Meme's and Marketing Explained

Oh. Friggin’. Boy. We’ve been excited to get to writing about this topic.

Memes. 

Oh yes. You heard me right. Memes. Those funny pictures seem to have taken the internet world by storm. You see them everywhere, your Facebook feed, Instagram, google searches, heck, even advertisements. That last mentioned bit is what we’re excited to talk about. Marketing and advertising. The holy duo. A match made in heaven. The chance to use humor to advertise your product to the world. 

The real question is though; does it work? Well, we're here to tell you - It does. It works marvelously.

According to a YPulse survey, 75% of 13-36-year-olds (and 79% of 13-17-year-olds) share memes on social media. According to the same survey, 55 percent of 13-35-year-olds post memes weekly, and 30 percent share them daily. On December 10, 2020, Instagram published a blog in which it stated that memes were what brought us closer this year. The business stated that over 1 million Instagram users share memes on a daily basis. Gen Z, which interacts the most with Meme’s - has an estimated buying power of 300 billion USD and growing, year over year. If you were looking for a way to reach a younger audience, here’s your chance! Meme’s give you the potential to tap into this market and make a serious impact. 

A Meme - Defined

Via a quick google search, you’d find this definition via oxford dictionary:

• An element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by non-genetic means, especially imitation.
• A humorous image, video, piece of text, etc., that is copied (often with slight variations) and spread rapidly by internet users.

In layman’s terms - or what you see the most often, is captioned pictures depicting an inside joke or humor from its origin that relates to the situation it’s poking fun at, so basically, a picture or image that will make you laugh (or should).

A Meme - History

The history, or creation of the word we know today as meme originated from science, believe it or not. Here’s a quick excerpt from our friends over at YouthTime.EU:

“The first person to have coined the word meme was Richard Dawkins, in his 1979 book titled “The Selfish Gene.” Dawkins came up with the term while trying to find a unit that measured how ideas were spread across generations. Dawkins considered the meme to resemble a gene, in the sense of its evolutionary properties. Just as genes and physical traits evolve through natural selection, the same happens to memes through ideas, if they undergo evolution. The first version of the word used by Dawkins was originally Mimeme— a Greek word signifying “that which is imitated.” The term was later modified to just “meme” to emphasize its relevance to the word “gene.”

To think that one of the generation's most prolific scientists would be responsible for spawning a cultural phenomenon that would transcend decades to the place it’s at now is pretty wild. Fate would have it, right?

A Meme - Marketing

So - I bet you’re wondering how you can use Meme’s in marketing. Well, our bud’s over at Invideo.io have written some awesome tips that we think hit the nail on the head. So without further adieu;

“Whether you are an online marketing agency creating advertising memes for your clients or a marketer looking for how to create branding memes for your product/company’s marketing, this section will give you a headstart on how you can potentially look to leverage memes in your marketing plans.

While there are no rules to be followed, keep in mind the following points while marketing through memes.

Identify what your brand is about

As with any social media strategy, memes need to reflect your brand's core values and messaging for it to work.

If your brand is all about friendliness and warmth, then a meme with crude humor is likely to confuse your audience members and go down poorly with them. Therefore, personalize your memes to deliver content that suits your target audience. Thus, meme marketing research involves understanding your audience as the first step. 

Gucci, for instance, used a Renaissance painting to make this viral meme that also embodied the luxury and good taste that Gucci represents.

Gucci started using memes in their marketing in 2017, and they even decided on a particular hashtag, "TFWGucci," wherein TFW stands for "The Feeling When."

Be relatable

The memes you pick need to reflect a universally popular joke or a deeply relatable situation. If your target audience members cannot relate to the context, they would not engage with you, and it also might blow up your reputation.

A case in point is this example from Apple TV which is one of the best meme marketing examples for 2022. AppleTV’s use of a pop culture reference from the movie No Country For Old Men is relatable and witty for their audience that is interested in movies.

Create proper buyer personas for memes

Monitor conversations that happen online related to your brand or business niche. Give your ideal customer a name, age, interests, and possibly a backstory. This vital information can help you strategize your marketing plans for success. Plus, when you know what your target audience is like, you will choose better memes for digital platforms.

Let’s take the example of the food delivery platform Zomato. Their social media team nails marketing with memes. Here’s a meme marketing example posted on their Twitter feed, something that their target audience (users between the age group 15-45) can relate to.

Personalize the most trending memes

One of the best ways to go viral quickly is to use memes related to a current event (also called memejacking) that has garnered universal interest. KFC, for instance, hopped on the famous "Bird Box" meme bandwagon around the time of the film's release on Netflix by depicting Sandra Bullock with a bucket of chicken as she fights for survival.

Its caption read, "The only #BirdBox you need." That is the level of personalization you must aim to have in your memes. Alternatively, you can personalize your sales emails or any other internal communications with such custom memes too.

Add originality to popular memes

Instead of merely reposting a popular meme, weave your brand's slogan, mission, or product values into the text for a touch of originality. This not only generates a few extra laughs but also works for your brand recognition.

Fast-food brand Ruffles does this cleverly, as seen in this meme. It gives a modern twist to its offering with the help of an old photo.

To do this, you need to stay on top of popular memes and figure out a way to customize them for your brand. One way of doing this is by using popular meme templates on InVideo and then simply tweaking this for your brand. 

Time your memes well

Quite often, memes have a short lifespan because they work around an event that not many people know about. To maximize your chances of going viral, do your research on how popular a meme currently is.

An example of well-timed memes in advertising on Instagram is from The Beard Club. For Christmas, they used two images to showcase a common situation – that we all had a challenging 2020.

So to be ahead of the curve and on top of the trending meme examples, stay abreast with the latest news, and follow meme accounts such as Sarcasm Only, Epic Funny Page, LadBible, and LMAO  on Instagram. 

Meme marketing examples: How are brands implementing meme marketing?

By now, you know that using memes in marketing is all about creating engagement and making users feel they’re a part of a community. This means it is a way of developing a sense of belonging.

For a genuine dose of inspiration, here are some meme marketing examples from top brands that we loved:

Memes in blog posts

By now, you know how important images are to your blog posts and your content marketing, as they make your content easier to digest for readers. Also, they’ve proven to improve SEO rankings.

Besides making your blog posts more visually engaging, memes contribute to the tone of your brand’s voice, serving as a differentiator. Here’s how we have used memes in our recent blog post to keep the content interesting and relatable for our audience.

Another example is the rewards and recognition platform Xoxoday Plum which uses content marketing memes to show their audiences their use case - which is why organizations should let employees choose their own gifts from their global catalog of 2,000+ options instead of choosing a standardized gift for all of them.

Memes in email marketing

While emails remain the most effective digital marketing channels, it is a great place to use memes. Given that the first

The best marketing memes can make your email more visually attractive, and as memes have a relatively smaller file size, they are great to add to your emails. Here’s an example of how Quuu uses memes in their email marketing.

You can use memes to promote a sale, special offer, or announce an event via your emails.

The brand - Function of Beauty sells customizable skin, hair, and beauty products by visually recreating their social media look and feel in emails as well as funny memes. Here’s an example of this:

If you'd like to explore cat memes, we have a ton of templates at InVideo that you can edit and make your own.

Memes in social media marketing

Branded content could fall flat on younger audiences, and that’s where online marketing memes can give your younger followers the feeling that you genuinely understand their perspective. 

Here, this meme by Chipotle is brilliant on a whole new level. This funny advertising meme is unique in many ways. Firstly, they have a meme from their product by adding some emojis. This teaches us that you don’t always need to add an outside picture when you can put your own product in the spotlight creatively. 

Second- the text in the meme is on point. It gives a clear message that you can eat Chipotle even when you’re broke - it is affordable. 

Source

When you know for a fact that connecting with your audiences on social media is the best way to grow your business and following, publishing memes for social media marketing can help you foster the meaningful connections you are aiming for. 

Epic Read is another example of a brand that posts super fun memes on Facebook. What sets their meme marketing game apart is that their memes are super-specific to their target audience of book readers. How well can you relate to a meme like this?

Want some more information about Memes? Reach out to us below! Also, make sure to subscribe to our newsletter here!

Sources:

InVideo, P., 2022. What is Meme Marketing: 4 Ways to Use Memes in Your Digital Marketing Campaigns. [online] InVideo - Online Video Creator for Content and Marketing Videos. Available at: <https://invideo.io/blog/meme-marketing/> [Accessed 3 August 2022].