PepsiCo, the giant soft drink company behind such iconic brands like Pepsi, Mountain Dew, Diet Pepsi and others is set to launch an emoji-clad packaging campaign in more than 100 countries this year, with the hopes that people will be encouraged to buy their drinks, as well as promote them on social media.

So far there has been no word yet from Seven-Up Bottling Company, the local PepsiCo affiliate in Nigeria, on whether the campaign would be coming to Nigeria.

Canada, Russia and Pakistan were the first countries to see the campaign in 2015, after Pepsi launched a short film for World Emoji Day on July 17, 2015.

The company says that emoji’s strength lies in its universal appeal. “An emoji is a small digital image or icon used to express an idea or emotion in electronic communication.”

PepsiCo said it created hundreds of emoji designs, including some that will have global appeal and some tailor made for local markets – all based on the shape of the company’s red-white-and –blue Pepsi circle.

“Along with the core universal set of emoji, regional markets are empowered to create their own set of relevant emoji,” the company said.

PepsiCo’s CEO Indra Nooyi, said that “Emojis are the language of today but no one has put them in the world like Pepsi will in 2016.”

Pepsi’s move comes after its main rival, Coca-Cola launched its very successful Share-a-Coke campaign in 2014, and a subsequent Share-a–feeling campaign earlier this year. Coke tagged bottles with localized first names in the share-a-coke campaign and emojis in the share-a-feeling campaign.

The motive for PepsiCo is to bolster sagging soft drinks sales. Sales fell 2% in 2015 and 2% in 2014.

The company is encouraging consumers who buy their drinks to also post photos of their emojis on social media such as on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and others. They also want users to use bottles, clad-with emojis to communicate with each other in places such as loud concert venues, where it can be hard to hear what someone is saying.