what's in a meme?

About four years ago I participated in a new business pitch for a Fortune 500 consumer packaged goods company that wanted to understand how they could use social media as a marketing tool. This was at the beginning of the social media emergence into the marketing work space. We were not even referring to it as social media.

I had been following and using the technology for years on a personal level. At the time, I was really hesitant how a massive company could take this extremely personal communication medium and manipulate it into a marketing tool. And honestly, at the time, I didn't really think it was such a great idea to encroach upon people's personal conversations with marketing.

So, in order to better understand how to harness the technology for marketing, I started delving more into the medium and culling out great examples that had gone viral - literally getting passed around and shared with people in exponential numbers. What I soon found was that each example had a "meme" that hooked users into watching and, most importantly, sharing the piece.

Simply put, memes are just little snippets of popular culture that, for whatever mystical reason, really resonate with people. They can relate to the meme, identify with the meme, and feel special for understanding or finding and sharing the meme. And it takes off. Memes have been around forever and are not limited to online media. For example, in the movie Forrest Gump it is slowly revealed that Forrest is responsible for inventing lots of cultural memes, such as the smiley face, the fad of jogging/running, the "--it happens" bumper sticker, and so on.

A more recent example is the Weezer video for "Pork and Beans," which features recent social media memes, like the T-shirt guy, Mentos ghysers and that crying Brittany Spears fan kid.

So, four years ago, my conclusion was that for a company to be successful using social media they would need a great big juicy meme idea that people would overlook as advertising and would identify with more as a cultural phenomena.

Turns out, I was wrong.

Why? Four reasons:

Social media is just like any other marketing tool. Sure, a big meme idea would be great to get attention, but without solid marketing strategy behind it, it won't achieve the marketing objectives it needs to achieve. As long as you are following that one simple concept your efforts will eventually be successful.

Social media doesn't need to reach a massive audience, it needs the right audience. Just like any other form of marketing, if you're not reaching the right people, what's the point? A meme piece might reach millions of people while a carefully crafted one might reach thousands of a specific niche audience. That is going to make all the difference because if the message resonates within that niche, they will share and act upon it.

They can't all be Super Bowl ads. Just like not all TV spots are awe-inspiring masterpieces of the medium (Apple's Mac spot during the 1984 Super Bowl comes to mind) not all social media campaigns are going to go crazy viral. But, because of its ease of use, low production costs, ease of frequency, a good social media marketing program can be the workhorse of your marketing efforts.

You're initiating an active conversation. Properly done, your social media will not just get people to talk about you, they will be talking with you.

So, what's in a meme? The answer is simple: A spectacular idea will always be shared, but a focused, targeted message will be acted upon by the appropriate people.

Look for our next post: Gazelles vs. Lions