Meme your brand

Millennials speak ‘the meme language’. As the young generation has moved from television to social media for entertainment, or distraction, their timeline is crowded with grumpy cats and Gavin the meme kid.

But, memes are not as new as we think. The word ‘meme’ is an anthropological concept coined by Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene. According to him, “memes are an idea, behaviour, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture.” Memes are ideas that are imitated because they strike a common chord and increase the likelihood of evolutionary survival.

Little wonder then that memes go viral -- with younger internet users spending an average of 250 minutes on their mobile phonesfrom 2012-2017,according to GlobalWebIndex. Brands have now started to capitalise on this new obsession.

Actually, the online food-delivery giant Zomato has been at it for a while now. Its witty and humorous content has been successful too. “We have always looked for topical and relevant concepts for social content and the team has done a commendable job,” says a company spokesperson, who does not wish to be named. According to him, memes have proven to be “effective”, being relatable, witty and “in synch with the brand voice”.

Brands are always on the lookout for an interesting topic that can be memed. From Deepika-Ranveer’s wedding pictures to Anushka Sharma’s face in Sui Dhaaga, brands leave no viral content untapped.

One of the most famous ones is the Radhika Apte video meme by Netflix, through which the online media service trolled its trolls. Netflix took the troll memes by their punch line -- of the online service using the actor in many of their productions – and delivered a knockout with its Omnipresent video. The video showing the making of a series in which the actor plays every role – the uneducated village girl, the passionate activist and the evil corporate queen -- came with a tagline ‘Whatever the role,Radhika Apt hai’. 

Brands such as Sony Max, KFC and Ceat Tyres took advantage of this trending topic and generated their own versatile memes. Zomato was the first to play with it. “Our social media team is always on the lookout for engaging topics to play with. The trick is to find a common ground of engagement and when the Radhika Apte memes were floating around, we thought we could definitely add a food twist to the subject. So, we binged on the key factor involved, i.e. versatility, and employed it to connect with our users,” says the Zomato spokesperson. They tweeted that Apte is not the only one blessed with versatility, and suggested paneer as a contender. Of course, Netflix replied and that too was shared widely.

Book My Show too joined the bandwagon of meme marketing – inviting viewers to caption some, compiling hilarious ones on movies and putting one generic ones on movie watching – and saw their efforts bear fruit. Marzdi Kalianiwala, SVP, marketing and business intelligence, BookMyShow, says, “Meme marketing has been super effective for BookMyShow since we started doing it about two years ago. We typically, see at least 5x more engagement, if not more, with memes as compared to the usual promotion posts.”

“The biggest advantage memes have is the fact that they're at the heart of pop culture and trends on social media. It's something each social media user consumes and interacts with regularly and is a high impact property,” he adds.

Can memes replace traditional advertising? Not really, according to Ketan Pandit, head of marketing and global growth, CleverTap. He believes they complement traditional methods. He says, “Understanding memes requires context, which everyone may not have. Due to this, the efficacy of every meme is limited to a specific segment of people. For example, a meme based on the Netflix special Stranger Things, will make sense only to those folks who have watched Stranger Things. Memes work as excellent tools of social narrative that can work in parallel with the all other modes of advertising.”

Rajinikanth vs CID Jokes, a content generation platform, is famous for its memes. The page, which was started for sheer entertainment, has now big-shot clients such as Amazon Prime, Comicstaan and Big Bazar. Ankit Mor, co-founder of RVCJ Media, says, “Memes have helped marketers speak in a brand new language with their target customers. The more catchy and unique a particular meme is, the more viral it becomes; and that is considered to be one of the foundational principles of meme marketing.” He believes this is the future of marketing.

“The first purpose of using memes for marketing is entertainment. The kind of memes that our clients usually ask for require exceptional graphics, which would effectively convey the message. We also strive to provide content, which is entertaining, fun and would immediately grab the attention of the masses. The truth is netizens have a short attention span, and memes deliver content in a meaningful, compact and precise way which appeals to them,” explains Mor.

Though memes are now trending in the marketing universe, some brands are unsure about their reach. Since these are restricted to digital media, brands fear lack of engagement with the older audiences. But, the Zomato spokesperson believes that they reach people of across generations. “With the rise of connectivity via popular mediums such as WhatsApp, memes are pretty much everywhere nowadays,” he says.

To ride this wave, brands have to be quick thinking and have to churn out new content on every important date in the calendar. Hastily done, there is also the danger of a meme backfiring. That said, this is a dynamic and cheaper way to connect with audiences, and its ‘virality’ of this method of marketing is only set to multiply!