Memes are culture right now. And it has transformed to become social media’s voice. If a person wants to be updated about the world and what’s happening in it, just follow a few meme pages. That is all! Movies, politics, relatable content, opinions, news, very recent developments like cryptocurrency, and much more information on the internet every day are achieved in the form of memes.
So, here’s a question, if societies are built from brands and societies are consuming memes, then why are brands not doing meme marketing? It could mean that many brands out there still ‘think’ that posting a branded version of a meme trend on their brand handle is meme marketing. It is a really good move to stay close to the meme culture, but they are missing out on a certain level of curiosity to understand what the bigger picture is with regards to memes.
If that seems to be the case, then what is meme marketing? It is the art of combining any sort of brand narrative via the usage of memes and germinating those memes on social media through the meme community. The meme community is a group of meme pundits who creates memes of different shapes and sizes. This community, which is part of the internet, is the source of meme consumption. From Akshar Pathak, who is a meme influencer, to random Twitter users with around 7000 followers tweeting things funny enough to be selected by meme pages with millions of followers.
Why meme marketing is so crucial right now is because there is an exponential divide between how brands want to communicate with the general mass and how the general mass, in turn, wants to communicate. Brands do not concentrate on what or how the general mass prefers to hear; rather they tend to concentrate on what they want to say.
To add to that, brands push ads down people’s throats under the mask of retargeting, but the ‘skip ads’ button is what the people search for first. People want to be interacted with very casually, but brands are tip-toeing about being casual.
If brand managers want to stay updated about the meme community, here are some tips:
- Talk to your interns or a young person to understand the kinds of memes they like and get following.
- Never leave a meme alone, ask your friends or colleagues to explain what the meme is, or feel free to check the comment section.
- Try not to view meme marketing as just another of those tools to shove ads around. It is not a new way to pack your ads; used to be the case in 2015, not anymore.
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