Sunday

28th May 2023

Finland brands itself with sauna and headbanger emojis

  • Sauna, the Nokia 3310 model, and a headbanger: quintessentally Finnish according to its foreign ministry (Photo: Bruno Leo Ribeiro)

Finland is trying to improve its brand among teenagers by publishing a set of emojis – pictograms or images often used in online chats, e-mails, text and social media messages.

The Finnish ministry of foreign affairs announced the set of “country-themed emojis” on Wednesday (4 November) in a press release, saying it “is the first country in the world” to do so.

Read and decide

Join EUobserver today

Become an expert on Europe

Get instant access to all articles — and 20 years of archives. 14-day free trial.

... or subscribe as a group

European countries generally do well in nation branding. In the most recent country brand index of FutureBrand, 13 of the top-20 countries are European, with Switzerland (2), Germany (3) and Sweden (4) performing best (Japan was number 1). Finland stood at place 13.

The emojis that have been released so far are images of a Nokia phone from the early 2000s, a headbanger, and two people in a sauna.

“Quite many countries tend to forget the teenagers and young people in their country branding”, Petra Theman, head of public diplomacy at Finland's foreign affairs ministry, told EUobserver.

Originally from Japan, emojis have become a popular means of expression across the world since hundreds of them were encoded in the so-called Unicode standard in 2010.

The standardisation allowed people using different devices to still use the same emojis – although their appearance may differ depending on the operating system of the computer, tablet or smartphone.

There is now even an annual World Emoji Day (17 July) and an online catalogue.

Another factor of the emojis' success was when they were included in the operating system of Apple's iPhone in 2011, and other systems followed. Now, many smartphones allow its users to use emojis with the press of a button.

However, it will be less simple for the Finnish symbols.

Theman told this website that Finland will actually not be applying for adoption in Unicode, a process which its governing body, the Unicode Consortium, says “can take two years or more”.

And even after characters are added to the encoding standard, they won't be able to be used until software builders update their systems.

“They will not be on your keyboard” in for example a message service like Telegram or Whatsapp, Theman noted.

Rather, the Finnish emojis will be “stickers”, which are basically giant-size emojis, but rather than encoded text these are actual images.

Theman said that beyond the three emojis that were announced, it has not yet been decided which ones will be in the final package of over 30 emojis, which will be released for download on 1 December 2015.

So are Finns so different from other Europeans, or even everyone in the world, that they need their own characters to express their feelings?

“It's not that we are that different, but I think many nations would be happy to have their own emojis”, said Theman.

With the popular Nokia mobile phone, Finns were early adopters of the short message service, or SMS, which pushed them to communicate non-verbally, said Theman, using emoticons like the smiley.

Earlier this year, photo networking site Instagram released some figures about its users and noted that emoji use in Finland is the highest in a 14-country sample.

Sixty three percent of Instagram texts from Finland included emojis, while that percentage was only 39 percent in Japan, the birthplace of the emoji.

Users from Italy, France, UK, and Germany included emojis between 45 and 50 percent of the time.

The Finnish emojis were created by Brazilian designer Bruno Leo Ribeiro, who previously designed emojis of famous musicians.

What digital barriers do Europeans still face?

"Mom! I did something illegal!" - as the EU gets set to unveil its new strategy on liberalising the digital single market, what online barriers do Europeans still face?

In Finland, the euro is not the real problem

Finns are living through tough economic times. Rather than blaming the euro, they should concentrate on repairing the dangerous divides that are developing in their society.

Predicting migration: the opaque science behind AI technologies

European states and international organisations have developed technologies to detect migration patterns and predict the number of people from third countries seeking asylum in the EU. But doubts have been raised about the effectiveness and desirability of using predictive technologies.

EU lawmakers 'hold breath' on eve of AI vote

European lawmakers regulating the risks of artificial intelligence are likely to face resistance from EU states ahead of negotiations later this year and possibly even among their peers ahead of a plenary vote.

Column

EU lobbying clean-up — what happened to that?

Six months after Qatargate, as institutional inertia and parliamentary privileges weigh in, the sense of gravity and collective resolve have all but disappeared. MEPs show little enthusiasm for reform of the rules that today allow them significant outside paid activities.

Latest News

  1. How the EU's money for waste went to waste in Lebanon
  2. EU criminal complicity in Libya needs recognition, says expert
  3. Europe's missing mails
  4. MEPs to urge block on Hungary taking EU presidency in 2024
  5. PFAS 'forever chemicals' cost society €16 trillion a year
  6. EU will 'react as appropriate' to Russian nukes in Belarus
  7. The EU needs to foster tech — not just regulate it
  8. EU: national energy price-spike measures should end this year

Stakeholders' Highlights

  1. International Sustainable Finance CentreJoin CEE Sustainable Finance Summit, 15 – 19 May 2023, high-level event for finance & business
  2. ICLEISeven actionable measures to make food procurement in Europe more sustainable
  3. World BankWorld Bank Report Highlights Role of Human Development for a Successful Green Transition in Europe
  4. Nordic Council of MinistersNordic summit to step up the fight against food loss and waste
  5. Nordic Council of MinistersThink-tank: Strengthen co-operation around tech giants’ influence in the Nordics
  6. EFBWWEFBWW calls for the EC to stop exploitation in subcontracting chains

Stakeholders' Highlights

  1. InformaConnecting Expert Industry-Leaders, Top Suppliers, and Inquiring Buyers all in one space - visit Battery Show Europe.
  2. EFBWWEFBWW and FIEC do not agree to any exemptions to mandatory prior notifications in construction
  3. Nordic Council of MinistersNordic and Baltic ways to prevent gender-based violence
  4. Nordic Council of MinistersCSW67: Economic gender equality now! Nordic ways to close the pension gap
  5. Nordic Council of MinistersCSW67: Pushing back the push-back - Nordic solutions to online gender-based violence
  6. Nordic Council of MinistersCSW67: The Nordics are ready to push for gender equality

Join EUobserver

Support quality EU news

Join us