By David Wiszniowski
It’s no secret that marketing has always changed with the times in order to remain current and to maintain a robust audience. As far as gaming and internet culture go, using memes to advertise was a logical stepping stone for the industry. As memes are utilized to spread culture and information throughout the internet, certain companies have taken their popularity amongst younger, more “online” demographics as an opportunity to spread their respective messages. Much like the viral video, memes are now being created by the large corporations they were once used to mimic.
For the purpose of this entry, I will primarily be focusing on the meme “Success Kid”, also known as “I Hate Sandcastles”. The common use for Success Kid is to describe a situation in which the results are better than expected. You can read more on the history and spread of Success Kid here. <http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/success-kid-i-hate-sandcastles>
The meme was first used in an advertisement by Virgin Media as of February 2012. Since then, Success Kid has been featured in many different advertisements which I was instantly reminded of when I saw Bell Canada’s (a Canadian telephone service provider) newest marketing campaign.
In this advertisement, more so than the Virgin billboard, I noticed that the message was geared towards college and university students, who are, let’s face it, probably going to be scrolling around the internet for the next four years. Bell has utilized a number of popular memes in their campaign, including their own version of “Grumpy Cat”, as well as “Confession Bear”.
Naturally, being that research is the name of the game here (sometimes quite literally); I began to wonder if there were any research implications regarding memes. I mean, obviously there has to be some kind of underlying social implications if nothing else. Right?
Across my research into the subject, I was unable to find any facts as to why companies were using memes to advertise, and whether or not the campaigns have been successful. I think, as mentioned before, the memes sarcastic mimicry is what is drawing customers to these companies, aside from simply the meme itself. I think that by using memes, companies are not only advertising their wares, but also coming across as more playful and, in a way, humane. Sort of a “Hey, were just one of the guys too” appeal. And that sentiment is where I can relate this back to research. I think the research industry could use this type of casual relationship to better examine unique cultural demographics, as well as to increase respondent and participant involvement in both quantitative and qualitative research circles.
The exact methods for enacting this type of community involvement where concerned with market research is so far lost on me. However, being a fan of memes, I think there is a good opportunity to observe the practices used here by Virgin Media and Bell Canada, in order to gain some insight into the potential of using memes for research in the future.
I’d like to open the idea of using memes for research up for discussion. If you have any ideas on the utilization of memes within the research industry I’d love to hear from you. Betty already pointed out in a discussion we had earlier, that the idea of memes is to be so painfully honest that they’re actually funny. Her thought was that memes could be used in conjunction with brand behaviour, giving companies insights into what is truly thought of them via public opinion.
What do you think?
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