“Man what a time, to be alive” – if you know, you know. For those of y’all that don’t know, this is a popular line from Drake and Future’s joint collaboration mixtape that dropped in the fall of 2015. Following its huge success, people came to learn that they made the mixtape in a mere 6 days! Due to this fact, and of course the iconic mixtape title, it was well on its way to becoming one of the hottest all-time memes of the decade.

Here’s a good example, especially for all our Dragon Ball Z fans out there, we know you’ve been rocking with this for a hot minute now.

This reinforces the times that we live in. We are flooded with social media news and global activities on a daily basis, so much so that people have begun to treat it like a drug. Social media has the power to get people hooked – whether you’re a content producer or just a consumer, social media can excite your senses in such a way that you can’t help but want to keep coming back for more. Your dopamine is spiked and it creates such a reward system in your brain that you find yourself reaching for your phone every 10 to 15 minutes. That’s an average of unlocking your phone to look at “stuff” up to 64 times a day for the 16 hours that you’re awake!

This phenomenon has been greatly tail winded by memes, but hold on…

What even are Memes?

So a meme is a portrayal of a concept or a joke (as pictured above) conveyed through an image that may or may not have some text in it. Pro memers (yes, that’s a thing) can tell you the name, origin, and use of a meme without even having to look at the text in it. The bottom-line concept is to share humor in a way that is snappy, crisp, and to the point. Memes came into inception around the mid-’90s but have recently bombarded the internet with no signs of slowing down. And rightfully so…

Memes have become a part of our culture and have planted its roots so deep into our very nature of browsing and interacting on the internet that it doesn’t seem to be a trend anymore. It has elevated itself into becoming a part and parcel of experiencing the internet in this day and age. Some common memes include:

1. Change My Mind

2. Success Kid

3. Exit 12

   

4. That Escalated Quickly

   

5. Shut Up and Take My Money

Some of these go down as classics while others are seasonal. Believe it or not, memers classify memes chronologically and often publish meme calendars on their meme pages, ranked by popularity – the same concept that goes behind Employee of the Month Awards. This is the sort of grasp memes have on our online society these days. This brings us to our next section – What is a Meme Community?

 What is a Meme Community?

To put it simply, a meme community as the name suggests is an online community of people that come together to revel in the pleasure of making and sharing memes. These are groups of meme enthusiasts who create and share memes on multiple platforms and are basically responsible for making half the things you see on the internet go viral. There are influencers that have become incredibly popular just by making and sharing memes and have amassed millions of followers.

Now, that’s a ton of engagement for a page that mainly deals with in-jokes. This helps throw light on what people actually seek when browsing online. They usually want something light or gauzy that they can enjoy while trying to decompress from the world; which brings us to our next section on how marketers can use this to create brand awareness and increase engagement.

What is Meme Marketing?

Meme marketing is a subset of viral marketing which is a practice of using mediums like word of mouth and social media networks to fulfill marketing goals. These goals are then tied to memes and created in such a way that by posting them on your socials, your content is bound to go viral. For that to happen you have to check a few boxes. You have to make sure your memes:

1. Provide a comical factor
2. Aren’t just Images
3. Are like, totally relatable and
4. Don’t die out in a couple of months or weeks.

How do you exactly make this happen? Read on as we address it further in the article.

As you must have guessed by now, Meme Marketing is the practice of using memes to promote a brand or product by creating appealing, engaging, and fast-spreading news or content.

Why are many brands still not on the Meme Marketing trend?

Just because it works, does not mean it will work for you too. Many brands realize that their messaging and tonality do not fit the air of a meme. They know what their values are and if it does not include humor then it doesn’t make sense to be marketing themselves with the help of memes. Doing this will only send the wrong idea and can have a negative effect on their brand image.

Brands like SparkNotes, Slim Jim, Glossier and Ugly Drinks have truly understood the assignment. They thoroughly understand their target audiences and have worked to serve their need for humor on their social media posts, making them go viral. Here are a couple of examples.

1. Slim Jim

2. Glossier

3. Ugly Drinks

Tips for growth marketing agencies to get better at Meme Marketing

If you’re still struggling to understand the meme culture but are well aware of its potential to go viral, then you need to take a breather, dive a little deeper and reassess a couple of things before you call your marketing inters to fetch you the “latest memes”. You need to consider:

Do memes fit your brand image, to begin with?

As in, do you want to adopt a light, humorous tone with your audience and will that do justice to your brand image or are you just looking for a quick fix to internet fame? If your answer is the latter you won’t want to reconsider adopting this approach altogether.

There are many digital marketing firms such as Mobikasa that can help you come with your own tailored method of marketing yourself so you don’t necessarily have to hop on a trend that might lead you to crash and burn.

A lot of brands have trouble reaching younger audiences because they lack the communication skills needed for that. They usually try to force ads down their throats not realizing that every teenager or millennial that has been on the internet for more than 20 minutes has ad-blockers installed on almost every website they frequent.

So how do you get through to them?

Well, you try to walk in their shoes, try to understand why they’re on the internet. Most youngsters do not have a problem with buying stuff online but they want to be serenaded in the form of quality entertainment. If they relate to your brand, if they understand and absorb your message and develop a liking to your sense of humor, you’ve won half the battle as a brand. Try the following few pointers to make your brand more relatable and stand out in their eyes:

1. Find your memes from popular sources like Twitter, Reddit, and Instagram. Follow retweeted memes, understand their roots, and try to relate them to your brand. Follow Reddit handles and Instagram pages with a million followers to stay on top of your meme game from a personal standpoint. If you’re good at getting memes yourself you can infuse them into your brand with great ease. A LOT of people aged 13 to 35 spend hours on these apps and websites and for them, finding a brand that gets their sense of humor is golden – that’s called tying the memes to your product. You’ll have an instant click right there.
2. Every time you see a Meme and you think you didn’t get it, don’t stop there. Make the effort to ask your friends to explain it to you or check the comment section. People discuss memes all the time and you can gather some useful information from there. Bottom line – never underestimate the engagement memes get on their comments.
3. Don’t try to use memes as a way to toss ads to your audience, although amusing, it can be really cringing sometimes, so if you’re doing it takes the opinion of your younger team members before you post it. As mentioned above, many brands have learned to use memes in a tasteful way so try and find your style too.

With that said, if you want any sort of assistance getting your brand off the ground, whether it be in terms of website development, website migration, social media engagement or plain and simple (yet, not so simple) growth marketing, head over to our Contact Us page and drop a query. We’ll be sure to get in touch with you ASAP.