How Memes Can Take Your Web3 Marketing To A New Level

Using memes can significantly amplify your marketing impact, making your brand more relatable with the potential to go viral. 

All major companies have already started implementing memes in their marketing, some with great success. 

With the right guidance, your company can also create a successful meme-based marketing campaign and tap into the power of memes to captivate younger audiences and make a lasting impact in the Web3 space.

Let’s explore the world of memes and how your company can utilize them to enhance its brand and appeal to the younger generations.

What are Memes?

Memes are just humorous images, videos, pieces of text, or GIFs that spread widely online, mainly through social media.

Over the years, memes have transcended their origins as merely funny pictures or videos to become a fundamental way we communicate and express ourselves.

This is especially interesting when we reflect on Richard Dawkins’ original definition of the term “meme” from 1976. He used it to denote an idea, behavior, or style transmitted from one person to another within a culture, serving as a mechanism for cultural transmission or imitation. 

This implies that the concept of a “meme” has, in some sense, come full circle in its meaning.

Through the strategic use of imagery, text, and humor, memes encapsulate shared experiences, making them a powerful tool for connecting with others across diverse backgrounds.

The ability to craft or share the right meme at the right time can amplify voices, influence perspectives, and even shape online discourse, illustrating memes’ significant role in our everyday digital interactions.

Why Use Memes in Marketing?

Society’s engagement with digital screens is on an upward trend, with the average global screen time reaching nearly 7 hours per day.

Graph Source: What’s the Big Data

Let’s Do Some Calculations

According to WHO, the average global lifespan is 73.4 years. If we take into account the 7 hours per day of screen time, the average person will spend around twenty years of their life looking at a screen. 

On average, 35% of that time will be spent on social media, meaning that around 7 years will be spent on using platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and TikTok.

Now, if we assume that only 30% of social media time will be spent scrolling through the news feed and considering that social media is already filled with memes (yes, even LinkedIn), we get to the conclusion that:

The average person will spend more than two years of their life looking at memes.

With that in mind, it is clear why companies of all shapes and sizes need to start implementing memes in their marketing and communication efforts. This is especially true for Web3 companies marketing towards younger generations that spend even more time on social media.

How Have Companies Used Memes So Far?

It’s no secret that many traditional companies have started experimenting with memes to enhance their social media marketing, with the goal of appealing to younger crowds. As with all experiments, some have been successful, and some have failed miserably.

Companies such as Google, Netflix, Zoom, Canva, Duolingo, Semrush, and Salesforce have all tried meme marketing with various degrees of success.

While memes and humor are very subjective topics, the results of these campaigns can highlight how the target audience perceives meme posts, and therefore, we can determine their success. Let’s look at the different goals memes have been used to achieve. 

Brand Personality Enhancement

Companies use memes to showcase their brand’s personality, making it more relatable and humanized. By tapping into popular culture and humor, they can break down the corporate facade and connect with customers on a more personal level.

Image: Google Maps meme

Product Promotions

Memes have been used to promote products or services in a less intrusive and more engaging way. Instead of traditional advertisements, companies create or repurpose popular memes to include their products, making the promotion feel more like entertainment than a sales pitch.

Image: ROQ.dev meme

Trend Participation

Companies often participate in trending meme formats to stay relevant and engage with contemporary conversations. By adding their unique twist to a popular meme, they can insert themselves into widespread social media discussions, increasing their visibility.

Image: Salesforce participating in a meme trend

Community Building

Memes are a tool for building and nurturing online communities. Companies use them to spark conversations, encourage shares, and create a sense of belonging among their audience. This fosters a loyal community that feels connected to each other and the brand itself.

Image: Semrush relating to its community

Key Drivers Behind a Meme’s Success

To effectively use memes in Web3 marketing, it’s crucial to grasp why some memes catch on while others don’t. While there’s no surefire recipe for success, we’ve identified several key factors that significantly increase the chances of a meme’s success.

Timing is Everything

Nailing the perfect moment to launch a meme can make all the difference. Memes thrive on current trends, events, and the general mood of the audience. If you can tap into what’s buzzing right at the moment, your meme is more likely to resonate with people and spread like wildfire. This means keeping a close eye on cultural pulses and being ready to act swiftly.

The Edginess Factor

Walking the fine line of edginess can significantly amplify a meme’s appeal. Memes that are slightly provocative or push the boundaries of conventional humor often capture more attention. They spark conversations, evoke strong emotions, and can even become the center of debates.

However, it’s crucial to navigate this aspect carefully; the goal is to be edgy enough to be memorable without crossing the line in a way that can hurt your brand’s reputation. 

So, on one side of the scale, you have edgy content, and on the other, you have “normie” content. Ideally, your content should be somewhere between those two extremes, depending on your needs. 

You don’t want to be overly “normie”  because that might make it seem like your company is out of touch. On the other hand, edgy content can definitely damage your company’s reputation and alienate some of your clients if not used carefully.

The Freshness Factor

Your meme should offer a new perspective, a surprising contrast, or an unexpected punchline. This uniqueness is what makes your meme memorable and shareable, distinguishing it from the rest.

Your meme must be unique to truly stand out in the crowded world of internet humor. Originality is what will capture people’s attention and make them want to engage with and share your meme.

Memes fall on a freshness scale from fresh to mainstream. Fresh memes, being novel and not widely circulated, have a high potential for virality but may be too niche, risking a disconnect with a broader audience. 

Mainstream memes, though recognizable to many, can become overexposed, leading to perceptions of a lack of creativity and diminishing their appeal for those seeking innovative humor. This dynamic outlines the challenge of balancing originality with relatability in meme creation.

Be wary of dead memes. These are memes that have been overused to the point where they no longer elicit the same humorous response. While they can sometimes be revived with a clever twist, relying on them too heavily can make your content feel stale and unoriginal.

Image: Example of a dead meme format

The Meme Compass

Using the scales we outlined earlier, it’s possible to develop a meme compass. This tool can help clarify a meme’s placement within the cultural landscape and assess its relevance to a particular brand. 

Image: Web3 meme compass 

By pinpointing a meme’s location on this compass, brands can better understand how to effectively engage with meme culture in a way that aligns with their identity and appeals to their target audience.

Matching Memes with The Brand

The key to successfully matching memes with your brand lies in understanding your target audience, maintaining authenticity in your brand’s tone, and fostering creativity.

Understanding the Age Group

Different age groups resonate with different types of memes. Younger audiences may prefer current, trend-driven memes, while older demographics might appreciate memes that evoke nostalgia or relate to more timeless humor.

Maintaining Brand Tone Authenticity

Your brand’s voice should always come across as genuine when using memes. Avoid sounding artificial or as if you’re trying too hard to fit in. Consumers can easily detect when a brand is forcing a meme to work for them, which can lead to disengagement. The tone should match your brand’s personality, whether it’s playful, sarcastic, or witty, ensuring it doesn’t come off as insincere.

Honesty is Key

In the world of memes and viral content, honesty goes a long way. This means acknowledging current trends and sentiments in a straightforward manner. 

Your audience is more likely to engage with content that reflects a true understanding and appreciation of meme culture rather than content that seems to exploit it superficially for marketing purposes.

Be Creative

Be creative in how you adapt memes to fit your marketing needs. This doesn’t mean altering the essence of a meme to the point where it’s unrecognizable but rather integrating your brand in a way that feels natural and adds value to the meme.

By paying close attention to these aspects, brands can effectively use memes as a part of their digital marketing strategy to connect with their audience, enhance brand visibility, and foster a sense of community and shared humor.

The Benefits You Can Achieve with Memes

Most can guess the benefits of meme marketing based on the memes posted by some large companies. Let’s explore in more detail what you can expect if you start implementing memes in your marketing. 

Increased Engagement

Memes are inherently engaging. They’re often topical and easy to consume, which encourages likes, shares, and comments. This heightened engagement can help boost a brand’s visibility and interaction rates on social media platforms.

Brand Relatability

By using memes that resonate with their audience, brands can appear more relatable and humanized. This approach helps break down the corporate barrier, allowing companies to connect with their audience on a more personal level, fostering a sense of community and loyalty.

Viral Potential

Memes have a high potential to go viral due to their shareable nature. When a meme resonates with a broad audience, it can spread rapidly across the internet, extending a brand’s reach far beyond its existing followers. This virality can lead to increased brand awareness and exposure.

Timeliness and Relevance

Memes often reference current events, trends, or pop culture, making them timely and relevant. By capitalizing on these moments, brands can demonstrate their cultural awareness and stay top of mind with consumers who value staying up-to-date with current happenings.

Conclusion

While the creation of memes might seem straightforward at first glance, crafting ones that resonate with your audience, align with your brand, and stand out in the saturated digital landscape requires insight, creativity, and a deep understanding of online culture. 

The balance between edginess, freshness, and relevance is delicate, and striking it is no small feat.

 If you’re looking to harness the power of memes to elevate your brand’s digital presence, engage with audiences on a new level, and capitalize on the cost-effective, viral potential of this unique form of communication, RZLT can help you.

Be the memorable part of your audience’s mindless scrolling sprees; reach out to our team today!