user, I didn't quite understand the whole release.

You can view the post here!

After reading some articles, I discovered that Chevy has a new model that is being marketed as a millennial car. What better way than to write a news release in their own language?

While I completely understand the premiss, I think Chevy missed their mark. I sent this news release to my boyfriend, who had no idea how to read it. After showing it to a couple more people, the only person I found who was able to comprehend the meaning was my 14 year old sister. She's at least 4 years away from buying her own car, let alone a new one.

Chevy missed the mark in two ways-- they assumed that millennials who use emojis can buy a car and that the news release would reach their target audience.

First, not all millennials use emojis. A lot of people assume millennials are in college or just getting out. However the majority of us are late twenties, early thirties. A majority of them have grown up without the emoji keyboard. My boyfriend and I are actually looking at cars, but neither of us understood the information presented. While they did release a translation of the release the next day, it kind of lost momentum.

Second, the news release didn't get that much publicity. I found a tweet from a public relations website on Thursday, three days after the release. While there has been discussion among marketing and public relations professionals over the effectiveness of the method, there hasn't been a lot of media coverage outside of social media. Chevy might have made a small splash, but they didn't attract the attention of their target audience.


Was it worth it? Maybe. I think that if Chevy had waited about 5 years, they would have had a better response. It's a great, innovative and creative way to grab people's attention. Unfortunately a little ahead of it's time.

What do you think of the emoji release? Did you understand it? Did they hit or miss the mark?