First, what is your opinion?
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What makes memes so damn good?
Picture, Text, a combination of both. Drawings – super fancy or super simple,
and sometimes the simple ones are the best.
Stupidity, originality, genuineness, and sometimes just the daily madness that everyone knows.
Some memes are shared with friends, the social media community, even the family and some are only for oneself. It is one way to stay connected with someone in a simple way: you see it, someone pops up in your head just share it. It is extremely easy.
It connects you to many – ever looked at how many have liked the meme before? Aha!
I don’t want to know how many, I guess mainly female, showed their partner how many other people liked a specific meme, therefore have the same thinking, therefore they are not stupid in the own behavior. It can prove the own statement. It can be used political, social, and in all other serious and not serious areas. Sometimes meme brings back the old days or lets you discover something you haven’t noticed or known before. Sometimes it is to appreciate someone’s work or `sharing` feelings.
I spoke with Griffith College‘s Deputy Head of Journalism and Media Communications, Dr. Robbie Smyth and he says that it is a new way of communication:
“Meme’s could be considered a new form of communication. They have endured as social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Instagram and Snapchat all lend themselves well to the medium.”
– Dr. Robbie Smyth
Who is the core audience?
By reading articles about the meme culture, they emphasize on the youth – teenagers – presented mostly not in the best light. But to be frank, who doesn’t have any memes on their phones nowadays?! Even if you haven’t saved them by yourself, one day someone will send you one and then you might become a part of the meme culture. Passive or active. There is no escape, isn’t there?
My mum, in her 50ties, likes memes as well, she has more a passive role in just enjoying them if I share them with her and we have a great and giggling time. So, okay yes, maybe the younger the more active in looking for memes and maybe even creating them.
In the end – does someone really cares?
Maybe except firms who try to get viral/ get attention with a (hidden) advertising meme, etc.
Memes and Companies
So, Memes and companies.
Memes are kind of uncontrollable. And if you are without luck, it can harm your brand but only if there is something wrong already, from my point of view. Overall, it doesn’t affect the perception to a brand – at least it doesn’t feel like it. If there is a real shift a study could prove.
What we know is, that “Memes uses can be flexible and can often travel far beyond the initial audience they were aimed at“, so Dr. Robbie Smyth.
What can be addressed in those Memes?
A characteristic of a firm and/or of their product(s), what people experienced with it, unfortunate situations and OMG-situations, brand favoring, puns with the names and “today years old”-moments. And of course a lot of random memes as well.
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Memes and Advertising
The latest trend that I could discover is that memes are abused for silly advertising. Not funny and not good made advertising.
“The use of memes in business for brand building is I believe fraught and dubious as a marketing exercise. It is an attempt to reach a target audience who would see through I believe the advertising strategy being used. Firms should stick to the ads and leave the memes to their consumers.”
– Dr. Robbie Smyth
Of course, we have to differentiate between Advertising Memes or memes that become advertising. The purpose behind it and the character matters.
Meme pages are sometimes sponsored by firms, they just put the product into a meme. They let it look like that somebody just posted something really interesting about a must-have product. Those pages are mostly private, so they don’t even have to identify those posts as advertising. Tada – the reason why some meme pages are private.
What do you think about those “memes” – annoying or you don’t care?
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Due through the circumstances that nobody really knows when the most memes occurred, I didn’t put any source on these images.
Thanks a mil to Dr. Robbie Smyth for talking with me about Meme Culture!
Feel free to write questions and/or comments below 🙂
