Of course I’ve dedicated 23373 words about memes, again.
Hollywood just loves movie sequels. Am I in Hollywood? No. Do I love a sequel? Absolutely. And holding my breath for a Death Becomes Her 2. However, please don’t tell James Corden because nobody ever wants to see a sequel of Cats. Long story short, I’m just sitting here writing a sequel of my previous memes article. The effectiveness of leveraging memes as a powerful marketing tool in the promotion of Don’t Worry Darling, House of the Dragons, Megan, The Bear and countless others, does make one wonder if there will ever be – or has been – a meme marketing strategy. In defence of memes gimmick, it’s actually… effective.
The Internet has ever been evolving; Internet culture and its subcultures go far beyond Facebook’s “What’s on your mind?” and Twitter’s “What’s happening?”. When culture moves incredibly fast, almost nothing sticks. Entering an era of chaos where it’s “nearly impossible to gain traction, or an audience” and “yesterday’s meme is sophomoric today, if you employ it you look bad”. People want to keep their fingers on the pulse; brands often talk about being culturally relevant. What are they saying? Why are they laughing? Millions of questions arise when you see something getting shared virally on the Internet.
Memes are everywhere. They “tap into collective consciousness online and have been referred to as digital folklore or netlore”, which is often more than meets the eye. Brands are finding memes creators as “useful translators” and turning to them to communicate better with audiences.
Universal Pictures knows exactly what they do with the promotion of their latest horror movie Megan. There’s a new it girl in town and her name is Megan. Gigi Hadid, you are not the doll; Bella Hadid is also not the doll (IYKYK). Megan is the doll. Megan in short is a movie about real artificial intelligence coming closer into humanity’s grasp that goes wrong. Sounds familiar? But what doesn’t seem too familiar is the demon doll breaking out a TikTok dance mid-murder, which caused sensational virality on the Internet. The trailer itself amassed nearly 10m views on Twitter only, with millions of views on TikTok for her TikToker-like spins and twists.
She ate and left no crumbs. The memes and reactions to the film have been hilarious which is not bad for a low-budget movie. Their ability to generate awareness for a whole new character is also impressive. You see Chucky and Megan appear to be beefing in a new series of tweets and everyone is so hyped. The sentiment was so positive that people are crowning Megan to be new supremacy. It might look like a reputation competition and a game of who’s who and who’s available, but don’t you forget that both Megan and Chucky come from the same house of Universal Pictures.
House of the Dragons has been arguably the most massive hit from HBO this year. Besides amazing storylines, content and cast, backed by probably one of the most famous TV shows in the world – Game of Thrones, House of the Dragons deserves its spot. But what might help breathe fire into the show’s popularity is the memes and discussion on the Internet. With more than 5.6b views for the hashtag #HouseoftheDragons alone on TikTok, no wonder why you keep seeing the series’ content in your For You Page. Everyone is now pulled into the world of Westeros. The show drives 54 times the market average and ranks in the top 0.2 percent of TV shows and makes its impact on cultural conversations and general pop culture. House of the Dragons conversations notoriously dominates social media – “no matter who you follow, odds are a meme, joke, or link about the show is making its way into your feed”, which can’t be said the same for another show of its scale “The Rings of Power”. I’m no mathematician but the odds are if you ask anyone about “a negroni, sbagliato, with prosecco in it”, someone will know exactly what you’re talking about.
Don’t Worry Darling might only have a critic score of 38% on Rotten Tomatoes and 48 on Metacritic, but safe to say it’s got 10-10-10 across the board in the publicity battle. Some might argue that not all publicity is good publicity but the way it made everyone itching to see and eager to jump into theatres might be one PR case study for the book. There’s no doubt that the phenomenal cast has made the movie a perfect talking point but the drama, the memes and the cultural conversation only accelerated the movie’s publicity.
And that is the power of tapping into pop culture conversation, leaning into digital folklore to generate awareness, conversations and ultimately better communicate and build relationships with audience.
But it does beg the question when everyone uses memes to be culturally relevant and uses the same tone of voice, will it be a sea of same? On the 3rd of October, I could see with my eyes closed that at least five brands used the same Mean Girls reference, with the same tone of voice.
Ask the President of the United States.
Twitter partnered with data scientists at Pulsar to investigate the shift not only in Tweets about brands, but the Tweets brands are sending themselves by analysing every Tweet published from 20 iconic global brands over a three-year period. The findings were interesting, to say the least. How many times have you seen brands want to revolutionise or reimagine something and turns out it’s just ice cream? People are tired of the sea of same indeed – only 1 in 3 people surveyed could guess the correct brand from a list of five options. The research also found that “brands began converging around the same social media archetypes, even using the same number of unique keywords and characters.” When asked to describe brands on Twitter, in eight countries, people use “playful” or “funny” – which is oftentimes associated with memes and pop culture references; however, one out of two people surveyed agreed that brands can rely only on humour and jokes can feel outdated today.
90% of people expect brands to talk about memes and internet culture, amongst other topics including cultural holidays, political and social issues, current affairs or TV shows, but only when appropriate and brands should evolve their tones with the times.
Memes serve many purposes and functions, reflect the mentality of modern society and prove to be a powerful marketing tool. Sometimes, an aubergine is an aubergine, a peach is a peach, but sometimes, it is much more. Perhaps it’s just a way to “cope with all the tragedies and misery that life can offer”, but yes, will there ever be a meme strategy?
