Meme Culture

The growth of digital media has undoubtable shifted into free earned media with more and more larger companies now trying to catch on by created their own viral campaigns. The success of smaller business who don’t have the option to spend millions on traditional advertising has proven how effective earned media can be, however as attempt from companies such as Woolworths have proven when these attempts at earned media come from a place of deliberate marketing rather than a more organic growth the results are often cringe worthy and overall harmful to the business.

One example of a smaller company using viral marketing to achieve earned media is women’s health brand “always” #LikeAGirl campaign which has now obtained over 63 million views on YouTube alone, achieving the kind of reach that many larger brands only using tradition media can only achieve by spending millions on marketing costs.

However, Woolworths ANZAC campaign from 2015 was not so successful, in fact it was more of a complete disaster. Trying to get social media users involved by sharing their own ANZAC stories to promote Woolworths ANZAC day sales their campaign was easily seen through as being an obvious attempt at cheap publicity rather than the earned media of Always #LikeAGirl campaign, resulting in negative backlash against the company, resulting in the complete opposite of their original plan.

Perhaps a possibility for Woolworths failures and Always success, beyond the generally ability of their marketing teams, is the way in which a message is perceived, along with the message itself. While Woolworths and Always both presented positive messages of supporting ANZACs and gender equality, gender equality was an issue that fitted the brand whereas Woolworths association with ANZAC day was much more obviously a ploy to gain media attention.

The growth of meme culture can also be observed when it comes to online promotion, with many companies jumping on the bandwagon in an attempt to gain some form of virality from adapting current memes. Similar to Woolworths ANZAC day campaign they do however come across as cringe worthy as millennials often see past the attempt at humour and directly to the advertising attempt.

The key concept to successful online promotion, whether it be through social media or other platforms such as YouTube is for the content to be organic and relevant. If a company is going to use of topical meme for promotion it needs to be genuine otherwise it’s destined to just come across more like your parents using slang don’t fully understand.

#culture #memes #TheIssue #DankMemes