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If you ask me, in the current ‘constant-trend-evolving’ digital landscape, brands are legit using every possible method to ensure a 24/7 connection with their audience. The moment someone mentions ‘meme marketing’, the first thought that strikes one is ‘quirky’, fun and most importantly, ‘highly relatable’ “yeh toh viral hoga bro” content. Memes, over the years, have one hundred percent the crazy potential to make it through the cluttered digital space and create an impact on the viewers. But the long asked question in advertising: ‘Does this humorous and witty image oriented content, drive real business results? Well, the answer is: Undoubtedly, YES! After multiple tried and tested formulas, all I would say is, it takes a well-planned and executed strategic approach! That is the key to achieve path-breaking success to your brand’s meme marketing initiative.

For brands taking this route and looking to unlock the full-potential of a viral meme marketing campaign, I’ve listed below some of the top factors which brands must take into consideration: 

Unleashing the power of memes for marketing success 

Unlike Akshay Kumar’s infamous Hera Pheri meme, aaj mein “zor zor se bol ke logo ko scheme bataunga”. Thanks to the digital realm, the world is now connected with each other like never before. Exchanging content in/with different formats, such as, shareable videos (reels/shorts), informative pieces (tweets/threads), and quirky static posts fosters a sense of camaraderie, eg., snap streaks, sharing funny reels etc. today are surprisingly a sign of healthy friendship. These sentimental connections, if strategically used and latched on by brands, can translate to an unwavering brand loyalty. Meme marketing can actually lead to an enhanced brand engagement and long-term brand recall by lightening the audience's mood, spreading smiles and fostering a positive image.

Delivering ROI through memes 

How I wish ROIs were a ‘21 din mein paisa double’ scheme, but I can definitely say memes do have a great potential for virality. Unlike its initial years where it was just for fun, memes today are an essential marketing tool and are designed with the intent to be shared and made viral. Captivating visuals and witty content gets shared widely at lightning speed across social media platforms, garnering massive reach and engagement organically at an exponential rate, all while saving significant marketing costs! 

By connecting a fictional situation with real life situations, memes enable brands to build human connections, harbouring a sense of authenticity and trust while making the brand relatable and approachable. Hence, I can indeed say that memes are quite an effective way to create a brand persona. 
Digital trends keep changing rapidly in real-time. Hence, ensuring speed and responsiveness is highly essential when opting for meme marketing. It allows brands to stay on the top of trending conversations and emphasise their awareness of pop-culture, positioning them as relevant and well-versed, which resonates well with the generation raised on the internet, also known as GenZ! 

Quirky content is a mighty weapon for driving engagements. Memes spark conversations, encourage people to share and comment, which delivers valuable user-generated content. Memes open a two-way dialogue that solidifies the relationship between brands and consumers, fostering a robust community. 

Here’s how to make it happen! 

Execution is easy yet tactical. A thorough understanding of the target audience is crucial for ensuring marketing success. Weaving meme content that considers demographics, psychographics, culture beliefs and values is vital. Staying atop of the current events and participating in those conversations using the latest formats, garners organic brand engagement. Always remember: Never force memes. Saare memes hamesha viral nahi hote, Laxman!
Memes must appear effortless, natural and organic to leverage your brand voice and reflect your brand personality. Focus on quality for both content & visuals! Use large, bold text to scream your message.

A step forward towards laughter - Evaluating success

Return on investment (ROI) is undoubtedly the most important metric to measure the success of any marketing initiative. Although, when it comes to meme marketing, it’s way beyond that. Meme marketing increases brand awareness through shares, mentions, followers and organic website traffic. A higher rate of engagement and sentiment analysis using social listening tools indicate how well your content resonated with the audiences and how the users perceived your brand after coming across your memes. 

And a happily ever after - Success stories

Brands today are now opting for meme marketing strategies to build viewer engagement at reduced costs while also increasing their reach and visibility. Both B2C and B2B brands are including memes into their marketing plans. Some successful and well-known examples of meme marketing include brands like Amul, Netflix, Swiggy, Zomato, Tinder India, Durex, Disney+ Hotstar, and many more! What these brands have in common is their impeccable use of timing and entertainment value, which we all see in their wholesome memes.
 
So, dekh raha hai Binod, kaise mazak karte karte aaj kal me-me marketing ho rahi hai!

Mehul Gupta is the Co-Founder & CEO of SoCheers. Views expressed are personal.

The ROI of laughter: How memes drive marketing results

Memes have taken over the internet from being used by brands to connect with young consumer base to even the purpose of trolling. In their simplest form, memes were images paired with text, often making light of a current event. Over time, however, the term “meme” has become a catchall phrase — for some, memes are a form of entertainment, while others use them to express themselves, and still others use them as a tool to promote their brands.

Their popularity have further been highlighted as per the data from management consultancy, Redseer on the rising demand for meme creation apps. The report states that users spend 30 minutes a day consuming memes, 80% have increased meme consumption in the last year.

“On average, we spend 30 minutes a day on the internet only consuming memes. The shareability of memes makes them popular among groups with the same interest or even globally because most people find them relatable. Thus, it comes as no surprise that in just the last on year, close to 80% have increased meme consumption,” says Mrigank Gutgutia, partner, Redseer.

The report further highlights that most users enjoy memes as a good way to release stress. Interestingly 50% expect their meme consumption to increase further.

For most people, memes are an easy way to distract themselves from the hustle and bustle of life and work. The findings state that the strong association between meme use and positive emotions is why marketers are increasingly turning to them as a way to connect with their audiences and build a rapport.

“This is especially true when it comes to funny and entertaining content, as it’s often the first thing users turn when stressed. Social media is the primary source for access to memes, followed by word of mouth from friends and family,” adds Gutgutia.

Around 90% of consumers are open to creating memes themselves, indicating large latent demand for meme creation apps. Memes are also a way to express oneself. A lot of people take the time and effort to even create their own memes, and research suggests that close to 90% of consumers were willing to do so. Social media has allowed everyone to try their hand at content creation, thus, this has paved the way for the rise of meme creation apps and platforms.

The report also highlighted that people want to consume or create memes for brand building and as a creative outlet, and not just for making money. An important aspect that makes memes attain such huge popularity in a short period of time is that any individual can connect to them – and this works great for brand building and marketing.

Memes are now at the peak of the entertainment sector. To keep up with this rising demand, meme creation platforms are crowding the market, indicating that monumental growth is on the cards for this industry.

Some of the popular meme apps being used include MemeChat, Mematic, iFunny, Giphy and Zombordroid among others.
 


Users spend 30 minutes a day consuming memes, call it a stress buster, report

Meme marketing is becoming the latest tool in companies’ digital marketing arsenal. More companies are devoting a bigger portion of their budget than ever before towards meme marketing, and specialised companies are stepping in to help them go viral.

But why memes? “That is the language that Netizens understand. People don’t want to be preached to. Memes subtly integrate brand messaging into conversation,” says Aditya Sobti, creative lead at Schbang, a creative and digital transformation agency. “Customers don’t know their time has been taken (by a brand).”

Take the case of the recent trailer for the movie Brahmastra, starring Ranbir Kapoor, Alia Bhatt and Amitabh Bachchan, among others. A dialogue said by Kapoor’s character Shiva in the trailer – ‘Kuch rishta hai mera aag se (I have a strange connection with fire)’ – quickly became a meme. Several brands like Tinder, Dunzo, Zepto and Voot were quick to catch on, and posted their own variations of the meme.

“Memes are a part of our day-to-day lives,” says Saksham Jadon, founder of Youngun, a meme marketing agency that was started in 2019. “And brands want to be part of internet conversations.”

Youngun handles clients such as Netflix, PepsiCo, Swiggy and Cred.

A short history of meme marketing

According to Sobti from Schbang, the meme marketing trend in India was started around 2018 by brands like Zomato and Swiggy, both of which are in the food-delivery space.

Many startups typically didn’t have much money to spend on recurring campaigns that are heavy on print ads and TV commercials, which are typically expensive.

Instead, they relied on a more irreverent – and practically free – marketing style which involves catching on to the latest trending topics online and putting the brand’s spin on it. And this often involved memes.

An analysis of Google Trends indicates that the search term ‘meme’ had been slowly gaining in popularity in India since around 2013. When compared to the worldwide trend, growth in India was slow.

The real spike happened during the pandemic-induced lockdowns in March 2020, when millions of people all across the world were stuck at home, with little other than their phones and laptops in the way of entertainment. While worldwide interest in memes grew at that time, India’s growth was much faster, and stabilised at about 75% of those levels since then.

Startups and their marketing teams were quick to catch on. The ability to make memes is even a part of the job description for a social media role at a startup. Fintech unicorn Slice even has a ‘Chief Meme Officer’.

The method to the viral madness

Brands that don’t have their own meme makers go to agencies like Jadon. “We’ve cracked how to make it so organic that even news publishers will pick it up. We make sure it’s worth people’s time.”

For instance, Youngun handled the meme marketing for the recent ‘Ranveer vs Wild with Bear Grylls’ web episode, featuring actor Ranveer Singh. The trailer sparked a meme fest, and ended up getting covered by several news outlets.

Brands are also exploring user-generated memes, but with a caveat.

Meme Chat, a meme community social media app started in 2019, enables brands to take this route. Kyle Fernandes, 24-year-old co-founder and CEO of Meme Chat, explains how the process works, “A brand sponsors a meme template. Our users generate thousands of memes, which are curated by moderators. The best ones are shows to the brand. If a user’s meme gets selected by the brand, they get paid Rs.5-10.”

The chosen memes are propagated across meme pages on Facebook and Instagram. Meme Chat said it owns 100 meme pages with a total following of 60mn and has tie-ups with another 300 that have a following of 540mn, meaning it can tap a collective following of 600mn.

[caption id="attachment_1307" align="aligncenter" width="700"]<img class="size-full wp-image-1307" src="https://images.storyboard18.com/storyboard18/Kuch-viral-bana-do-yaar.jpg" alt="Kuch viral bana do yaar" width="700" height="1200" /> Kuch viral bana do yaar[/caption]

Meme Chat has done campaigns for companies such as Britannia, Moj (owned by ShareChat) and films like Jugjugg Jeeyo. Last year, the company raised $1mn in a funding round led by BeeNext, a Singapore-based venture capital firm.

OTT platforms are the biggest clients for meme marketing agencies, followed by e-commerce and digital startups.

Sometimes, memes can also be "seeded" via influencers and content creators – they either repost these memes, or make their own versions of them. And when multiple brands are handled by a single agency, the agencies ensure the brands end up participating in each other's meme trends online, seemingly organically.

Larger, more traditional companies are slow to the uptake, says Sobti. Lawsuits arising from copyright infringement are the main concern, even though lawsuits like these are rare.

Way back in 2015, Getty Images asked GetDigital, a German blog, to pay licensing fees for using a picture of a penguin from their image database to create what would become a widely popular meme called ‘Socially Awkward Penguin’.Getty said they were trying to protect the livelihoods of photographers who click such photos. GetDigital was also asked to keep quiet about it. They didn’t.

In a later report by Huffpost, Getty said they had pursued similar action against several such blogs who used images in this manner.

“Companies like Jio and Britannia have a lot to lose,” says Sobti. “It’s been tough to convince them, (but) slowly and steadily, brands are warming up to the opportunity – they know they will lose out on social media reach otherwise.”

Britannia recently launched a meme campaign for the launch of a new biscuit. The campaign was managed by Schbang and Meme Chat.

A numbers game

Meme marketing companies can change anywhere between Rs.2 lakh to Rs.3 crore, depending on the duration of the project.

Memes are now becoming a bigger part of companies’ marketing budgets. Snehil Khanor, CEO of Indian dating app TrulyMadly says that meme marketing now makes up 30-40% of his content marketing budget, up from 7-10% when they first started meme marketing about two and half years ago.

“We see very good engagement for memes versus other posts. Users are able to relate to it – it doesn’t seem like advertising,” says Khanor. Video memes are now becoming more popular versus static ones, says Khanor.

What constitutes virality? It depends on who you ask. Fernandes says that it would have to be about 10 million in reach and engagement numbers would constitute virality. Jadon says that it’s viral when news publishers organically pick up stories on memes, or the meme makes it to the meme review video of an influencer like Tanmay Bhat.

But sometimes, it’s hard to tell what’s organic and what’s not.

For instance, a recent meme that went viral was a screenshot of a WhatsApp conversation between a college student and his dad. Storyboard18 spoke to the original poster of the meme, 23-year-old engineering student Jitu Malani from Ajmer. Malani, who posts memes on his Twitter page, said he had no idea that this screenshot would go viral. Malani said he was approached by a few news outlets after the meme went viral, although not by the brand itself.

While the meme appears not to have been posted by the brand, the story was picked up by several news organisations. Jadon put up a LinkedIn post with screenshots of the coverage, with the caption ‘Remember this viral meme? Work by Youngun – a Meme Marketing agency for Swiggy’.

Similarly, yet another viral post by Swiggy shows signs of the blurring lines between brand-led and organic viral content.

In this case, it was a video of a man on a horse carrying a Swiggy delivery box. Three days later, the brand put out a tongue-in-cheek notice saying it had taken note of the viral video, and announced a reward for whoever identified the horseman. The day after that, the app’s delivery status section had a modification which showed a man on a horse, instead of the usual bike.

A week after the meme went viral, the company put out another letter, saying it had identified the horseman, as well as the person who shot the video.

Sobti says that, typically, changes to an app take weeks to plan and execute. He added that this particular meme was considered a well-executed campaign in marketing circles because of how organic it looked.

In response to questions about the story, Swiggy sent links to the notices it posted on its official Instagram page (described above).

Sobti says there’s no harm in marketers trying their best to make memes look as organic as they can.

The audience has a few laughs, and the brand wins too.

[caption id="attachment_1306" align="aligncenter" width="700"]<img class="size-full wp-image-1306" src="https://images.storyboard18.com/storyboard18/Manufacturing-Memes-How-meme-marketing-works.jpg" alt="Manufacturing Memes - How Meme marketing works" width="700" height="700" /> Manufacturing Memes - How Meme marketing works[/caption]

MEME MARKETING