The World Raises Its Umbrella for Safe Sex, but the battle for a #CondomEmoji is not over yet!

Mumbai, 5^th December 2016  Durex refuses to give up its fight for the creation of an official Condom Emoji, and the global reaction to its latest campaign shows that the world agrees that a condom emoji would make a real difference in how young people everywhere communicate about safe sex.

Last week Durex marked World AIDS Day by unveiling “Umbrella with Raindrops” as the temporary unofficial safe sex emoji following global research to discover the most popular choice¹. The announcement prompted a spectacular response which saw the internet covered in umbrellas on December 1^st as people took to their smartphones to show Unicode just how much they want a condom emoji to become a reality.

To mark World AIDS Day people showed their support by using the umbrella emoji more than 15,000 times² on twitter. The campaign hashtag #CondomEmoji achieved over 44 million potential impressions as it trended around the world³. An accompanying global research poll further supported the case for an official safe sex emoji, revealing that more than three quarters of young people use emojis to discuss sex and that  91.7% agree that a condom emoji on their phone would be a significant help in enabling them to make sex safer.

Now, Emojipedia, the “leading resource in documenting emoji”⁴, has announced that it has updated its definition of “Open Umbrella with Raindrops” in response to the impact the campaign has had and the resulting change in the emoji’s use.

In addition to this, and in a world first, Emojipedia has also thrown its support behind the campaign by creating a page for the as yet to be approved condom emoji. Never before has Emojipedia featured a page for an icon that has not been approved by Unicode, again demonstrating the case for Unicode to reconsider their decision and make the #CondomEmoji a reality.

Volker Sydow, Global Category Director at Durex commented “We know that young people are using emojis to communicate with each other and discuss sex. With so many people around the world using the unofficial safe sex emoji this week, we have further strong evidence that a real #CondomEmoji is a necessary addition to the official line up to help contribute to make sex safer.”

Emojipedia founder Jeremy Burge⁵ added, "If the 60% of young people who are uncomfortable discussing safe sex are better able to talk about it using the unofficial safe sex emoji, that is a great thing. Emoji use is very flexible and changes over time. Emojis are a great way to make a discussion like this more accessible to everyone.”

Emojipedia links:

        http://emojipedia.org/umbrella-with-rain-drops/

        http://emojipedia.org/condom/

Campaign Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxndJz-CBf4