Most people have seen at least one meme in their life. Memes can be used to link people together, find viral topics, mock major issues and to pass time. In Taiwan, bloggers also blend paragraphs with memes to express their feelings in a more vivid way. 

For me, I really enjoy the memes made with the animes I watched and the ones my boyfriend shares with me. Ever since we’re together, he either shares with me funny memes from time to time or uses my pictures to make memes and we burst into laughter together. Seeing that memes are creating such a buzz in my life, I decided to take a closer look at memes and its impact on marketing (my fav topic!!). 

What are memes? And what makes meme so special?

How does the world define it?

Memes are mostly captioned pictures with trendy jokes and are easy to share. It uses humor to process difficult situations, crises or serious issues.

My definition

Hilarious combinations of blurry pictures and/or misspelled words. I can easily use them to start a conversation and bring some good laughs just by sharing them with friends or using them in messages.

Meme-creations are slightly different from place to place since most of them are closely linked to slangs, certain cultures and the jokes are made by common online users. It is often used to mock political situations, laugh about annoying issues like working over hours, or making fun of a movie… Unfortunately with my weaker understanding of western culture, I often find myself less able to relate with English memes and take longer to understand the jokes. Saying so, the hilarious sides of each of the captioned images are still there. 

It is certainly a well-developed and independent online culture, especially to the youngsters. It is hard to make a good joke but when one gag works, it provokes strong resonance amongst the audiences. In the marketing way, it means people would proactively share, comment or engage with the content and when something brings traffic it’s attractive to online users! That’s why there are many people who steal memes across platforms, trying to build up the traffic for their social media accounts this way. If you want to know more about meme wars, check out this video from Internet Historian! 

                                                                  Actual OC meme

The market loves memes, how about marketers?

On average, people spend more than 3.5 hours a day on their phone (emarketer), and pick up their phones about 58 times a day (The Guardian). According to Statista, the average time spent on social media is 144 minutes per day worldwide. The popularity of memes is high too! From Google Trends’ data, the search term “memes” has increasingly higher interests among internet users over the past 10 years. These all lead to the reason why more and more marketers start to pay attention to memes as a communication tool and its impact on branding.

In the marketing world, you always want to speak the language your audience is using. You want people to listen then react in the way you expected. Especially when trying to catch the attention of the younger generation on social media, a market always needs to keep up with the trends! What marketers do every day is to try to find the best formula of latest sayings, viral activities, brand names and the subject they’d like to mention. If it’s perfectly balanced, the end result can build up a positive feeling towards the brand. Using memes for marketing can be a good idea to raise brand awareness and engagement but it can also very easily bring harm to the brand. 

When a brand is trying to use memes to talk to the younger generation, brands often find themselves missing the timing,  misunderstanding the meaning of a punch line or overly place a product or brand name. As a result, the attractiveness of the sponsored memes are usually lost and even create a confusing brand image at the end. With memes, people always expect a fun, silly and authentic captioned picture. Sponsored contents and ads with too much product or brand placement are definitely not appreciated anywhere on social feeds.

The million-dollar question: Should brands use memes? 

Generally speaking, most of the popular memes are user-generated which means it’s hard for a brand to track and control it along with its radical effects. Unlike other types of social content, a meme can easily become viral like wildfire yet each gag’s life span is surprisingly short. 

There are a few success cases like Netflix with its original film Bird Box. Within a day of its release, the internet is on fire with all kinds of related memes! It successfully links those who just finished the film to the meme content to continue the impact of the intense story. While at the same time, it helps attract those who haven’t watch the film to Netflix and watch the most trendy movie in order not to be left out from the buzz. (More insights of the Bird Box success visit this article from WIRED!)

For more ideas about meme marketing, read articles from Forbes and PPC Protect! 

                                                                      Actual OC meme

If you want to dive deeper into the meme culture...

On all kinds of social channels, where do all the memes come from and where to find them? Many follow 9gag on Instagram or Facebook, there are also more cultural ones from pages like Your Everyday Asian on Facebook. While on Reddit, r/dankmemes is the go-to page for meme lovers. The attractiveness of memes is worth being experienced by yourself and to be seen with your own eyes!

The final touch, memes are certainly the type of content that you can get lost in for a great laugh. As an internet heavy user, memes are ideal for keeping up with digital trends. Hopefully, soon I’ll join the creator side and I guess by then my friends and family would start worrying about what kinds of captions I’d add on their pictures!

Cover Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash