Did you know that July 17 is World Emoji Day? No, me neither—at least not until Ford used the celebration of these 21st century hieroglyphs to announce that it wants a pickup truck emoji. In fact, Ford was so serious about the idea that in 2018, it submitted an official proposal to the Unicode Consortium to make that happen. On Wednesday, it revealed that the little blue truck had made it as far as the short list for inclusion in the next official emoji update, which is scheduled for 2020.
"When customers started demanding a truck emoji, we knew we had to help make it happen," said Joe Hinrichs, Ford's president of automotive. "Given the popularity of Ford trucks globally, there's no one better than Ford to help bring an all-new pickup truck emoji to hard-working texters around the globe."
The emoji as proposed by Ford is unmistakable as a pickup truck, but it's generic enough to work for any make or model of pickup. (Although, as the cheeseburger emoji scandal of 2017 proved, that might not stop some app or OS team from implementing their version with the wheels on the top, or the load bed out front of the cab.)Ford's submission to Unicode is a fascinating read [PDF]. First, it benchmarks the popularity of trucks against an existing transportation emoji, specifically the ambulance. Here, Ford notes that Google searches for pickup truck far outstrip searches for ambulance over the past five years, although if you get specific and search for "pickup truck" (with the quotes) that difference is reversed. (It also notes that ambulance is more common than pickup truck and "pickup truck" in Bing, but that pickup truck returns more YouTube results than either ambulance or "pickup truck".)
Ford also points out that pickup trucks are a global trend and therefore relevant to regions where Chinese or Spanish is more commonly heard than English.
Next, Ford suggests an array of different uses for a truck emoji:
It can be used as a symbol for hard work, as in “Keep truckin’” or for an enthusiastic replacement in “Truck yeah!” There are many commonly used English idioms such as “fall off the back of a truck” or “I don’t truck with that,” that could be enlivened by the use of a pickup truck emoji.
And the company also proposes compound emoji using the truck as a suffix:
You could also combine emojis to represent new ideas, as in an ice cream cone and a pickup truck to symbolize an ice cream truck. Or a wastebasket emoji plus a pickup truck to symbolize a garbage truck.
Perhaps my very most favorite part of the entire document is the section that points out that a truck emoji is frequently requested by people on social media. Here, the company links to plenty of Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook posts asking for just that. Specifically, the proposal points out that Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson—who it credits as the most influential celebrity on social media and the most popular actor on social media—has asked for the truck emoji on at least six occasions. I can't speak for the people who run Unicode, but I know I wouldn't want to disappoint The Rock.
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