Marketing With Memes: How to Use Them for Promotion

Memes are native on social media platforms. They are funny, entertaining, and easy to consume. But there is more to them than meets the eye. Marketing with memes is an understated trend that’s quickly becoming popular.

This practice led to the birth of a new term: meme-jacking. When marketers hijack popular memes to market their products, it’s called meme-jacking.

Meme-jacking is becoming increasingly popular because it’s an excellent way to share refreshing content that has the potential to go viral. Just think about it, who doesn’t like a good meme?

How are Brands Using Memes for Marketing?

An average person spends an hour and a half every day on social media. And memes are the language in which people on social media communicate new ideas and attitudes.

So, it’s not surprising that memes have become a cultural phenomenon. Grumpy Cat, Good Guy Greg (GGG), and LOLcats all have one thing in common — they’re all meme characters that are now a part of internet pop culture. They’ve been used in different ways to spread various ideas.

Marketing with memes can breathe new life into your social media strategy. Memes are highly visual, making them a great tool to create social media fodder.

The best part is you can simply take a concept that is already gaining traction and piggyback on its popularity. With memes, there is no such thing as plagiarism.

With the least amount of effort, your shareworthy memes can get you likes, shares, and comments. When you post them on your blog, you can reap the benefits of increased inbound links and website traffic as well.

No wonder brands are jumping in on the meme marketing bandwagon. Here are a few brands that have been marketing with memes:

1. Gucci

Gucci is a luxury fashion brand that’s built an image around sophistication and grace. But for their 2017 #TFWGucci campaign, they decided to shatter all preconceptions about their brand. With memes, they showed their target audience that they could be hip.

Image via Instagram

#TFWGucci, which is short for “That Feeling When Gucci,” was a campaign designed to promote their new line of watches. In a series of relatable memes, Gucci used memes that ranged from absurd to hilarious. They created all of the memes in collaboration with artists from around the world.

The landing page for the campaign even featured an explainer video on the history of memes for those who were new to the concept. The descriptive captions paired with edgy graphics gave Gucci a refreshing brand makeover.

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2. Seamless

Seamless, the popular online food delivery service in the U.S. often uses humor on social media to connect with their audience.

In 2014, they came up with a creative concept for marketing with memes. They ideated a series of memes based on nominations for Academy Awards. Called the #OscarNomNoms, Seamless’ meme-series created quite a stir on Twitter.

Image via Twitter

They re-imagined and designed movie posters to include some crazy food puns. American Hustlebecame “American Muzzles,” while The Wolf of Wall Street became “The Wolf of Waffle Street.”

Needless to say, the #OscarNomNom series won the internet. Their memes went viral for two reasons — timeliness and good puns.

The Academy Award nominations were just announced, so obviously, there was a lot of curiosity around them. By leveraging a popular trend, Seamless was able to position themselves as a brand that could make people laugh.

Continue reading this article on Shane Barker's blog.