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Memes: Brand Image Rocketfuel

Spending all day on Twitter counts as reactive marketing, right?

By Rk.kePublished 2 years ago 3 min read
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Comedy is a massively underrated form of marketing. Historically, large companies have always veered away from humour, fearing that it would negatively affect trust in the brand. However, high-brow sophistication and authority are now seen as intimidating; customers now demand increasing transparency and openness.

This mutual openness is a fantastic foundation for humour, as comedy demands a deep understanding of your audience.

At the same time, market leaders are increasingly seeing the value of content production: there is an almost endless demand for online content, with 47% of consumers viewing three to five pieces of content prior to engaging with a brand. Tweets with images see a 150% increase in retweets, too.

Arguably, Denny’s Twitter account was the first to commercialise viral memes in 2016 — to massive success.

The meme above is an adaptation of a widely-consumed format, with its own Denny’s twist. Contextually, Denny’s had been bantering with its online followers over egg consumption for months now: this meme format cements the feeling of an inside joke with its followers.

The concept of a well-established commercial entity having the personality of a regular twitter user really clicked. Following this success, other fast food accounts jumped on the bandwagon.

Wendy’s emerged as a verbal sharp-shooter, quickly becoming renowned for quick-witted roasts of its naysayers and competitors.

This willingness to sling virtual shit made Wendy’s online presence stand out in a sea of corporations, just as Twitter was beginning to become a marketing must-have. This example was particularly potent, as it not only established Wendy’s as aware of competitor concerns — but further built itself as the more likeable and ‘human’ alternative to its major competitor.

Memes are inherently viral: as online users share content and tag their friends, the visibility and traction of a post increases.

As potent as a tool that meme marketing can be, the good marketer should still exercise caution. Nowadays, commercial memes are everywhere, and the danger of bad memes can be found in the term ‘meme-jacking’. Meme-jacking is the overtly commercial use of memes — contrary to some opinions, this label is not something to be celebrated. Nowadays, overt commercialisation risks a lot of ridicule and cyninsim around your brand.

The danger of meme-jacking goes further than just being embarassingly unfunny. Take this Ladbible snap that includes meme content of snoopdog: a callback to early-2010s montage videos on youtube immediately dates this snapchat story. This further creates an image of an outdated or ‘tryhard’ brand:

And, unfortunately, brands have a pretty bad rep when it comes to meme content: Mashable writer Christine Wang writes

Brands, especially fast food brands, are usually pretty terrible at using pop culture references to sell their product. Any time they try to use a meme, it just comes off as sad and derivative.

So, attempting to lazily insert commercial products into a pre-existing meme is a recipe for disaster. If, however, you create original content that is related to your business, memes can be a fantastic tool for brand positioning: consumers adore being entertained. On a subconscious level, they will also know that you really understand the problems that your product/service solves.

So, go for a virtual stroll through your customers’ socials — understand what meme content they adore. Do you find ‘boomer humour’ Facebook memes? Or metatextual Gen X Reddit memes? (Note the difference in platform demographics, too).

Generate your memes through imgflip or — if you want a wider range of customisation — canva. If you’re feeling really fancy, photoshop can lend you full control over your visual humour.

At the end of the day, don’t force it. But, the weird thing about memes is: the more you immerse yourself in the language of badly-edited pngs, the more fluent your meme marketing becomes.

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