A Penn State professor is on a quest to convert the whoopie pie into a global symbol by turning it into an emoji you can use from your smartphone, alongside the heart, laughing face or any other emoji.
When Bill Zimmerman, assistant teaching professor in advertising and public relations at Penn State, decided to enhance his teachings about how new emojis are developed for digital advertising campaigns, he decided to unravel the process himself.
He landed on the whoopie pie — or what Western Pennsylvania refers to as a gob — idea last year, hired a designer to develop the emoji icon and submitted a proposal to Unicode Consortium, the official organization that determines which emojis appear on phones and other devices, on April 2.
And when World Emoji Day approached on July 17, he ramped up efforts to spread the word about his proposal by kick-starting an online petition.
Growing up near Johnstown, considered “the home of the gobs” and where the term originated, fueled Zimmerman’s affinity for the cakey dessert. He was inspired by an almost 2,000-member Facebook group where people share their love for the dessert, which led him to create something that has roots to his hometown.
“It really grew out of just having a sweet tooth,” Zimmerman said. “I found it appealing that there was just this very unique kind of Pennsylvania connection to it.”
Although the cake-like dessert originated in Pennsylvania and can be found in other northeastern states — the Maine Legislature designated it as the official state treat in 2011 — Zimmerman said his emoji pitch needed to outline a whoopie pies’ global relevance for it to be considered by the consortium.
In doing so, he reframed the whoopie pie concept as a sandwich style “snack cake” in his proposal and compared the dessert’s appearance to other cakey, cream-filled international desserts such as the French macaron, dorayakis, or Japan sweet burgers, and even ice cream sandwiches.
“The desire to make and enjoy a highly snackable, sandwich treat is universal,” Zimmerman said.
He also emphasized how the dessert emoji has the potential to be communicated in creative ways such as in trendy expressions on treating oneself, classifying a person or thing as a cakey snack or simply expanding the emoji dessert lexicon.
“I see it attached to conversations about the literal dessert, or more general conversations about treats or treating yourself or deserving a treat or something being sweet,” he said.
Most significantly, Zimmerman said going through the process himself has given him a valuable perspective and shown him that pursuing an emoji proposal can ultimately generate significant public attention.
“What I think has been really fun is all the media coverage I’m able to get,” he said. “I’m able to give little shoutouts to small whoopie pie and gob companies that exist regionally and just hype up the connection or get to talk about a dessert that people seem to be so fond of around here.”
This experience will enhance his lessons for years to come by giving his students a firsthand example of how emojis can be used in marketing tactics, he said.
“There’s all these interesting observations and experiences that I can talk about in the class about how you launch a campaign, how you pitch to reporters and how you measure the effectiveness of that coverage,” he said.
Zimmerman added that many of the emojis people use on their smartphones today exist because companies launched campaigns to get them approved.
In his classroom, he teaches about examples such as Taco Bell’s push for the taco emoji, which went through a similar process to get approved in 2024. Another example is Tinder’s campaign for interracial couple emojis, which were developed and proposed by the dating app and added in 2019.
To strengthen his proposal, Zimmerman launched an official website, and the petition he launched has gathered 114 signatures — more than halfway to its goal of 200.
Whether the whoopie pie emoji will appear on smartphones could be decided in November, when Zimmerman said he expects to hear back on his proposal. If it is approved, he said the emoji could appear on Apple and Android smartphones within six months to a year. If it gets rejected, he would need to wait five years to submit a new proposal.
Story by Paloma Pimentel, Centre Daily Times (State College, Pa.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. BDN writer Ethan Andrews contributed reporting.