MEME MARKETING: THE MARKETING CULTURE SHIFT THAT IS LEAVING GEN X BUSINESS OWNERS BEHIND

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you will have noticed this social media phenomenon that’s been sweeping your FYP, wherein brands have become internet personalities, and have shifted their marketing approach from pushing sales to being entertaining. Gaining hundreds of thousands of followers and blowing their business up online in the process. 

The new age of social media marketing is totally unlike anything businesses have been doing before, and it can be a massive adjustment for old school business owners to let go of their polished business identity to start dancing on TikTok for views. 

But that’s exactly what is leading to social media stardom across Instagram and Tik Tok.

If you don’t know what we’re talking about, check out account like Messina Gelato and Ryan Air. Where they give their marketing team total creative control and allow them to blow the 4th wall off the business, making fun of their own shortcomings, talking to their audience about the actual experiences of the team members (the good, the bad and the ugly), which most bosses would prefer to keep behind closed doors. 

Brands like Duo Lingo, where the internet has, for years, joked about the mildly threatening reminder emails they would get from the app, took it and ran. Using their mascot to lean into the humour of marketing to their audience with underlying threats has allowed the brand to establish themselves as being ‘in on the joke’ and listening to their audience. 

This approach works for a few reasons: 

1. You don’t go to social media to be educated/sold to. Surveys have shown that sales driven content actually incites feelings of anger in users and leads to drop off in play time on video content and unfollows – which hurts your algorithm performance overall. 

2. It creates a sense of familiarity, as though by following your socials, your viewers get a sneak peek they wouldn’t get otherwise. Like they’re in on a secret. 

3. It shows your audience that you see them. Creating content purely for their enjoyment, rather than to sell them something shows your audience you’re not just interested in their money. And that you see and understand that your audience are real people. 

4. It means that your customers have a reason to follow you online. Realistically, if people interested in your brand have gone so far as to look you up, they know your business to some degree, so the entertainment factor gives your followers a reason to subscribe, rather than just looking you up on the rare occasions that they need to. 

We call this ‘Meme Marketing’ in the Papaya office. 

So next time your boss says they want to go viral on Tik Tok, it might be time to start introducing them to the trending memes.