
Some memes have been around for years, while others are fleeting, like Kenneth Bone during the presidential debate. Know your target audience and cater to their interests instead. Don’t try to create a meme that appeals to everyone. It’s guaranteed that only a sliver of the population will understand your meme. If you don’t, the audience will immediately pick up that you’re trying hard to be cool, and it will hurt your brand.īe relatable.

Make sure a digital native is writing and sharing memes from your brand so the lingo is on point.

How can you start your own version of a Heinz campaign? Follow these rules:īe a native. They also had over 80,000 total engagements across Facebook and Instagram. Heinz received over 4 million impressions, which was quadruple their goal. "Getting people to debate over a subject usually brings the most attention to it." "We created a custom meme for Heinz that fed into the internet’s obsession with arguing, highlighting their brand in a way that was entertaining," said Romanescu. They asked people to take sides with hashtags and posted graphics saying, “If you had to decide right now if a tomato is a fruit or a vegetable, which would you choose?” Heinz cleverly fed into the timeless debate on tomatoes being a fruit or a vegetable. "Not anymore. The times have changed and every brand is now adapting. “I have been telling people memes are the future of social marketing for years - I would always get pushback," said Razvan Romanescu, the co-founder of. It worked directly with to implement a meme marketing campaign with the goal of earning 1 million impressions. The condiment brand wanted to increase brand awareness and engagement on its social media. Heinz is a perfect example of meme creation in action. In fact, the benefits of creating your own meme can outweigh existing memes, as long as you play your cards right. This is more difficult to do, mostly because it’s not a trusted meme that your audience recognizes. If you don’t want to use an existing meme, make your own. Pepe the Frog is a perfect example of an innocuous meme gone awry. Meme meanings change over time, and you can unintentionally use an offensive meme. You also need to ensure your content is original, actually funny and fully understand a meme before using it.

To effectively use an existing meme, brands have to keep their ear to the ground to know what’s trending. Memes can have either a long or short life cycle. The value of meme marketing is clear, but how do you actually make it happen? Well, you can either use an existing meme or make your own. Think about it: Would you rather share a hilarious meme about McDonald’s burgers or a 500-word blog from McDonald’s about their newest menu addition? You’re probably going to go for entertainment over information, and the same is true for your audience. Memes aren’t overly promotional - they make people laugh with a casual reference to your brand.īecause of their entertainment value, it’s easier for your audience to share memes. Memes work for brands because they’re designed specifically for social platforms and provide value through entertainment. It goes past gag-inducing branded content and shares something of value to the audience. When done correctly, meme marketing can be very successful. Gen Z is very ad-averse. They can smell promotion from a mile away, and they aren’t having any of it. They want to skip over lame, commercialized content and get to their normal programming. Let’s be honest, nobody wants to see branded content on their feed. The downside to brand marketing on social media is that it often has low engagement. Did you know that millennials spend over 200 minutes online every day ? Memes are so prolific that there's a good chance millennials and Gen Zers are laughing at and sharing memes while online. This gives brands plenty of opportunities to engage with their audience.
