The journey of a Meme is very different from other forms of content. Similarly, the lifetime of a meme is also different. Lets go through a detailed discussion on how can one master this art of meme making and be Picasso of it.
In today’s world Memes are the vehicles that drive any form of news to trend virally – They talk about the Government, Politics, Movie, Trolling, Fake Feminism, Climate Change, Anxiety Issues, Corporate Life and a lot more basically any topic that one can Imagine.
The Template Game
To make ourselves knowledgeable about memes, first we need to understand templates.
Meme templates are picked up from any current affairs or anything from the past. The image-template gives context to the text and the text provides meaning and humour to the template thus producing a MEME. If you practice this often and get a hang of it, no one can stop you from mastering the art of meme making.
The Meme template are like the expression of the Meme and The wordplay used is the Script !
The synergy of text and template is the key
One template can work for thousands of permutations and combination with different texts as long as the synergy is good. The Memers community is all hyped when they see a new Meme Trend pick up and this stirs up a competition among Memers to come up with more jokes based off that same template thus leading to virality. The scale of Virality completely depends upon how interested are the Memers in that Meme trend.
Every Memer takes his or her own troll on the template to keep it rolling. When everybody jumps into this exchange of memes then this phenomenon is called going viral and thats how we see trends like #YoSonakshiSoDumb #SayitlikeNirmalaTai and who can forget “The Paragliding Guy”and all of this happens out of Youth’s pure passion for Memes, There is little to No monetary benefits in this process.
The Memers community is always like :
Without Memes nothing can go viral!
Some templates come and go while some remain forever as classics. These templates overtime create that sweet spot in youth’s heart and establishes its loyal fan base over time.
People develop a certain liking towards a template because of the memes they have seen in the past which used the same template. This process goes on and one creates a subconscious influence on people.
That’s what we call a true Influence ! If you see a Viral Meme template coming to your feed, You are gonna consume that content because subconsciously your mind has a space for that template because of the hilarious memes that you saw in the past!
Every Meme in this world is read.
No one skips memes. Ads, influencers, posts, stories get scrolled over but memes are always read. It takes about 3 seconds to go through a meme and the message is delivered effectively in that time.
This is why memes are loved. They are tailored to fit in the lives of the quick millennials who want everything to be fast. The default humour that memes bring is a huge bonus.
Memes are straight forward hilarious and even disgustingly up front which is why they have a reputation of being genuine and expressing the true opinion. This quality can be leveraged by brands that want advocacy for their products.
How strong is the Meme Influence ?
There is an ocean of Meme Pages on the Social Media. The number would be a 100 times bigger than the number of influencers available. These pages have the same audience or i should say a more diverse audience than influencers.
Celebrities follow Meme Pages
Kids Follow Meme Pages
Age groups of 15 to 29 Year Old is the biggest audience of any Meme Page
There are Memes in regional language
There are Genre specific Meme Pages ….
The frequency of content posting on these meme pages is much higher than influencers because a group of people manage these pages.
These admins either create their own content based on what’s trending or just simply repost the content on their page.
How can Brands Leverage this ?
Brands and Advertising Agencies still have a perception that Meme Marketing is about leveraging the Meme Trends and posting a creative on their Brand Handle !
In reality that’s only 1% of the whole potential that they can explore !
Meme Marketing is about leveraging Meme Page’s loyal and Mass audience to get your message out.
The path isn’t that simple though, Meme creation requires knowledge about the Meme Culture. The wordplays, the context and a lot more things. Most important one being, how are you gonna keep the balance of Brand Message and Humour in that Meme.
And if you don’t do that well ! You’ll just end up becoming a laughing stock amongst the Youth.
The viral trends are unpredictable. Anything pops up and breaks the internet. It is as impulsive as the behaviour of this young generation. Although with carefully planning and strategic execution, orchestrated viral campaigns can be crafted. But in case that doesn’t happen, We can definitely leverage the trend if we can’t create it!
But one thing is for sure memes have the power to provide solid support to any meaningful brand communication in the digital domain.
Discover more about meme marketing at Youngun India.