Binance attempted to generate some publicity on Wednesday by announcing that their hashtag emojis were back!
The company tweeted an updated emoji as a branded hashtag for #Binance, #BNB and #BitcoinButton.
This new hashtag emoji (see image below) would appear whenever someone tweeted one of these preselected hashtags; however, users everywhere were surprised the cryptocurrency exchange didn’t notice the emoji’s resemblance to the symbol of the Nazi party.
At first, Binance appeared to be commemorating the launch of this updated emoji; however, after many users pointed out that the new logo resembled a swastika, the company quickly removed the design, and announced their embarrassment.
“Well that was obviously really embarrassing,” Binance tweeted this afternoon. “We’re not sure how that emoji got through several layers of review without anyone noticing, but we immediately flagged the issue, pulled it down, and the new emoji design is being rolled out as we speak.”
Indeed, Binance has removed the new hashtag emoji, and the original hashtag emoji, which matches their profile photo, is now being used again whenever you type in any of the Binance hashtags.
It’s unclear if this was an intended joke or if their concern was serious, and there’s no record of the following tweet, which Bitcoin News attempted to verify.
Regardless, Twitter users have been reacting to the emoji with a mixture of shock and disgust, and many are incredulous that this happened on Adolf Hitler’s birthday.
Bitcoin news reached out to Binance to find out: what made Binance decide to change the Twitter emoji at this point in time?
After all, their original Twitter emoji for Binance matched their actual profile photo; and even though they incorporated their profile photo / logo into the new emoji, it was hard to interpret, and clearly different.
We asked representatives from Binance: why would Binance want your Twitter emoji to be different from your profile photo logo?
It certainly seems that their profile photo on Twitter was intended to remain different and separate from their hashtag emoji, and from a communications standpoint, it’s curious: what was the marketing intent behind that decision?
Hashflags
It’s been documented that Twitter allows brands to add custom emojis next to hashtags as a marketing benefit for brands and revenue stream for the platform.
Twitter has charged companies a hefty price tag for these so-called “hashflags,” which are commonly used for holidays or large events, like the Super Bowl, to help companies differentiate their brands and to create a buzz amongst consumers.
According to some reports, companies have paid up to $1 million in order to get their branded emoji hashflags to be displayed for a limited time.
Some examples of famous hashtag emojis are:
- #PokemonLetsGo, purchased in late 2018
- #Coca-Cola, used during a marketing campaign in 2015
- #PepsiHalftime, which displayed a Pepsi can during the Super Bowl in 2016
Typically, these promotions are temporary, and disappear at the end of the marketing campaign.
Although, recently, this hasn’t been entirely true for all things; especially, that is, Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.
In February 2020, Twitter activated a new bitcoin-branded hashtag, with founder Jack Dorsey calling for it to become part of the universal web standard. Since that time, Twitter has automatically displayed the bitcoin symbol as an emoji after #bitcoin or #btc.
Now, because Bitcoin is decentralized, it is worth acknowledging that this was, most likely, granted by Twitter to the Bitcoin community for free—although, this has not been confirmed by Bitcoin News.
Then, in June 2020, after payments platform Crypto.com’s token, “Cronos,” became the second cryptocurrency to be allowed a permanent hashflag on Twitter, the community was filled with chattered speculation to learn if another cryptocurrency would be granted permission to display a branded hashtag emoji on one of the world’s most popular social media platforms.
Rumors began circulating that, potentially, Ethereum or Tron might be next to receive their own hashtag emojis, but in July 2020, it was announced that Binance had secured a deal with Twitter to receive it’s very own hashtag emoji.
At the time, Binance commended the launch of its original hashtag emoji by making the announcement on its various Twitter accounts, similar to its announcement on Wednesday—and, even back in June 2020, when first announced, the crypto-Twitter community did not seem pleased about the Binance hashflag; many pointed out that it was obvious that Binance paid a large sum of money for the emoji in terms of ad-spend, which rendered the achievement worthless in terms of increasing Binance’s popularity—now, they are back to using the original hashtag emoji after the botched unveiling today, which resembled a swastika.
More Announcements Have Followed
Ignoring the hashtag emoji image itself, and focusing attention on the messaging in the tweets posted by Binance and its executives today, perhaps this hashtag announcement was intended to be part of a larger announcement; but instead, maybe they were sidetracked by the backlash, and, perhaps they had to pivot away from the announcement to perform damage control.
This is, of course, speculation, but it certainly appears as if Binance is still attempting to make some sort of announcement as recently as Thursday.
Binance had yet to respond at the time this article was published.
