Durex, owned by London-listed Reckitt Benckiser, has written a firm letter to the Unicode Consortium, the nonprofit group that approves new entries for the Unicode writing system (the emoji keyboard), to approve its condom emoji design.
The open letter pushes the Unicode Consortium to approve Durex’s design for a condom emoji during its scheduled meeting at the Adobe Systems in San Jose, California. The condom brand pushed for emoji condoms last November, ahead of World AIDs Day, in an effort to promote safe sex. The #CondomEmoji campaign
The company is still pushing for it, Durex tweeted a letter to lobby the Unicode Consortium to approve the emoji. “A safe sex emoji will empower them to talk openly about protection,” part of tweet reads. “Let’s make 2016 the year emojis take safe sex seriously.”
Durex posted a video to showing the open text message it sent to Unicode.
The push to get the condom emoji on the keyboard, which is widely used on iOs and Android systems, is supported by the AIDs Foundation of Chicago, the Terrence Higgins Trust and MTV’s Staying Alive foundation.
The #CondomEmoji campaign claims that emojis play a vital role in young people’s conversations around sex. Global research commissioned by the Durex found 80 per cent of 18-25 year olds find it easier to express themselves using emojis and more than half of respondents regularly using emojis when discussing sex
If approved, the earliest the condom emoji could appear on keyboards is mid-2017.
