While most nations have their national animal immortalised on the emoji keyboard, New Zealand continues to wait for our beloved flightless bird to make the cut after a few unsuccessful applications.

So on World Emoji Day (July 17), Tourism NZ posted a simple open letter on social media urging fans of NZ to prove to Unicode that the kiwi bird deserves its rightful place on the esteemed emoji keyboard.

This was the gold key and brown circle emoji’s most famed moment in history as they made national and international headlines and flooded social media with thousands of NZers and overseas fans proudly declaring their love for our country and support for our little beaked emoji.