Taco Bell and Deutsch L.A. Unveil Taco Emoji Engine

Emojis are no longer just contained to inside jokes between friends. Taco Bell recently launched a “taco emoji engine,” which allows users to mash up an emoji of their choice and a taco.

Smartphone users have been waiting on pins and needles for software updates to include a taco emoji, but their hopes have been dashed the last few rounds of updates. Taco Bell has heard the cries of the many and has teamed with Deutsch L.A., a Los Angeles-based marketing communications agency, to roll out a social-marketing campaign to welcome the new taco emoji, available at their website.

"They're all meant to be fun, almost collectible pieces,” Marisa Thalberg, chief brand engagement officer for Taco Bell, told AdWeek. “I think they're going to be highly Instagramable.”

To use the engine, users need to tweet a picture of the taco emoji along with another emoji available at Taco Bell’s website. Users then will get a reply from the brands Twitter account with a GIF of the two emoji’s mashed up together. The Irvine, California-based brand announced it has 600 pieces of different content ready to go.

Taco Bell has been an advocate of getting a taco emoji off the ground. In November 2014, the brand set up a petition at Change.org in order to get some exposure for the cause. With more than 33,000 signatures on record, Unicode Consortium unveiled the newly-designed emoji in June. Thalberg went on to say this unveiling has been a long time coming.

"This is about the taco having its rightful place in the official emoji keyboard—this wasn't about us doing a branded thing, this was about the taco itself,” she said. "We had our hopes raised and dashed a few times along the way, but ultimately Unicode came through, and it’s here."