The Ad Council has announced that it will be debuting its signature custom eye emoji beginning today when users type #IAmAWitness to take a stand against bullying.

"I Am A Witness is a digital-focused campaign developed pro bono by Goodby Silverstein & Partners in collaboration with Adobe, Apple, Facebook, Google, YouTube, Johnson & Johnson and Twitter. The campaign features a new eye emoji supported by the Unicode Standard, which is now available on iPhone running iOS 9.1,” said the Ad Council in a press release.

The campaign is an effort to give teens who witness bullying and cruelty on the internet the power to take a stand; the custom eye emoji signifies a unifying symbol that is one-of-its-kind.

"The campaign aims to activate the silent majority of kids who witness it each day, and empower them to use the eye emoji and additional creative assets to speak up, be a friend and reject bullying,” the Ad Council said.

The anti-bullying custom emoji made headlines in late October after appearing on the iOS update and being revealed as the first-ever social awareness emoji.

Ad Council CEO Lisa Sherman told NPR that the emoji is a “digital arm wrapped around a cyberbullying victim.”

"Since the launch of I Am A Witness six weeks ago, the effort has generated extraordinary reach and engagement with over 600 million online impressions, 10 million video views, 57,000 uses of the keyboard emoji images and 35,000 downloads of campaign stickers on Kik. Additionally, two sponsored posts on Whisper, as part of an ongoing partnership, have resulted in more than 410,000 impressions and over 1,100 replies,” the Ad Council said.

Sherman says the custom emoji for Twitter is a crucial extension of the campaign that will further help teens embrace the message.

Read more about the campaign here.

Article by Nicole Gorman, Education World Contributor

12/9/2015