How memes grow and what that means for marketing
Opinion
Tracking the spread and evolution of memes can provide a fast-track way to identify emerging trends and cultural shifts. Memes can also be a gateway to gaining insights into niche communities and subcultures.
My children have a near-encyclopaedic knowledge of memes, which are often considered the pinnacle of contemporary digital culture. I suspect many of you are similarly knowledgeable.
However, fewer may be familiar with the theoretical ideas behind them.
The term “meme” was popularised by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. He used it to describe an idea, habit or style that spreads throughout a culture via imitation. Memes often capture a specific phenomenon or theme with symbolic importance.
Dawkins saw memes as cultural parallels to biological genes. They serve as carriers of concepts, symbols or practices, transmitted from one person to another through various forms of communication. Like genes, memes can replicate, evolve and adapt in response to changing environments.
Later, in 1993, the term was adapted for the internet when author Mike Godwin observed how early online culture was remixing, replicating and sharing images as part of a shared cultural experience.
Today, memes are woven into the fabric of online life, as it’s incredibly easy to make them and share them (there’s even a real-life meme board game that my kids are exceptional at). Although different platforms have native formats and meme culture, their use is easy to spot, impossible to predict and utterly unstoppable. Have a look at @fuckjerry, @ladbible and @daquan if you need any further proof.
Goodness knows what Dawkins thinks of modern memes but, according to YPulse, a market research company specialising in Gen Z and millennial demographics, 75% of people aged 13-36 adore and share them, while nearly half of respondents to a study said they had seen a laughter-inducing meme in the past week.
And today’s online memes are funny. Very, very funny. Indeed, like the best jokes, we want to share them (often with our own personal spin). And the funnier they are, the longer they live.
As they are remixed and adapted, we — strategists — also stand to gain insights into cultural currents. For memes are, despite their silliness or surrealism, excellent markers of demographic sentiment.
Why this is important to a strategist
Analysing memes allows us to uncover authentic and (culturally) real-time feedback, which has the potential to be more insightful than traditional surveys or focus groups — or they may act as supplementary insight. This is because memes often tap into subconscious biases, humour preferences and cultural nuances that may not be readily conveyed through formal research methods.
Tracking the spread and evolution of memes can therefore provide a fast-track way to identify emerging trends and cultural shifts, helping us understand emotional engagement and resonance on certain topics. These can be far-reaching, but there are good examples for mental health, pop culture and the cost-of-living crisis.
Memes can also be a gateway to gaining insights into niche communities and subcultures, which can open up new routes to reaching audiences (as I’ve written about before). They can even tell us something useful about a market or the brands operating within it — both the good and the bad.
Beyond insight, memes might even offer a new channel of communication for brands that are skilled at leveraging them on social media, much like Greenpeace does when it responds to the news agenda. This is a good example of a brand genuinely speaking the same language as its audience, bringing it eye level with its authenticity and landing the message with humour and cultural relevance. It could even be argued that the best advertising is memetic in its appeal becoming owned and shared by wider audiences — “Should’ve Gone to Specsavers”, for example.
Making use of memes
Practically speaking, how might we go about using memes to achieve different aims?
Sentiment-analysis software can certainly play a role by identifying keywords and basic emotions in meme captions and comments. Other platforms can also help examine meme formats and trends, tracking their popularity and evolution to offer insights into broader emotional shifts within audiences (Know Your Meme and Brandwatch are good starting points).
However, memes often embed sarcasm, irony and cultural references that software alone may miss, making human analysis indispensable in deciphering the true sentiments that underpin memes. This is why strategy teams should be staffed by people who live and breathe culture — online or otherwise — to unearth the context and subtle nuances that tech might overlook or misinterpret.
This is important, because using memes as part of a marketing strategy — whether for insight or as a channel of communication — can easily go wrong (there are even memes to demonstrate this). Memes allow brands to appear more human and relatable, rather than as impersonal corporate entities — this is particularly useful for reaching youth audiences, who tend to feel unrepresented in traditional media. However, the strategy comes with significant risks, including the potential to backfire into the worst possible audience outcome: sneering mockery.
Successful meme marketing therefore requires a deep understanding of the brand’s identity and audience, and is best suited for brands willing to be seen as less formal and more engaging.
The third way
I’ve previously discussed the concept of the “multi-player brand“, a term coined by Zoe Scaman. This idea highlights how technology is ushering in a new era marked by so-called remixed content, open intellectual property and community-driven creativity. For brands, this could mean transforming into “toolkits” that enable audiences to collaborate and create together — an intriguing concept that’s being supercharged by AI.
Importantly, this approach suggests brands do not need to become experts in meme generation; rather, they should focus on enabling people to remix, engage with and create their own branded content. It’s certainly an idea for the more experimental brands keen to ride shifting cultural waves before others.
Yet, regardless of a brand’s personality or communication challenges, social media is expected to play an increasingly significant role in the media mix, with memes a key component of that world and its evolving language. Indeed, consider how many iconic memes were generated from the Olympics, from sharpshooters and bad breakdancers to endless Snoop Dogg and that French pole-vaulter.
So whether as observers or active participants, brands should — at the very least — become fluent in understanding that language or risk awkwardly standing outside the circle, not quite sure what it is everyone else is chuckling about.
Five learnings for media planners
Unique insights: Memes offer timely and culturally relevant feedback that can be more immediate and revealing than traditional research methods. Media planners can use this to quickly gauge demographic sentiment and cultural trends.
Identifying niche audiences: Through their viral nature and community-specific appeal, memes can help media planners identify and understand niche markets and subcultures, providing a gateway to tailored audience engagement strategies.
Risks and rewards: Memes can humanise a brand, making it appear more relatable and engaging, particularly to younger demographics. However, they also carry risks of misinterpretation or backlash, requiring careful, context-aware usage.
Communication channels: Memes can serve as an innovative channel for brands to communicate with their audience, especially when aligned with a brand’s identity and the audience’s values and humour.
Future media strategy: Understanding and participating in meme culture is crucial for planners who want to speak the language of younger online audiences. Ensure planning teams are fluent.
Simon Carr is chief strategy officer at Hearts & Science