Twitter to 'market' Coke through emoji branding

In a bid to cash in on the growing popularity for emojis, Twitter is testing the effectiveness of the freakish pictograms in helping to advertise brands.

The social network has teamed up with soft drink giant Coca-Cola for it, Wall Street Journal reported.

In the form of paid ad placement, an emoji of a pair of Coke bottles clinking has been appearing on Twitter for the last few days when users post a tweet with the hashtag #ShareaCoke.

Twitter will only be offering the feature to Coke and others as part of a package deal to its biggest clients that have already committed a certain amount of their ad budgets to Twitter.

Twitter worked with Coke for six months on the project and is currently talking to 10 of its biggest brand clients about cashing in on the craze for weird faces and love-struck cats.

Although custom-built emojis have appeared on Twitter earlier too, but its alliance with Coke marks the first time a brand has paid Twitter to have an emoji made for a specific marketing campaign.

As part of its "Share a Coke" marketing campaign, Coke over the past few years has replaced periodically its brand name on bottles and cans with people's names.