The use of memes in advertising

Using memes on the internet has become a very widespread practice in the last few years. It is no wonder then that they are used in other fields, such as advertising and marketing. In this essay first I would like to clarify what a meme is and then explain why and how it can be used for marketing purposes, giving a few examples at the end.

According to the Online Oxford Dictionary, the word meme today means “an image, video, piece of text, etc., typically humorous in nature that is copied and spread rapidly by Internet users, often with slight variations” (Oxford Online Dictionaries). The term was coined by Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologist, in 1976, meaning the “cultural equivalent of a gene, anything that is copied, imitated and spreads around like a virus” (Guardian). Of course, back then its meaning was truly biological but now, in the age of the internet, this expression has been applied to a new aspect of human culture – electronic media.

With internet memes, users can express and share a feeling or an experience that is common and familiar for other users. This familiarity, commonness and sharing is what is good about memes: taking only a short glimpse at them is enough for a user to understand what the other user would like to express, and they can immediately connect to that common experience. For the sake of simplicity, in this essay I will only examine image memes.

The marketing departments of some companies are shrewd and could detect the use of memes on the internet as something worth their attention. This is how they ended up using some of the most popular ones for advertising their own products and services. This is called memejacking, i.e. “hijacking popular memes for your own benefit -- in this case, for marketing purposes”, according to Pamela Vaughan, marketing expert (Vaughan).

There are several reasons why memejacking is useful for advertising and why the advertisements made with this technique function better than the average ones. Firstly, when potential customers spot them, they immediately recognise the meme and, besides smiling at it, will remember the advertisement later as something peculiar and creative. This is the same kind of connection they feel when they see the meme on the internet posted by other users. The British media company, Virgin Media, for example, used Success Kid very well in a campaign. The caption says, “Tim just realised his parents get HD channels at no extra cost” (Vaughan). The message is clear, convincing the audience with one simple sentence that they must get this service. Secondly, it is beneficial for the company, too, because creating them is quite easy and cheap, so there is no need to spend millions on expensive advertising campaigns when there is a simpler and more creative way. This is why HipChat using Y U No Guy, with the simple caption, “Y U No Use HipChat?” was successful (Vaughan). The advertisement is brief, to the point, creative and captures the people’s attention immediately. Thirdly, one crucial characteristic of a meme is that it can go viral very soon and then the whole internet is full of it and everyone knows it. This rapid spread is what a company needs for their advertised products to reach millions of people in a short time, and with the help of memes this can be obtained easily.

There are some issues which must be considered before creating a memevertisment, that is, an advertisement that uses a meme. It is extremely important for the company to know how to use the memes exactly. Not all memes are alike, every one of them expresses something different, and this is why it is important to do some research in order to know what they really mean and how they are used on the internet. The creators should identify the memes that have just gone viral and are very popular at the moment and then choose that one which is the most appropriate for their advertising purposes. Another aspect which needs to be considered is the target audience. Although not everyone knows what memes are or even how to use the internet, the number of these people is decreasing, so using memes in advertising is a useful technique that can reach out to a lot of people. For this, the perfect example is Grumpy Cat as it was used in an anti-drinking advertisement, saying “Should you drink at prom? No!” (NewAdverteering). It is again a direct and short message that later is remembered by students at the prom.

All in all, what we can see from the three examples mentioned above is that the general rules of advertising are relevant when using memes, too, meaning the use of a picture and a sentence that is short, simple and to the point. The use of memes in advertising, a field that has long been considered by people as lying or boring, is a new and creative way of convincing people of the merits of a particular product or service.

References

Guardian, The. “Richard Dawkins on Memes – Cannes Lions 2013.” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 28. June. 2013. Web. 27. Oct 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCzb6SuyriU

Markowski, Jordan. “The Best Examples of Meme Marketing.” Sparksheet. 4. Oct. 2013. Web. 27. Oct 2014. http://sparksheet.com/the-best-examples-of-meme-marketing/

“Meme.” Online Oxford Dictionaries. Web. 27. Oct. 2014. http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/meme?searchDictCode=all 

“Memevertisment.” NewAdverteering. 14. Oct. 2013. Web. 27. Oct. 2014. http://newadverteering.wordpress.com/2013/10/14/memevertisment/

Scherer, John. “Popular Memes and How to Use Them in Facebook Ads.” Leaders west Digital Marketing Journal. Web. 27. Oct. 2014. http://leaderswest.com/2014/02/13/the-psychology-of-memes-and-how-to-use-them-in-facebook-ads/

Spencer, Stephan. “Leveraging Memes for Your Own Viral Marketing.” Marketing Land. 26. Nov. 2013. Web. 27. Oct 2014. http://marketingland.com/leveraging-memes-for-your-own-viral-marketing-63919

Vaughan, Pamela. “10 Popular Memes Masquerading as Marketing Campaigns.” Inbound Marketing. HubSpot. 7. June. 2012. Web. 27. Oct 2014. http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33197/10-Popular-Memes-Masquerading-as-Marketing-Campaigns.aspx