There's no getting around the fact that emojis, whatever their social equity among young people, are quite literally cartoony. And if you're going to build a whole global ad campaign around them, as Pepsi has done with PepsiMoji, it's going to feel pretty lightweight. And indeed, the five-second TV ads, which we wrote about earlier, are bubbly but also fleetingly goofy—all the more so because of their short length.
Good thing, then, that Pepsi wisely decided to get some help from photographers for the out-of-home and Instagram elements of the campaign, created by Lloyd&Co.