Meme mechanics for marketing mastery

When Coldplay announced its January 2025 concert dates for India earlier in April, the declaration sent their fans -into a frenzy within hours. From making content about the best seats in the stadium to sending reminders about this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, these followers set the ball rolling for the band.

And when the tickets for the concert were finally issued on BookMyShow last weekend, they literally broke the internet by flooding social media with an avalanche of memes. These showed an array of intense emotions ranging from joy of securing tickets to frustration over long queues.

These funny messages came from all over cyberspace, Coldplay’s fans, influencers, influencers, meme pages, and brands. Suffice it to say that social media platforms had a field day with Cold Play.

This instance once again underlined how memes have become influential message carriers for brands to reach people on social media platforms. To identify themselves with consumers, brands must now speak the language of their audiences, and today’s generations, mainly the Gen Zs and millennials, speak the lingo of memes.

Down the ‘memery’ lane

Contrary to popular notion, memes are not just an internet phenomenon. They prevailed in the world’s cultural realm from the early 1970s.

Webster’s New World College Dictionary defines a meme as “a concept, belief, or practice conceived as a unit of cultural information that may be passed on from person to person, subject to influences in a way analogous to natural selection.” It is a cultural, social, or political expression that is communicated through humour, which is created and posted by individuals or brands on media.

Engaging with meme culture enables brands to demonstrate their personality, maintain cultural relevance, and foster a deep connection with youngsters, who often view traditional advertising with a degree of scepticism. Memes help brands convey complex messages or core values in accessible and captivating formats.

Memes have a substantial cultural relevance because they mirror and comment on societal norms, values, and behaviours. One may remember that Amul started using the meme format to comment on the social or political events happening in the country.

Those Amul ‘memes’ would get published in newspapers or posted on billboards—way before the internet and social media were born. Amul’s ongoing commentary, leveraging its brand mascot and humour, helped the brand stay current, relatable, and genuine amidst the changing consumer beliefs and behaviours.

It is important for brands to create content like memes that are relatable to their target audience. A meme becomes relatable if it reflects shared emotions and experiences of its target group. Such content provides a sense of community to the audience.

For relatable content to succeed, it is important to keep it simple. It will be easy to understand if its context is known by the target audience in advance. Creators, therefore, mostly use famous stills from a movie, TV, or OTT content which already has recollection in the minds of the people.

Shareability of memes

Once a meme is relatable and simple, brands must assess its shareability. The platforms where the meme is posted needs to have easy sharing elements. This helps audiences share content easily in various ways, either publicly or to particular individuals or groups. The second important aspect that makes a meme sharable is the element of humour. A meme that succeeds in evoking laughter, is more likely to be shared with others.

The difficult part is to catch the correct emotion. Humour is highly contextual in nature. What is humorous for one person may not be so for another. Hence, brands should do a due diligence before posting memes. This can be done through a short, A/B testing of the meme created. Further, the social proof (liking, engagement) of the meme format can also help in understanding the reaction of the audience.

Consumers visit social media platforms primarily for entertainment and then for information. It does not matter to them who is creating great memes, for them the entertainment value of the meme is more important. Hence, if a brand can communicate with a consumer via a hilarious meme and envelop its brand message along with it, it’s a win-win for both—the brand and the consumer.

From memes to maturity

Given the highly contextualised nature of humour, meme marketing may also backfire. This mostly happens when brands do not do their due diligence of a context around which they form the campaign. Like when #WhyIStayed hashtag was going viral for the stories of survivors of domestic abuse, DiGiorno brand with cold pizzas created an insensitive meme without understanding the context. It led to a consumer backlash turning the campaign into a nightmare.

Many a time, consumers incorporate a brand’s name in it while creating memes. Such user-generated content may sometimes prove beneficial to a brand. However, if such a content piece disregards the potentially sensitive nature of a particular context, it may backfire.

While investing in meme marketing, brands must steer clear of inappropriate or insensitive content to jack up trends. Also, they must avoid force-fitting their brands into a trend. Meme marketing, when done without understanding, adapting to, and evolving with a trend, is the perfect recipe for disaster. Creative value-addition to a trend by brands—rather than mere copy-paste jobs—receives consumer acknowledgement.

As India’s online culture continues to evolve, the role and impact of memes in cultural commentary and marketing strategies are poised for expansion, mirroring a shift towards interactive, participatory communication. Memes are dynamic tools that brands can leverage for socially and culturally responsible messaging, going beyond simple humour.

- Amrita Bansal, assistant professor-marketing, International Management Institute.