It’s no secret that brands try to appeal to millennials in their marketing campaigns. Thanks to social media, millennial pop-culture has now grown to include using emojis, memes, as well as phrases and lingo popular amongst the demographic. Big brands try to incorporate these things into their marketing messages and advertising campaigns in order to appeal and win those people over.

IHOP, the renowned all-day breakfast food chain, have a different tone on their Twitter account versus their other social media outlets. With the right blend of sarcasm and lingo with their product placement, IHOP’s Twitter campaign has been a hit amongst millennial users. On the contrary, their Facebook page carries a universal tone amongst its page’s audience, which does include older generations that would not understand the appeal of IHOP’s Twitter presence.

One of the most recent “Truth About Smoking” ad campaigns aimed at younger millennials features popular Internet memes to reinforce their anti-smoking message. Their TV ads have always targeted teens and young adults susceptible to smoking, however these ads seem just as lazy and unoriginal as the memes they try to exploit. In addition, this ad has come under fire from countless YouTube users for being downright terrible.

Emojis have quickly become one of the most recognized forms of communications amongst millennials. They have become so popular, in September 2015, Twitter and Coca-Cola rolled out the first brand emoji (which is currently exclusive to Twitter). By including the hashtag, #shareacoke, a Coca-Cola bottle emoji shows up in a tweet by any user. The hashtag had over 150,000 mentions in one day, and will continue to be used throughout 2015. After seeing how effective brand emojis are, the latest brands to implement them in their Twitter campaigns are Starbucks Coffee, with their hashtag, #RedCups and Dove, with their hashtag, #LoveYourCurls.

Despite these brands getting their own branded emojis on Twitter, Taco Bell has taken the branded emoji one step further, with Unicode developing the taco emoji to be featured across all Android and iOS devices in the near future!

When creating a millennial campaign, big brands should always take as much effort to ensure that those campaigns are relevant, thoughtful and properly executed in order to drive engagement and interest amongst this challenging demographic.