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Memes, meme marketing, and how brands and influencers can leverage them on social media

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Memes, meme marketing, and how brands and influencers can leverage them on social media

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MEMES, MEME MARKETING,
AND HOW BRANDS AND INFLUENCERS
CAN LEVERAGE THEM ON SOCIAL MEDIA

by

Meng Lyu

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
STRATEGIC PUBLIC RELATIONS

December 2020

Copyright 2020 Meng Lyu
ii

Table of Contents
Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... iii
Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1
Meme accounts ............................................................................................................................... 4
Why Are People Crazy About Memes? .......................................................................................... 8
Content Format ....................................................................................................................................... 8
Relevancy & Relatability .................................................................................................................... 10
Positive Emotions ................................................................................................................................. 11
Meme Marketing ........................................................................................................................... 14
Case Study: Hinge ................................................................................................................................ 15
The Merits of Meme Marketing ......................................................................................................... 17
Who Is the Target Audience? ............................................................................................................. 20
How Is Becoming a Meme Helpful for Upcoming Influencers? .................................................. 22
Case Studies: Antonio Garza & Brittany Tomlinson ...................................................................... 23
The Process of Becoming A Meme ................................................................................................... 27
How Brands Can Leverage Memes for Their Social Media ......................................................... 30
Case Studies: Dr. Squatch & Slim Jim .............................................................................................. 31
The Advantages of Using Memes on a Brand’s Social Media ...................................................... 35
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 38
Appendix ....................................................................................................................................... 40
Works Cited .................................................................................................................................. 53

iii

Abstract
Social media is infiltrating every aspect of people’s lives. Along with the thriving
development of social media, memes are becoming one of the ubiquitous content forms as well.
With a significant number of meme accounts emerging, they are gradually accumulating a vast
follower base online, thus making them influential on today’s social media platforms. Meme
marketing also emerges with the growth of popularity among the meme accounts.
Memes have some general characteristics which are strictly related to the functionality of
meme marketing. This thesis includes five case studies to explore the merits of meme marketing
for brands and upcoming influencers. The author also explores the advantages of using memes as
a part of a brand’s social media content. As more and more successful meme marketing cases
occur, PR professionals must understand how memes and meme marketing work in this digital
era.
Keywords: Meme, Meme Marketing, Influencers, Social Media Marketing
1

Introduction
For the younger generations such as Millennials and Generation Z, they do not recognize
the word “meme” exactly as academic terminology. Memes are a part of the content that they
consume on today’s social media. However, the concept of the “meme” dates back to the year
1976. This term was introduced by British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his work
The Selfish Gene. In it, Dawkins deems that the basic units of genetics are not species, families,
or even individuals but rather single genes – unique strands of DNA (Dawkins, 1976). As one
might get curious about the correlation between biology and these Internet jokes that we have
easy access to everyday, “meme” was initially introduced as a biological concept when Dawkins
discussed the areas where evolutionary theory might be heading next. Dawkins acknowledges
that much of human behavior comes not from genes but rather from culture, and he labeled these
nongenetic behaviors as memes (Davison, 2012).
In Patrick Davison’s essay The Language of Internet Memes, he further explains that
genes are not thinking beings but they determine an organism’s physical characteristics. The law
of nature, the survival of the fittest, is applicable here. The genes that are highly adaptable to the
changing environment survive. However, memes determine the behavior of an organism. They
are either taught to an organism or learned through experience. In the origin of this biological
jargon, memes described cultural ideas or behaviors, such as fashion, sports, and politics. As
Dawkins points out, the process of meme transmission is carried out primarily by employing
verbal, visual, or electronic communication, ranging from books and conversation to television,
e-mail, or the Internet (Dawkins, 1976). Today, memes – or “Internet memes” that the author
specifically focuses on – represent a much narrower concept.
2

There are numerous definitions about Internet memes online. Generally speaking, a
meme consists of a picture – customarily derived from pop culture such as cartoons and viral
videos – followed by a caption above the picture, which refers to “relatable” scenarios or even
something related to any relevant social, economic, and political news (Michelle, 2019).
Similarly, an Internet meme can be described as a picture or drawing (usually from an unwitting
source) that has taken on a shared, iconic quality, coupled with a resonating message (Zittrain,
2014). The following visual demonstrates a typical meme on the Internet.

Visual 1. A typical meme on the Internet
http://top-meme.com/26-relatable-memes-funny/

The pictures in this meme are from an iconic scene in the movie The Incredibles 2. The
caption above describes a relatable situation that is relevant to the pictures. The caption is clearly
targeting young people who still live with their parents. With each element working together in
this meme – current and popular visual content and relatable text – it is considered a “relevant”
meme on the Internet.

3

These two definitions about memes not only focus on the content of the memes, but also
the psychological implications – the powerful resonance – behind the memes. Defining memes in
a more complete and comprehensive way, Davison thinks of an Internet meme as “a piece of
culture, typically a joke, which gains influence through online transmission” (Davison, 2012).
This definition here vividly puts the Internet memes in a dynamic process and emphasizes the
importance of sharing. However, due to the complexity of the Internet memes, not all memes are
jokes. These definitions are still superficial. One application-oriented and comprehensive
definition that also neglects the aspect of humor is from Limor Shifman. According to him, “An
Internet meme is a group of digital items sharing common characteristics of content, form, and/or
stance, which were created with awareness of each other, and were circulated, imitated, and/or
transformed via the Internet by many users” (Shifman, 2014, p. 41). This definition depicts the
content of the memes, their creation, and their transmission process, which resonates with the
advertising lifecycle: Transmission, decoding, infection, storage, survival, and retransmission
(Murray, 2013).
Memes have considerably infiltrated today’s social media. Numerous studies indicate that
Millennials and Gen Z are the most active social media users. Considering memes are broadly
diffused on social media platforms, people who are passionate and curious about memes are
likely to represent these younger generations. The author primarily focuses on Internet memes,
especially those on social media, and studies their characteristics. With a thorough study of
Internet memes, this thesis dives into the “curators” of these Internet memes – meme accounts.
Through some recent cases, the author elaborates on the advantages of meme marketing, from
both influencer and brand perspectives. As the memes are morphing into new memes with more
4

recent context, they are a tremendous asset for brands as well. (Sax, 2012) For brands, meme
marketing serves as an alternative to influencer marketing. Besides meme marketing, the author
discusses how memes can act as the brand’s asset and work well as a part of a brand’s social
media content.
Meme accounts
Memes are popular, even more popular than Jesus. Indeed: in 2014, Google Trends
showed that the search term “memes” had surpassed “Jesus” (Barrie, 2016). Tremendous
popularity fuels the creation of memes. We see a large number of new memes appearing on
social media every day. Some social media accounts have started to aggregate memes and have
built up a decent number of followers. For people who are interested in memes, when there are
places where you have access to thousands of funny memes, it becomes a natural move for them
to follow these accounts. Many meme accounts even have more viewers than many of America’s
highest rated TV shows (Smith, 2017).
Meme accounts have evolved over the last decade, from just a personal hobby to a
corporate system. The teen behind the popular meme account @daquan (an account with 14.8
million followers on Instagram) started this Instagram account back in 2014 because he saw a
trending meme and decided to make an account dedicated to posting “Daquan” memes (Smith,
2017). It is not likely that every person behind these meme accounts shares the same motivation
as Daquan. However, it is evident that meme accounts are maturing and the people behind the
meme accounts are making memes more corporate. Daquan, along with his two work partners,
Barak Shragai and Dor Mizrahi, launched IMGN Media in 2015. IMGN Media now is the
company behind @daquan and some other popular Instagram meme accounts. IMGN Media acts
like a production studio for memes. According to IMGN, they hire content creators to write, edit,
5

and curate memes (Hitt, 2018). However, IMGN Media is not the only company behind these big
meme accounts. The team behind @betches, a meme account with 7 million followers on
Instagram, has now grown into Betches Media, a media/news company. The meme account
@fuckjerry on Instagram now has more than 15.3 million followers. The company behind the
account released a party game called What Do You Meme, which has already garnered millions
of copies sold on Amazon. In order to satisfy people’s growing appetite for memes, it seems that
turning meme accounts corporate is a successful path and strategy. Some meme accounts have
grown into full-fledged media companies and agencies (Southern, 2018).
Among these popular meme accounts on Instagram, one common feature stands out – some
meme accounts are private. Mediakix, an influencer marketing agency based in Santa Monica,
California, released The 25 Best Instagram Meme Accounts to Follow Now in 2020 (Appendix I),
depending on the popularity and the size of followers of these meme accounts. Among the 25 of
the top Instagram meme accounts, over 30% are private accounts. Doing Things is a media
company that manages a network of Instagram meme accounts with a collective 14 million
followers. The founder Reid Hailey claimed that around 75 percent of the accounts he oversees
are set to private (Lorenz, 2018). It became clear from an interview with Matthew LeVeque, social
media and marketing expert at USC Annenberg, that this exclusivity to these meme accounts,
similar to the concept of “limited editions”, works well to motivate people to want it more
(Appendix III).
By making their accounts private on Instagram, meme creators count on and actively instill
FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), which reflects the anxiety people experience when an exciting or
interesting event may currently be happening elsewhere, and it is often aroused by posts seen on a
social media website. The exclusive content in these private meme accounts triggers FOMO
6

among Instagram users on the outside, who naturally want to find out what they are missing (Cyca,
2019). For random Instagram users and those in a sharing environment such as a group chat, these
private accounts fuel their curiosity and trigger the fear of missing out, thus urging the action of
following. Although some Instagram users have negative opinions about these accounts turning
private, it is still a new way for Instagrammers to attract attention and followers in a crowded
market on an increasingly volatile platform (Lorenz, 2018). Unquestionably, this tactic works.
According to Reid Hailey, before one of his accounts went private, it was gaining an average of
10,000 new followers per week, compared to 100,000 once the account switched to private.
Matthew LeVeque has taught at USC Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism for
more than 14 years. His expertise includes advertising, branding, marketing, public relations and
social media. Specializing in integrated campaigns, digital and social media, and emerging
communication channels, LeVeque is the authority for these new social media formats like memes.
During an interview with Matthew LeVeque, he claimed that turning the account private not only
helps with growing followers but also helps these meme accounts maintain a locked network on
their Instagram page (Appendix III). Meme creators use this tactic to increase organic engagement
on social media. It builds a sense of loyalty and community, which in return reinforces engagement.

7

Visual 2. The account @epicfunnypage has 17.2 million followers. It is a private account on
Instagram. There is an enticing sentence in the account bio indicating that “your friends follow
this account and so should you,” a reinforcement of the FOMO tactic.
https://www.instagram.com/epicfunnypage/

The author also has some other observations from the list offered by Mediakix. Among
25 of the top Instagram meme accounts, 28% of the account names emphasize or subtly imply
the concept of “funny”, which is not surprising because one of the most outstanding features of
memes is humor. By creating such distinctive and identifiable account handles, meme creators
emphasize the “funny” feature of the memes they produce, thus naturally attracting more
followers. It is also not hard to notice that some of the account names are explicit and vulgar. 7
accounts out of these 25 have explicit or vulgar handle names. The author fails to see a
comprehensive rating system for the content of memes. It is very easy for underage people to
access these meme accounts, which can be risky for content creators.
With this scale of popularity and a huge follower base, people sometimes associate these
meme accounts with influencers. However, one thing these meme accounts are trying to do is
dodge the similarity to influencers. Unlike influencers, meme accounts typically do not have an
identity or a persona. The meme account @daquan used to aggregate memes is attached to a
8

fictional character: Daquan, a character born out of Black Twitter in the early 2010s. The team
behind this account intentionally phased out this fictional character because they did not want
their company’s pages associated with a particular individual. They wanted to function as
generalized publishing pages, because that increases the likelihood to earn money (Hitt, 2018).
Not attaching a persona grants these meme accounts flexibility and, of course, more
opportunities to work with a wide range of brands.

Why Are People Crazy About Memes?
Content Format
Memes exist in various content formats. A standard meme generally consists of text
(caption) and visuals. It is also possible that a meme solely consists of text. This often appears in
the format of a tweet, with the credit to the text creator along with the text itself. The most
outstanding feature for text-only content is that they always maintain a relatively short length of
text.

Visual 3. A typical meme post with text alone
https://www.instagram.com/p/B-YY-pojBtA/
9

Take @fuckjerry on Instagram, one of the most popular meme accounts, as an example.
Despite the explicit account name, @fuckjerry has 15.3 million followers on Instagram. For the
period of December 19
th
, 2019 to April 4
th
, 2020, there are 20 posts of memes with text-only
content. The average word count is 23 among the 20 posts, with 58 words in the longest post and
only 4 words in the shortest one. Short and concise text works better and makes it easier for
memes to go viral simply because they are easier to read. It has been proven that shorter
Instagram posts have a slightly higher number of comments and reach (Ayres, 2019).
As for the visual content, videos and images are frequently used in a meme post. On the
same account, there are 20 videos posted from February 24
th
to April 2
nd
, 2020. The average
length of the video is 20.9 seconds among 20 videos, with 59 seconds as the most extended video
and 5 seconds as the shortest one. Although these posts are just a small sample from one popular
meme account on Instagram, it still shows the pattern of the adoption of short videos. The format
of short videos only takes up a small bite of the consumption time on social media, which makes
it even more possible for memes to go viral. It aligns with people’s social media consumption
behaviors. Videos get better engagement than photos on Instagram (Cooper, 2020).
The observations and the definitions of Internet memes bestow one feature to these
memes – they are short. As Barak Shragai (one of the founders of IMGN Media) says, “it’s a
matter of attention span. What can be shorter than a meme? In just a few seconds you are sharing
content and you can connect with your friends” (Hitt, 2018). Part of the reason why people are
crazy about memes is because they are short and so easy to share. Meme creators have to adopt
corresponding formats, such as short text, images, and short videos, to keep them brief and easy
to share, because a “meme” is the lowest common denominator of an idea, a basic unit of
10

communication. It is simplicity itself, easily understandable in a matter of seconds (Levinson,
2001). The author also interviewed Dr. Su Jung Kim, an assistant professor at USC Annenberg
School. Her research projects have examined cross-platform media use patterns, news and
information sharing behaviors, and mobile app/web engagement, which makes her the perfect
authority to turn to in terms of the subject of memes. According to Dr. Su Jung Kim, the
combination of an image with phrases is attention grabbing (Appendix II). The simplicity plays a
crucial role in these Internet memes.

Relevancy & Relatability
There are several factors that play a role in the process of a meme being shared and going
viral. People consume, share, and discuss them on social media and in real life because content-
wise, memes are relevant. Some of the visual content may be out of date, but when new relevant
captions/text are put together with the visual content, the memes become relevant again.
Whenever something becomes trendy online, new memes will be created to generate social
media buzz. We have seen Tiger King memes widely spreading once the show launched on
Netflix. These new trending events range from the release of popular TV shows, to a bombshell
that happened in the latest Democratic debate, updates from celebrities, and current events taking
place globally. Memes are often created to serve as social repercussions. General public opinions
on topics are generally incorporated into memes.
To prove the relevancy of these Internet memes, the author has kept a record of memes
about COVID-19 on the meme account @fuckjerry. The memes about COVID-19 take up 68%
of the total memes made in March 2020, compared to none in February. Among the 68% of the
11

content in March, subtopics such as quarantine home life, social distancing, and pets during the
lockdown, appeared as viral meme topics on this account.
Not all memes are about current affairs. No matter if memes are satirizing or trending
social events or not, relatability is a powerful psychological mechanism that can explain the
popularity of memes. “Relatable memes usually get shared the most,” says the team behind
popular meme account @daquan (Smith, 2017). People behind meme accounts are intentionally
trying to make memes relatable. When they are creating new memes and meme accounts, they
contemplate “how I can mimic my audience’s voice” (Hitt, 2018). There are also powerful
psychological implications behind the relatability. “If the concept of identification suggested that
an individual experiences a work as a mirror in which he might recognize himself, the notion of
relatability implies that the work in question serves like a selfie: a flattering confirmation of an
individual’s solipsism” (Mead, 2017). As surprising as it may sound, it is relatability that
instantly registers with viewers on a visceral level, encouraging them to engage with the meme
and share it.

Positive Emotions
When meme creators combine relevancy and relatability with positive emotions, such as
humor, sarcasm, and empathy, memes are more likely to be shared and go viral. As the author
points out, some meme accounts emphasize the feature of humor and fun in their account names
to attract more followers. According to the definition from Merriam-Webster dictionary, a meme
is “an amusing or interesting item (such as a captioned picture or video) or genre of items that is
spread widely online, especially through social media." When it comes to memes, people
subconsciously expect them to be funny and entertaining. A meme that produces high-arousal
12

emotion tends to be shared with higher frequency, thus, going viral. During the interview with
LeVeque, he indicated that memes are short, sweet, and give people something to laugh at.
Memes can either be satire, humor, or social commentary. The fact that people constantly want
to be entertained and engage on social media platforms also helps memes go viral and become
ubiquitous (Appendix III).
It is not strange that people are obsessed with sharing the content that produces high-
arousal emotions because sharing emotions helps people connect (Berger, 2013). According to
Jonah Berger, the author of the book Contagious: Why Things Catch On, high arousal emotions
boost sharing, no matter if it is positive (awe, excitement, humor) or negative (anger, anxiety).
Memes fall under the category of humor, which makes them psychologically more likely to be
talked about and shared. As COVID-19 continues to spread and the stay-at-home order has been
prolonged, people under quarantine are spending more time online and turning to the Internet for
relief. Coronavirus-themed memes are providing comic relief and distraction amid times of
uncertainty (Harris, 2020). As a medium embedded with positive emotions and parodies, memes
are serving as a form of comforting and entertaining content during these difficult times, which
makes it even more possible for more of them to go viral.
Clinical psychologist Dr. Kanan Khatau Chikhal, who has been analyzing the human
brain rewiring for 16 years, also thinks that memes make people happy. She thinks that memes
make people feel less alone, help people bond with others, and help people connect with our
deeper selves. Dr. Kanan Khatau Chikhal claims, “Human beings need three things: love, self-
esteem, and security. In our journey of seeking security, belongingness plays a very important
role. If you read Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, you will find that belongingness is
featured heavily. That’s why people relate to memes—because they resonate with them, which
13

creates a sense of identification. We form groups, and this identification with the meme culture is
largely perceived with a feeling of 'I’m not alone.'" (Arora, 2018).
The combination of short content format, vivid visuals, and the compelling psychological
reasoning behind them makes memes extremely popular on social media. However, we can
never neglect the importance of social media platforms when it comes to getting these memes
shared and circulating.
Social media platforms serve as content carriers for memes. Memes can exist on almost
all of the mainstream social media platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit.
The convenient design of social media platforms encourages people on the Internet to share and
engage with the content. With just one click on a smartphone, it is extremely simple to share a
tweet on Twitter. The features may vary on different platforms, but the philosophy of simplifying
the process of sharing is the same. The natural process of sharing on social media boosts the
spread of the content, which is a big factor in memes going viral. “Share,” “Like,” and
“Comment” features serve as important indicators of engagement on social media platforms. In
order to determine how well a meme is performing on the Internet, similar to influencer
marketing, we must examine engagement.
The emergence of new social media platforms also helps the meme creators collect more
visual materials. Through the observation of meme accounts, the author also notices that there is
a significant increase in visual content coming from TikTok, a rising short-video social media
platform. With 80 million downloads in the United States and nearly 800 million worldwide,
more and more people have joined TikTok, and the amount of video content has naturally
surged, which makes more visual content available for meme creators to use (Yurieff, 2018).

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Meme Marketing
Popular meme accounts have a huge following online. A large follower base represents
the high success rate of delivering a message to a particular group of people, which means that
popular meme accounts are influential. Meme marketing is the collaboration between brands and
meme accounts. It is not a novel strategy for communicators and public relations specialists.
Brands have already started to dive into meme marketing and work with meme accounts. Social
media agency Cult LDN has run a campaign with a couple of meme accounts for one of its
clients, streaming service Hayu, to promote the new season of Keeping Up with the Kardashians
(Southern, 2018). Slim Jim has turned its Instagram page into a meme account analogue
(Bradley, 2019). Meme marketing has become the next social media marketing strategy to look
at.
To some extent, meme accounts are similar to influencers: They both have a huge
follower base. Therefore, there is also a similarity between influencer marketing and meme
marketing. As a new alternative to paid media channels, does meme marketing work better than
influencer marketing? Zanna Wharfe, senior strategist at social agency We Are Social, thinks
that memes are a new form of native advertising. “This is a specific type of content you are
producing with meme accounts with a specific look and feel and humor, rather than using the
influence of the individual. It’s a new distribution platform” (Southern, 2018). Meme marketing
is not necessarily performing better than influencer marketing, but it is cheaper than influencer
marketing, at least for now. A brand can pay $15,000 to a human influencer who has 1 million
followers. For a meme account with 1 million followers, the collaboration price can be as low as
$1,000 (Southern, 2018). It is not the author’s priority to compare meme marketing and
15

influencer marketing in this thesis, but meme accounts seem to have a good return on investment
when compared to influencers.

Case Study: Hinge
Hinge is a New York-based dating app founded by Justin McLeod in 2012. Among other
dating apps such as Tinder and Bumble, Hinge is different because it emphasizes relationship-
oriented features and brands the message, “designed to be deleted.”
In September 2015, the feature “Tinder and the Dawn of the ‘Dating Apocalypse’” on
Vanity Fair voiced Gen Z’s opinions on dating culture and how dating culture is turning into
“hookup culture” (Sales, 2015). Hinge, one of the dating apps, had the swipe feature as well. To
find the brand’s differentiator, Hinge conducted multiple surveys with scores of questions to
more than 500,000 of its users and received tens of thousands of responses (Sales, 2016). Here
are some of the key findings:
Seven in 10 surveyed women on the leading swiping app have received sexually explicit
messages or images. Six in 10 men on the leading swiping app are looking primarily for flings or
entertainment. Thirty percent of surveyed women on swiping apps have been lied to about a
match’s relationship status. Twenty-two percent of men on Hinge have used a swiping app while
on a date. Fifty-four percent of singles on Hinge report feeling lonely after swiping on swiping
apps. Twenty-one percent of surveyed users on the leading swiping app have been ghosted after
sleeping with a match. Eighty-one percent of Hinge users have never found a long-term
relationship on any swiping app.

These findings inspired Hinge to redesign the app and relaunch as a subscription service
in 2016. Hinge describes itself as “an alternative to swipe culture by creating smart matches and
natural conversations among people who are on the same page. That’s why 75% of first dates on
Hinge turn into second dates.” With a key message of rebranding itself as a dating app that is
16

long-term-relationship oriented, Hinge started to launch partnerships with Instagram meme
accounts.
Hinge has collaborated with several meme accounts on Instagram such as @betches,
@fuckjerry, @thedailylit, and @highfiveexpert, all of who are considered popular pop culture
meme creators on Instagram. The following are several partnership posts:

Visual 4. A post from @betches, with the annotation of “paid partnership with Hinge”
https://mediakix.com/blog/hinge-app-influencer-instagram-case-study/

Visual 5. A partnership post with @highfiveexpert, featuring two puppies and a fictional caption
about how they met on the dating app Hinge
https://mediakix.com/blog/hinge-app-influencer-instagram-case-study/

17

Interestingly, Hinge and all the collaborative meme accounts did not include any strong
call-to-action. One outstanding feature among the partnership posts was that the brand placement
was subtle. The audience would not identify these posts as paid partnership content at first sight.
Partnership content, much like other meme content on these accounts, is widespread and
generates a high engagement rate. For example, the post featuring two dogs with a bag of chips
got 453 comments and 886,702 views, which is 4 times the total number of @highfiveexpert’s
followers back then. In the comment section below these posts, the author often sees curious
followers asking about Hinge, tagging their friends, and reiterating how much they need a dating
app like Hinge.

The Merits of Meme Marketing
As a derivative of influencer marketing, meme marketing serves as an alternative to paid
media channels. Based on the Hinge case study, the author concludes three general merits from
conducting meme marketing.
The first merit is adding fun and humor into the brand’s image. As the author mentioned,
memes are generally amusing and entertaining. By collaborating with meme accounts to promote
a brand, it is implied that the brand is approachable and witty. As a dating app that focuses on
“designed to be deleted” branding, the collaboration with meme accounts aligns with the brand’s
funny and friendly image. It is hard for a brand to create the kind of wit that comes naturally to
the content creators behind these meme accounts (Southern, 2018).
Secondly, the collaboration with meme accounts increases brand awareness by subtly
delivering the key message to the audience, because engagement is often more stable as follower
counts grow, than that of influencers (Southern, 2018). The subtleness of meme marketing works
18

particularly well on younger people. Take Instagram as an example. As of January 2020, more
than half of the global Instagram population is age 34 or younger (Clement, 2020). When brands
are launching meme marketing campaigns, they are dealing with Gen Z and Millennials.
Therefore, it is crucial to understand what kind of marketing approach works best for them.
According to a study conducted by the McCarthy Group, 84% of Millennials stated that they did
not like traditional marketing, and they did not trust it (Arnold, 2018). The content partnership
between brands and meme accounts subtly delivers key messages to their audience and increases
brand awareness without shoving traditional advertisement into young people’s faces. Therefore,
this collaboration caters to the way Millennials and Gen Z consume marketing content.
Lastly, the content can be malleable and creative. As the visuals on page 19 demonstrate,
meme creators put Hinge into different scenarios and various content formats. Although memes
are generally amusing and funny, different meme accounts have different styles and
personalities. Meme accounts are offering their own brand of witty and relatable posts (Southern,
2018). In the Hinge meme marketing case, meme creators were allowed to direct the creative.
The content being produced is malleable and in various formats and styles, which saves content
production time for brands.
However, there can still be several disadvantages when it comes to meme marketing. On
the premise of increasing brand awareness without a strong call-to-action, it can be hard for
Hinge to measure the success of meme marketing. Likes, Comments, and Shares are key
indicators of engagement. However, it is not easy to track the audience and their decisions, from
seeing the actual posts to downloading the app.
Another potential risk of meme marketing is that humor is not the answer to everything.
For this year’s presidential campaign, Mike Bloomberg contracted some of the biggest meme-
19

makers to post sponsored content on Instagram. These meme accounts posted Bloomberg
campaign ads in the form of fake direct messages from the candidate.

Visual 6. A post from the meme page @grapejuiceboys indicating the paid partnership with
Mike Bloomberg
https://www.instagram.com/p/B8fLyStAKJ4/?utm_source=ig_embed

While most people were confused about whether or not the posts were real, some
followers were even more skeptical (Lorenz, 2020). From the author’s point of view, it is not
appropriate for a presidential candidate to launch her/his campaign with meme accounts. First,
memes and meme accounts are not mainstream sources where people consume political
information. Second, Bloomberg’s meme campaign did not deliver a political message. Instead,
this campaign focused on building an approachable and humorous image for Mike Bloomberg,
which seems incompatible with the political views and beliefs that Bloomberg holds. “We’re
trying to be innovative with how we’re translating campaign [message] on social, trying to do it
how the internet actually works,” an aide to the Bloomberg campaign had said (Lorenz, 2020).
Although the initiative may be appreciated, from the author’s perspective, the approach of meme
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marketing does not align with the seriousness of political campaigns and the presidential
election.

Who Is the Target Audience?
When brands are considering influencer marketing, it is reasonable to think about with
whom the brands should be collaborating. Generally speaking, brands assess if the influencer’s
followers align with the brand’s target audience. For instance, if an athleisure brand in the United
States wants to conduct an influencer marketing campaign, it is highly possible for the brand to
look for influencers who are active and sporty because their follower base is more likely to be
interested in sports and athleisure.
However, for meme accounts, it is hard for some to generalize a vivid audience persona
among their followers. Take @epicfunnypage as an example. This meme account has 17.2
million followers on Instagram. However, it is not easy for brands to identify the follower
demographics and personas unless the account holder provides a follower analysis. When
collaborating with general meme accounts like @epicfunnypage, the concept of the target
audience is likely to be the general public (among younger people), which is also why meme
marketing works well when it comes to increasing brand awareness instead of a call-to-action.
Despite the fact that the target audience of meme marketing can be hard to generalize, both
interviewees, Matthew LeVeque and Su Jung Kim, agree that meme marketing is mostly targeted
towards younger generations who are more familiar with ways of communicating based on
memes (Appendix II, III).
Memes and meme accounts are generally targeting anyone who craves entertaining and
engaging content online. However, some meme accounts target specific groups of audiences.
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@betches focuses on humor for its female-skewing audience, which is why this account created
collaborative content with Hinge based on females’ point of view. The majority of the memes on
@betches jokingly address multiple ways girls have learned to deal with the stress of the female
experience. The content is tailored to a female audience.
When looking into more micro to mid-sized meme accounts, the author found out that
individual meme accounts exist to serve particular types of audiences. @asiansneverdie is
another mid-sized meme account with 367k followers on Instagram. By curating memes that are
relatable to Asian people, this account is naturally popular among the Asian audience. Grindr is a
networking and online dating app geared towards gay, bi, and transgender people. The account –
@best_of_grindr – curates memes that are more relatable to the LGBTQ community, which
makes its follower base more specific. The team behind @daquan has launched another meme
account @Journal on Instagram. This account is tailored to teenage girls who like pop culture
and influencers (Hitt, 2018). Meme accounts have realized the ambiguity of their follower base
and have started to create different “meme brands”, each publishing material as narrowly
targeted as @Journal. Companies like IMGN Media are trying to cater to a specific
demographic. Once a particular audience group flocks to a meme account, it is extraordinarily
beneficial for brands and advertisers to reach out to a precise target audience. According to
LeVeque, the target audience of meme marketing also depends on the platform (Appendix III).
Different demographics dwell in different social media platforms. For instance, TikTok tends to
have younger users. As of February 11, 2020, 41% of TikTok users are aged between 16 and 24
(Aslam, 2020). However, an older generation dominates Facebook. According to a report from
Omnicore, 88% of online users ages 18-29 are on Facebook, and 84% of those are 30-49 (Aslam,
2020). Therefore, when it comes to meme marketing, it is imperative to take the choice of social
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media platforms into consideration, because the platform determines the audience demographic
as well.

How Is Becoming a Meme Helpful for Upcoming Influencers?
The author has observed the trend of upcoming influencers getting featured on Internet
memes, and their career as influencers taking off. From the concept “YouTubers” to the
phenomenal soar of TikTok and the “TikTokers” in 2019, we can show that when people have a
new platform to express themselves, they will have the opportunity to acquire fame on this new
yet not-oversaturated social media platform.
The concept of influencers is no longer limited to traditional content creators. Back in the
earlier stages of influencer marketing, influencers were supposed to provide valuable information
to their audience and to become an expert in a specific field. There are multiple influencer
categories. Beauty influencers are supposed to have professional knowledge about skincare and
cosmetics. Fashion influencers should have a unique taste and should be knowledgeable about
the fashion industry. Travel influencers have to have been to several travel destinations in order
to be a relevant authority figure online. With an oversaturated influencer market, the concept of
influencers is becoming more and more ambiguous nowadays, especially with more and more
Gen Z influencers joining the conversations online.
When the author examines these upcoming content creators, such as Antonio Garza (17-
years-old, 2.2 million followers on Instagram), Adam Ray (20-year-old, 5.1 million followers on
TikTok), and Brittany Tomlinson (22-year-old, 3.6 million followers on TikTok), the author
reinforces the deconstruction of the concept of traditional influencers. Unlike traditional
influencers, these upcoming content creators no longer provide hard-core informative and
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educational content to inspire their followers. What they have adopted to make up for the void of
professional knowledge in a particular industry is the combination of their talent and personality
in an entertaining form, which resonates with the characteristics of memes and attracts the
attention of the general public and meme creators. Is becoming a meme helpful for these
upcoming influencers? If a person becomes a meme, “he/she becomes relevant” (Appendix III).
LeVeque holds the same opinion as the author: If a person becomes popular in a meme, people
tend to think of them as “celebrities on TV” and fantasize that they have a relationship with that
person. Anything that continues to build that familiarity in those relationships is positive for
these upcoming influencers (Appendix III).

Case Studies: Antonio Garza & Brittany Tomlinson
Antonio Garza was born in 2002 and lives in Austin, Texas. A leading transgender
influencer, she posted her first video titled, “VALENTINES HEART CUT CREASE MAKEUP
LOOK” on YouTube on Feb 4, 2018. A brief glimpse of her YouTube channel gives the
impression that she is a beauty influencer who shares makeup tutorials. However, her content
neither focuses on makeup tutorials nor skincare recommendations. According to her interview
with the New York Times, she has always wanted to do makeup tutorials when it comes to her
content. However, when she actually started doing them, she also realized she wanted to do
makeup tutorials and not talk about makeup. Therefore, in many of her videos, she talks about
her stressful school life, her failure to create a drag makeup transformation, her decision to drop
out of high school, and her gaming experiences. Antonio Garza is presenting her teenage life to
the world. The unique part about her is that she unfolds her multiple selves, her personality, and
her “relatable” mental breakdowns. In her videos, she will say things like, “I’m dying – finally!”
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and “I look ugly, and I’m really depressed!” Apparently, the young generation thinks that they
can spend their days feeling like ten different people at once and they can, and should, express
them all (Weil, 2019).
From a psychological point of view, “pre-internet, the prevailing belief was that we had
real selves and fake selves, and we cast judgment on the fakes. We took for granted that we
should at least try to present ourselves to the world as coherent people with unified personalities”
(Weil, 2019). With the young generation getting more comfortable with presenting their multiple
selves to the world, the way that they boldly demonstrate their personality makes their content
accessible.
After posting several videos on her YouTube channel, nothing happened at the beginning.
However, by May 2018, Antonio Garza reached more than 300,000 subscribers on YouTube.
Along with the growth in popularity, her content appeared in multiple popular meme accounts.
Her video clips were captioned with various scenarios. In one of her most shared videos, she is
putting makeup on and realizes that she is going to be late for school. Instead of rushing her
makeup process, she prays, “Please Lord Jesus Christ, help me.” The post is captioned, “me
during an exam that I didn’t study for” by the meme account @was (2.4 million followers on
Instagram), and it received 701,707 views and 664 comments as of April 15, 2020.
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Visual 7. A meme posted by meme account @was featuring Antonio Garza

After frequently getting featured by meme accounts, Antonio Garza has reached 2.2
million followers on Instagram as of April 2020. So far, she has collaborated with Honey, a tech
company that operates a browser extension that aggregates and automatically applies online
coupons, and James Charles, another beauty YouTuber and the first male ambassador for
CoverGirl. Antonio Garza’s career as an influencer has taken off. With a total of 3.67 million
subscribers on YouTube, Antonio Garza is also active on Instagram, Twitter, and recently, on
TikTok.

Brittany Tomlinson, also known as Kombucha Girl, is the typical case of a user going
viral overnight. She is 22 years old and recently moved to Los Angeles from Texas. As a content
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creator, Brittany Tomlinson takes advantage of the new short-video platform, TikTok. She
created her TikTok account in July 2019. In September, Tomlinson shared her most famous
video, a 21-second video of her trying Kombucha for the first time. In that video, her expressions
changed a couple of times as she was delicately tasting the beverage.

Visual 8. A few shots from the famous Kombucha-tasting video clip
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/20/style/kombucha-internet-viral.html

This video on TikTok soon became one of the internet’s most ubiquitous videos.
According to a representative of TikTok, this video post reached 11 million total engagements
(collective likes, comments, views, and shares), and it was among TikTok’s list of Top 10 viral
videos of 2019 (Greenspan, 2019). As the exponential spread of the video was happening, the
video clip and the most iconic frames in the video were featured by so many meme accounts.
These memes appeared with captions like, “when you try alcohol for the first time,” and “me
reading back my own writing.”
After the Kombucha video went viral, Brittany Tomlinson continued to post for her
followers. She delivers jokes, impressions, and other comedic performances. Her talent in acting
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and the entertaining nature of her posts are the contributors to her phenomenal popularity. A
psychology professor who studies facial expressions analyzed the structure of the video and told
the New York Times, “Her expressions are exceptional – easy to see and rich” (Greenspan,
2019).
Brittany Tomlinson has already earned sponsorships with Chipotle, Crocs, and
HelloFresh. Most amazingly, she is one of the 19 faces in Sabra’s 2020 Super Bowl ad. From a
viral meme in September 2019 to next year’s Super Bowl ad, Brittany Tomlinson’s career proves
the power of memes in generating buzz and increasing awareness.

The Process of Becoming A Meme
So, how does one actually go about becoming a meme? The logic behind the process is
simple. Meme creators are actively looking for exciting and malleable content online, every day.
They often incorporate user-generated content as the visual part of the new memes. When this
“user” is a content creator or an influencer herself/himself, the exposure of their content on
popular meme accounts increases the possibility of growth on their follower base. For
influencers who are looking to be more influential with more followers and more exposure,
becoming a viral meme is exceptionally beneficial.
Influencers are content creators. Another term for influencers is KOLs (Key Opinion
Leaders). To become an influencer, they have to provide valuable content to boost the behavior
of sharing. People like to pass along practical, useful information (Berger, 2013). This
psychological fact about human beings helps content creators spread their useful and valuable
content, thus making them one step closer to an influencer. Some upcoming influencers are not
traditional content creators anymore. They do NOT provide informative knowledge, such as
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skincare, fashion tips, lifestyle recommendations, on their social channels. They fall more under
the category of talents and entertainers. Their content may include daily life vlogs and parodies.
The content from them is humorous and amusing, and these high arousal emotions create the
value of sharing.
No matter what category the content creator specializes in or which social media platform
they are on, content creation is always the first step to becoming an influencer. Whether it is
Antonio Garza’s videos uploaded on her YouTube channel or Brittany Tomlinson’s short-video
posts on TikTok, these are their assets. With content being produced and piling up, it is more
likely for them to develop some moments, especially video clips, that are malleable and can be
used as visual content by meme creators.
These moments are usually unexpected. At the base of a lot of memes is an authentic,
unguarded, involuntary moment (Zittrain, 2014). Meme creators are looking for funny, relatable,
and malleable content to be featured in new memes. In order to make visual content applicable to
various scenarios, these moments are often happening in day-to-day scenarios with general
topics being discussed. As the case studies show, the content featured in the viral memes are not
studio-produced at all. It is the daily, spontaneous moments that can transform into different
memes relating to various scenarios.
When a specific video clip or a screenshot from a video clip goes viral and catches the
meme creators’ eyes, the process of making new memes begins. Meme creators put new captions
and text with visual content to create new memes. When it comes to user-generated content, it is
sometimes hard to find original content creators and indications of who should be credited for
specific content. However, meme accounts pay close attention to credits and copyright. If a
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video clip is featured in a meme post, the meme creator of this account often mentions the
content creator’s name (Instagram handle) or the source of the content.

Visual 9. A meme from @epicfunnypage with the credit information of the video creator in the
captions under the post. (via @chase_herrmann)
https://www.instagram.com/p/B-xtl9HD6yy_RXWEWyjmxDUCOnEa5Ij6zo-dNg0/

A viral meme is highly likely to be posted by multiple meme accounts, which creates
even more exposure for the content creators and leads to an increase in their follower base.
The clarification of the content source is essential for upcoming influencers to gain new
followers. If the meme account acknowledges the original content and the content creator
happens to have an Instagram account, the audience of the meme accounts will be curious, and
the potential growth of the follower base for the influencers is more likely to happen. Even if the
meme accounts fail to find the source of the visual content, there will be curious followers asking
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questions about who this person is in the comment section. Other people may have information
about the content creator and share relevant information with others. This process of word-of-
mouth boosts the growth of followers for the content creators as well. The process works just
like the process of a brand’s meme marketing. When curiosity is generated, traffic will be driven
to the content creators. A high conversion rate is not guaranteed, but the possibility of attaining
more followers is higher than for those not being featured in memes at all. The interviewee Su
Jung Kim agrees with the author. Kim thinks that influencers who are featured in a (successful)
meme will receive large-scale exposure to people who otherwise would have never seen those
influencers (Appendix II).
In Antonio Garza and Brittany Tomlinson’s cases, the process of becoming viral memes
was never part of their plan. Their content gained popularity and was shared first, before they
were made into viral memes by a large number of meme accounts. However, the process of
being featured in memes can be a well-planned strategy. These upcoming influencers can
strategically collaborate with meme accounts to promote themselves.
The number of followers is undoubtedly a crucial indicator of an influencer’s success. In
the collaboration between influencers and meme accounts, similar to the process of building
brand awareness, memes subtly deliver the message from the featured influencer to a significant
number of followers, thus creating buzz and increase awareness, and eventually helping the
influencers gain followers.

How Brands Can Leverage Memes for Their Social Media
Today, social media plays an essential role in connecting the world and endorsing a
product or a brand. Social media, according to Gini Dietrich’s PESO model, is an integral part of
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the shared media channel. Nearly every business has recognized the value and benefit in social
media marketing (Kruse, 2019). When brands are conducting social media marketing, some key
factors are to delegate planning and managing content on social media. When it comes to content
management, different brands incorporate various content to build up their social media
presence. The content includes but is not limited to: Products, user-generated content, influencer
partnerships, celebrity endorsements, CSR (corporate social responsibility), and special
announcements.
Memes are ubiquitous on social media. They not only serve as entertaining information to
be consumed and diffused but also as a form of creative content utilized as part of the planning
process on brands’ social media pages.

Case Studies: Dr. Squatch & Slim Jim
Dr. Squatch was founded in 2013, and it is headquartered in Los Angeles, California. The
company produces personal care products designed to change the way men approach hygiene.
Their products include handmade and natural soaps, hair care, colognes, beard oils, and shave
kits.
Dr. Squatch first got people’s attention with humorous and lighthearted commercials on
social media platforms. These commercials always feature a long-haired and long-bearded male
narrator switching up the chemical products men generally use with the products from Dr.
Squatch. On the brand’s Instagram, the narrator introduces the new soap gripper in a nearly-two-
minute video, repeatedly saying how he could not let go of this soap because of the soap gripper.
From the captions on Instagram to the advertising style, Dr. Squatch is promoting a funny,
quirky, and spontaneous brand image.
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On the brand’s Instagram page, they maintain a high update frequency with daily posts.
In March 2020, Dr. Squatch posted every day with 31 posts in total. In these 31 posts, 18 meme
posts feature the brand name “Dr. Squatch.” These memes come from the popular TV series
Tiger King from Netflix, characters in Harry Potter, and other viral meme visuals.

Visual 10. A meme post from @drsquatch on Instagram featuring a frame from the movie Star
War with the captions about the brand’s product
https://www.instagram.com/p/B-Sbrzlhv5I/

Some of the meme posts are simply being comical, such as making fun of the quarantine
life during the COVID-19 outbreak and men getting a Dr. Squatch logo tattooed. The post in
Visual 10 is a creative and smart way to incorporate product promotion in relatable memes. Just
like the example here, Dr. Squatch uses memes as a form of content to include product and
company messages. In this specific Adam Driver meme posted on March 28, 2020, there are
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3,542 likes and 62 comments. Some of the comments are even complementing Dr. Squatch’s
marketing strategy.
Dr. Squatch consistently uses memes as a part of their social media content to incorporate
product information and create an exclusive community for its consumers. In DataIntelo’s 2020
report, “Men’s Bar Soap Market Growth Prospects, Key Vendors, Future Scenarios Forecast By
2026,” Dr. Squatch is among the major players in the global Men’s Bar Soap Market with P&G.
With approximately 148,000 followers on Instagram, Dr. Squatch’s social media strategy of
including memes seems to work well.
Slim Jim is an American brand of jerky snacks or dried sausage sold globally, and it is
widely available and popular in the United States. Just like many other brands, Slim Jim has an
Instagram account (@slimjim). In the fall of 2018, Slim Jim had only 5,000 followers. However,
a fan account, @SlimJimsDoingThings had 15,000 followers. The only difference causing the
big gap is that Slim Jim’s content on Instagram was dry and contrived, while the fan account was
using an “irreverent voice and meme culture” to get a conversation going (Bradley, 2019).

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Visual 11. A meme post from @slimjim. In this single post, it makes fun of Slim Jim’s British
nickname “Slender James” and ties in with the current quarantine situation.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B-98w48pIvY/

After realizing the existence of the fan account, Slim Jim invited Andy Hines, the man
behind the fan account, to a pop-up event and hired him as the content manager to help with the
company’s social media content creation and management. After adopting the funny and witty
content from Andy Hines, Slim Jim’s follower count has grown organically from 5,000 to
500,000 in just one year. Slim Jim not only came up with a social strategy that included a steady
diet of quirky memes that boosted the growth for the brand but also coined the nickname, “Long
Bois” for Slim Jims and fans are part of the “Long Boi Gang.” A community was born.
According to Spencer Fivelson, brand director of the protein snacking group at Conagra
Brands, Slim Jim is growing at the fastest rate it has seen in the over five years, thanks to the
strategy that is infused into the meme culture-based approach they have adopted (Bradley, 2019).

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The Advantages of Using Memes on a Brand’s Social Media Pages
As we can tell from these two case studies, utilizing memes as a part of social media
content represents a funny, quirky, and approachable brand personality.
According to Gallop’s State of the American Consumer Report, for brands, social media
channels do not motivate prospective customers to consider trying a brand or recommending a
brand to others. Therefore, companies should engage with their existing customers and inspire
them to advocate on their behalf in order to acquire new customers. By including meme content
on social media, brands would have a more friendly and approachable image with which
consumers are more willing to interact. By focusing on connecting with the consumers on social
media and keeping the content fun, brands are more likely to be appreciated by the consumers,
and the content is more likely to be shared.
According to the study, “Creating Connections: What Consumers Want from Brands in
an Increasingly Divided Society” released by Sprout Social in 2019, 79% of the consumers agree
brands are well-positioned to connect people of varying backgrounds and beliefs. Brands should
embrace their role as relationship builders on social.
Slim Jim accomplished the task of creating a loyal community among its followers on
Instagram by giving Slim Jim and their fans nicknames and excessively using the nicknames in
their meme content on social. It is a logical move to bring people together with memes and unite
them together as a community. When asked about why people are so passionate about memes,
Su Jung Kim thinks that memes, on a deeper level, are deeply rooted in cultures and subcultures.
Being able to “get it” means you also are a part of that culture, which makes the memes more
relatable and may also give followers a sense of belonging (Appendix II). By creating such
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relatable memes for its follower base, Slim Jim succeeded in creating an exclusive community
for its followers.
As the author mentioned before, one of the meme’s characteristics is its relevancy.
Current affairs and other popular topics are always emerging in memes. Staying trendy is also
the reason why memes are talked about and shared. By using spot-on memes with appropriate
captions and viable product placement, social media managers are helping the brand’s social
media stay relevant. Compared to outdated information and content, trendy and relevant content
is more likely to increase engagement and help with the brand’s exposure on social media
platforms.
When it comes to brands utilizing memes on their social media pages, there are some
potential downsides and risks. When looking at those most popular meme accounts on
Instagram, the author found that some visuals are pixelated. A majority of the visuals can be
created with basic Adobe Photoshop skills. Traditionally, a brand’s social media is supposed to
be aesthetically pleasing because it represents the brand image. Using pixelated or rough-cut
Photoshopped memes on a brand’s social media account can be risky and potentially affect the
brand’s aesthetics. However, LeVeque thinks differently about memes affecting a brand’s image:
that with the right message, the right audience, and the right platforms, memes can be very
effective for brands. Due to the meme’s characteristic of entertainment, people do not expect
high-quality visuals from memes (Appendix III). People constantly avoid and skip professionally
produced ads on social media platforms. He indicated that “we are tolerating them rather than
participating with them.” If people are skipping traditional brand messaging and marketing, yet
proactively consuming memes online, it means that the minimal format of memes are attracting
people to consume them, thus making it possible for people to enjoy them and to reamplify them.
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The most powerful difference here is that people are more likely to become participatory in
meme marketing rather than in traditional commercials on social media platforms. A high
engagement rate on a brand’s social media accounts is one of the determining factors for a
brand’s successful online presence. Using memes on a brand’s social media might affect the
brand’s overall aesthetics but might also boost the engagement with its follower base.
It is also undoubted that social media managers have to consider and examine the tones
of their messages. Memes are funny but they can be offensive if the humor is taken in the wrong
way. If brands are considering incorporating memes into their feed on social media, they should
be careful of offensive, sexist, and racist content that might possibly trigger backlash. However,
if brands find a way to turn a universally culturally relevant meme into something that helps
engage the audience, builds that customer relationship, or shows the audience that the brand is
contemporary, hip, cool, and funny, it can be extremely beneficial for them to do so.

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Conclusion
As we are witnessing more and more memes curated and meme accounts created, the
power of memes is notable. Generally speaking, memes are relevant, and they evoke positive,
high-arousal emotions. Meanwhile, meme creators are emphasizing the “funny” feature of
memes, and some of them are creating FOMO (fear of missing out) to attract more followers and
keep them hooked. When meme accounts keep growing and become more influential, the
concept and opportunity of meme marketing emerges.
Brands are collaborating with meme accounts to produce creative content. This new
format of collaboration adds fun and humor into the brand’s image and increases brand
awareness. In terms of meme marketing, the process and ideology are similar to that of
influencer marketing. Even influencers can benefit from memes and collaboration with meme
accounts. Furthermore, brands are starting to utilize memes as a part of their social media
content. Some of them succeed in building a community and increasing engagement on their
social pages. Public relations professionals should keep track of this trend in general. The
flourishing development of memes and meme marketing is inspiring and valuable as they are
playing a more and more essential role in social media marketing.
According to long-time PR strategist and USC Professor Jennifer Floto:
“PR professionals shouldn’t fear meme marketing just because they are unfamiliar with
it, nor should they assume memes will fade out anytime soon. Instead, they should do their
homework, determine what might work for their brand or organization, then, prepare a strategy
for actual meme marketing. Key to their success will be to pre-determine measurement factors:
What constitutes success? How can we shift gears to become even more visible/successful?
Does our meme marketing suit us like the Slim Jim brand’s did? All of these elements must be
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discussed and considered. But, the last thing an organization should do is to launch a meme just
for the sake of saying they have a meme strategy. If they do, they risk, well, becoming a meme!”

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Appendix
I. The 25 Best Instagram Meme Accounts to Follow Now released by Mediakix, an
influencer marketing agency based in Santa Monica, California, depending on the
popularity and the size of followers of these meme accounts. The list is as follows.
1. @epicfunnypage – 17.2 million
followers
2. @memezar – 16.1 million followers
3. @fuckjerry – 15.1 million followers
4. @sarcasm_only – 14.5 million
followers
5. @daqua – 14.2 million followers
6. @hoodclips – 11.2 million followers
7. @thefatjewish – 11 million followers
8. @lmao – 9.1 million followers
9. @couplesnote – 9 million followers
10. @funnymemes – 7.1 million
followers
11. @betches – 6.9 million followers
12. @bitc.h – 6.1 million followers
13. @insta.single – 5.9 million followers
14. @shitheadsteve – 5.5 million
followers
15. @bitch – 5 million followers
16. @greatcomedy – 4.7 million
followers
17. @mytherapistsays – 4.6 million
followers
18. @whitepeoplehumor – 4.3 million
followers
19. @daddyissues_ – 4.1 million
followers
20. @beigecardigan – 3.8 million
followers
21. @fourtwenty – 3.8 million followers
22. @cohmedy – 3.7 million followers
23. @kalesalad – 3.6 million followers
24. @menshumor – 3.5 million
followers
25. @bored – 3.2 million followers

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II. Interview with Su Jung Kim via email (Sunday, April 26, 2020)
Su Jung Kim is an assistant professor in the USC Annenberg. A quantitative and computational
social scientist, Su Jung Kim examines user engagement with digital media and its sociopolitical
and commercial impact using large-scale behavioral data such as clickstream data, mobile app
logs and social media data.
Her expertise includes: Advertising, Business, Computation and Informatics, Data and Coding,
Digital Media, Marketing, Organizations and Networks, Politics, Social Media

Hi Su Jung,
First of all, I’d like to express my gratitude that you are willing to spend time answering these
interview questions. I want to give you a brief introduction about my thesis. As we can see on
social media nowadays, people are really crazy and passionate about memes, and meme accounts
are rapidly gaining a great number of followers as well. Some brands have already started to take
advantage of these viral memes and popular meme accounts to form a new kind of
collaboration.
Meme marketing, in short, is the collaboration between brands and popular meme accounts.
Considering popular meme accounts have millions of followers, they are undoubtedly influential
on social media platforms.
My questions are focused on Internet memes and general meme marketing. Just a few short
paragraphs to each question would be super helpful for my thesis:

Meng Lyu: Why are people so crazy about memes?
42

Su Jung Kim: On the surface, it is funny. The combination of an image with phrase(s) is
attention grabbing. At a deeper level, the memes are deeply rooted in cultures and subcultures,
being able to "get it" means you also are a part of that culture, which makes the memes more
relatable and may also give a sense of belonging.

Meng Lyu: What kinds of brands should consider meme marketing? (e.g.: collaborating with
meme accounts on Instagram)
Su Jung Kim: I'd say brands that would benefit from humor and light jokes, for example,
financial institutions would NOT be suitable because their brand value depends on giving the
sense of security to their consumers. Also, (related to the next question), brands that target
younger audiences would be more suitable because they are the ones who enjoy memes more
than older audiences.

Meng Lyu: Who do you think is the target audience of meme marketing?
Su Jung Kim: Mostly younger generations at this point, who are more familiar with mimetic
ways of communicating. But it remains to be seen whether meme culture will grow together
when these young consumers grow old.

Meng Lyu: Are there any possible downsides and risks of meme marketing?
Su Jung Kim: Yes, the interpretation of memes depends on consumers. Consumers may not
interpret and enjoy brands' memes the way brands had intended and may backfire. Brands
should be fully aware of cultures and subcultures of the consumers they are targeting with a
particular meme campaign.
43

Meng Lyu: Some upcoming influencers are getting featured in memes lately. They quickly
accumulate a huge following base if they were featured in a viral meme. Do you see any
correlation between these upcoming influencers and meme accounts? In what way do you think
becoming a meme is helpful for these influencers?
Su Jung Kim: I'm not following influencers on social media, so my knowledge in that domain is
limited. However, I think influencers who are featured in a (successful) meme will give them a
large-scale exposure to people who otherwise would have never seen those influencers. In a
traditional advertising perspective, it will increase the reach and frequency of the presence of the
influencers, which usually is an advantage. But they also should be careful about how their
image is used in memes. It may not always be positive, which then will become more of a
disadvantage.

Meng Lyu: What do you think of brands using memes as a part of their social media content?
(For example, Dr. Squatch (@drsquatch), a men’s skincare company, is constantly using memes
as part of their social media content. They would incorporate their products and promotion
information into the trending memes, and post them on their Instagram page.)
Su Jung Kim: I personally do not know any of these examples you mentioned. I think if brands
can make successful memes, that would definitely a great way to increase brand awareness. This
would be great for new comers in the market. I'm not sure how much effective memes will be
for already established brands. The ultimate goal of advertising/marketing is to build loyalty and
increase customer lifetime value. This also includes encouraging people to purchase your
44

products repeatedly. How meme marketing will lead to increase in purchases, and ultimately
customer loyalty is something that we should keep investigating.

III. Interview with Matthew LeVeque via Zoom (Tuesday, April 28, 2020)
About Matthew LeVeque: Matthew Le Veque is an associate professor at the University of
Southern California, Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, where he
specializes in integrated campaigns, digital and social media, and emerging communication
channels. He has taught at USC for more than 14 years—first as an adjunct professor for nine
years and as a full-time professor for the last five years.
His expertise includes: (Traditional and Digital) Media Industries, Advertising, Advocacy,
Branding, Creativity, Emerging Media, Marketing, Marketing Research, New Interactive Media
and Technologies, Public Relations, and Social Media

Meng Lyu: I want to first give you a brief introduction about my thesis topic. It is about Internet
memes and meme marketing. So it's actually it's a very interesting topic because I know
everybody is talking about influencers. But when you think about it, these meme accounts, the
meme creators on Instagram, they're kind of acting like influencers because they have a huge
following base, like they have millions of followers on Instagram.So I think they are very
influential for sure.
Matthew LeVeque: Yes. Someone just remakes a fascinating meme. That gets a lot of
amplification. People will share it and just keep moving it along. It's entertaining.
45

Meng Lyu: Yeah. Exactly. And I actually just read some news about people are actually craving
more memes during this quarantine life because it's obviously entertaining. So people are like
trying to look for memes to ease their stress.
Matthew LeVeque: Or there's so many things going on within society, within the elected
officials, the leadership, the health care community and others that have relevancy to be turned
into memes at this point. My favorite one I've seen lately is the one where the boyfriend is
walking with his girlfriend picture and he's looking backwards to a more attractive woman, and
the girl is looking at him, like, all shocked. You know what I'm talking about?
Meng Lyu: Actually, I have that as my zoom background.
Matthew LeVeque: I see this with so many different things, with Trump, and with Lysol and
Medicaid. And I just see it used so many times creatively in last week. It's hysterical.

Meng Lyu: Yeah, it's funny! It's good to know that you have a favorite. My first question for you
is, why are people so crazy about memes?
Matthew LeVeque: You know, I think that they're short, sweet and really give us some form of...
They're just small things that give us a lot of meaning. And the meme can either be satire, humor
or social commentary. Just something to laugh at. We just constantly want to be entertained and
engage on our social media platforms.

Meng Lyu: OK. Got it. So a lot of brands, actually, they are already collaborating with a lot of
meme accounts on Instagram. So I did my case study about Hinge. So Hinge is a dating app. It
has actually been collaborating with probably at least five meme accounts on Instagram. They're
developing new memes, but you can see Hinge is in these memes. And the meme accounts are
46

posting these memes on their account. So it's like the collaboration between brands and
influencers. This is meme marketing, similar to influencer marketing. So my second question is
what kind of brands should consider meme marketing? Or there's no really limitation? What do
you think?
Matthew LeVeque: Well, I think these memes are sort of like highjacking and remixing
somebody else's original idea. You're turning it to something else. You know what I mean? I
mean, I remember watching all those Hitler movies where he was in the room, and everybody
redid it with some changed the copy in English. So he was like yelling at the other German Nazi
soldiers for something. So to me, it still comes into purpose because many of these and much of
humor is making fun of something or someone, so it is almost open to anybody. But within the
context, what you really have to think about, is what you're doing offensive? Is it sexist? Is it
racist? Are there some aspects of it that you're doing on the Instagram, where on its own, it's just
kind of a funny thing, you know, then you're trying to tie your brand to it. That would be my
main concern on it. But on the other hand, many of these memes are also like, if you're doing
Gangnam Style or some of these other ones, those are sort of universally culturally relevant. If
you can remix it or hijack it and turn into something else that helps engage your audience or
connect your audience or build that relationship with your audience, or shows your audience that
you're contemporary, you're hip, you're cool, you're funny, you're sort of normal. I think it could
be very beneficial.

Meng Lyu: Yeah, I agree. So I actually did some research about meme marketing. So I know that
a lot of millennials and Generation Z don't really like the traditional advertising on social media.
So they will be like, I don't want to see ads or like they're just so against ads. But meme
47

marketing is deeply rooted in these meme accounts. And if you read the memes and probably
until you finished the last word, you will realize this is probably a collaboration post because
they're just, you know, consciously delivering the key message to people. So I want to ask, who
do you think is the target audience of meme marketing? Do you think there is a target audience?
Is it the younger generation or is it just general people on the social media?
Matthew LeVeque: Well, I mean, it depends on which platform the meme is being placed on.
And that meme is going to be potentially seen or consumed by whoever is using that platform.
So, you know, although I was gonna say TikTok would tend to be very much younger, but I
think during this coronavirus, we're seeing a lot of people who are just entertaining themselves in
almost an obsessive fashion, watching TikTok. You know, I was joking with somebody that it's
Huxley wrote about soma, as with medicates the mask on. We're sort of joking about that TikTok
is the modern coronavirus soma that everybody is taking. You see a lot of memes on Twitter, and
Twitter may have a young and an older population on it. And if it's relevant and the people are
being entertained or looking at it, it will be impactful. If it's on Snapchat or TikTok or some of
the other platforms that may have a different audience make up on it, then it works for them. I
think that just simple humor and sort of this remixing of culture works for everybody. There may
be some age groups that don't get memes. It is so beyond the way they're used to consuming. But
anybody that's sort of consuming in the modern communication technology. I think there's
capability of memes to resonate with across the board.
Meng Lyu: OK. So you think it depends on the platform?
Matthew LeVeque: Depends on the platform. It depends on the meme, too. Maybe this is a
culturally relevant moment for very young people. And then if you remix it or you hijack it and
you change it to something else. If you don't understand that what's going on in the original one,
48

you're not going to get meme of it. It's kind of like the joke that people do when they get older.
It's like, oh my God, you know, people are talking, and I had to go to Urban Dictionary to find
out what that meant.
Meng Lyu: OK. Yeah. Yeah, I totally get what you're saying.
Matthew LeVeque: Know what I mean? So it becomes sort of the relevancy of it as far as the
what's being remixed within it culturally.
Meng Lyu: OK. I got it. Do you know the Kombucha girl? She is kind of an influencer. She's
very popular last year. You know, she's kind of doing the kombucha taste. And then she's doing
the faces, like within probably three seconds.
Matthew LeVeque: I've heard of it. It's not something that I paid attention to.

Meng Lyu: Well, she went viral last year. She has a TikTok account and she's constantly posting
entertaining content instead of traditional influencer stuff like, let me teach you how to do
makeup. And then all of sudden she went viral and then she became a meme. A lot of meme
accounts are starting to feature her in their new memes. And then she started to gain fame and
followers. And then she was actually in this year's Super Bowl ad. I was just surprised that how
powerful memes are to spread the word for these upcoming influencers. So, do you see any
correlation between these upcoming influencers and meme accounts? Do you think they're
helping each other?
Matthew LeVeque: You know, I haven't really not looked into that, so I can't give you, like, a
strong insight into it. But I would say, again, to become a meme, it becomes relevant. You will
have people include you within their social network, and have your copy be something that
they're going to amplify and move throughout the modern communication technology. And
49

memes are hugely popular. So if you become popular in a meme. It's like if you've seen
somebody on TV or on social media or in movies or just some way where you've never seen
them physically and then you see them physically. It's I think it's the same type of thing. It's back
to that sort of "I feel like I have a relationship with that person and I know who they are." That is
the type of social relationships that people develop with influencers or celebrities or YouTubers
or whomever. And I think anything that continues to build that familiarity in those relationships
is probably positive for those people.

Meng Lyu: OK. Got it. Besides meme marketing, a lot of brands are actually using memes on
their own social media. I know this brand. It's pretty amazing. It's called Dr. Squatch. It's a men's
skincare company and their signature product is this natural organic soap. So they're actually
posting a lot of memes and they're just doing very basic Photoshop to use the popular memes and
put their product into this scenario. It's crazy, like people are engaging with them. I constantly
see people commenting like, "oh, you guys are doing the most amazing marketing job" and stuff
like that. So I want to ask you, what do you think of these brands using memes as a part of their
social media content? Is it just convenient to do so, or do you think it's actually strategic?
Matthew LeVeque: Again, it's back to whether it's the right message, the right audience and the
right platforms. I think it can be very effective, as you said earlier. And the cost. I mean, clearly,
you want to be creative and smart and, you know, being sort of appropriate in the know within
the meme cultures. Also, the access to that. I mean, if you think about, you know, the class that
you took with me. We looked at like Super Bowl ads and sort of classic TV advertising, and
there are tremendous production costs on that. And people like it's another fifteen second, you
know. It's like the longer than six second YouTube videos, the advertisements at the beginning, I
50

don't know anybody unless it's a movie they really want to see, that doesn't hover over that skip
button as it's counting down to five, four, three, two, one skip. So if people are skipping that type
of brand messaging and marketing and yet the meme accounts, they're not only looking at the the
investment to consume it is minimal because most them you just look and go, oh, yeah, I got it.
Yeah, you'd sort of laugh. It's not like I need to invest 20 seconds of my time to guess "where's
this going? What's the story here?" So it's a very simple consumption that is taking place. And
then fundamentally, if the person is consuming it, enjoying it, and it has some determining factor
that makes them want to re-amplify it. Whether that's like it, share it, retweet it, whatever they're
doing and then they're becoming participatory in that advertising marketing relationship building
with that brand. And it's going into all their followings and maybe a few other people within
their network, you know, retweet it, repost it, and like it, just continues to move through it.
Whereas if it's a, you know, 15 second, 30 second commercial at the beginning of a YouTube
video, I don't know too many people who are sharing those. Again, unless it's like I'm the first
one to see the new Star Wars trailer or Marvel series trailer or something of that nature. They're
just, you know, we're tolerating them rather than participating with them.

Meng Lyu: OK. Got it. But the thing is, I think nowadays when brands are managing their social
media content, it's very important to have quality content because they have to take pretty photo
shoot of their products and you have to have a very aesthetic layout on social media. But memes,
they're just so easy to make. You only have to have basic Photoshop skills and then you can
make means. So do you think using memes on brand's social media is going to affect the brand's
image or that's just a sacrifice to make?
51

Matthew LeVeque: The expectation. Nobody's expecting. Oh, my God, look at this picture. It's
6K and it's six thousand by eight thousand pixels. It's not what they expect. That's really funny
that you bring that up because I saw a meme and I really zoomed in on it. I was like, wow,
because you're mostly consuming it on your mobile device. And I looked at it on a twenty-seven-
inch screen and I was like, wow, this is such low quality because I was like that Photoshop looks
really good. They must have spent some time like blending the new hand into it and all that. No!
It's so pixellated that it was a piece of cake for them put together. So that's what we expect. And
if it's still satisfying and giving that humor, giving whatever is satisfying about it to its target
audience or the people that are consuming it, then it works.

Meng Lyu: So the more important aspect here is the message instead of the visual quality?
Matthew LeVeque: Well, the visual is everything to me. It is the visual and the message, but the
quality of it, whereas like if you went into a theater and you dropped fifteen dollars, just need to
see the new Star Wars movie and it was in five-forty standard definition, you would be very
unhappy because that's not the experience that you're expecting. Yeah, but simple entertainment
on my phone, I'm not looking for 4K or 6K or even necessarily super high resolution on it.

Meng Lyu: OK. So you don't think that's going to affect the brand's overall social media image
because they're using low quality memes as their social media content?
Matthew LeVeque: I mean, I haven't really examined it, but my gut says no. For most brands or
individuals or other people, it's the expectation here until something very big changes in the
future.

52

Meng Lyu: That makes sense. My last question is about these private meme accounts on social
media. So, you know, now you can set your account on Instagram into private accounts. You
have to request and then if I grant you this access, you can follow me. There are a lot of popular
meme accounts are transitioning to private accounts because they're trying to take advantage of
people's fear of missing out because, you know, they're so popular. And if your friends are
talking about this meme account, it's kind of like generating of fear of missing out. So they're
trying using this tactic to gain more followers. Do you think that's going to work?
Matthew LeVeque: Exclusivity, limited edition, and, you know, only a few left, those things
definitely work to motivate people to want it. It's human nature psychology. I mean, they're
basically making it private, they already have many millions of people that are following them.
So that they already have that lock network on it. It's more exclusive on it. You have to ask to get
into it, which makes it seem like that must mean it's even cooler, and I want to see this.

Meng Lyu: OK. So I'm just curious, when you are producing videos, have you ever considered
incorporating any meme content into your videos? Did you actually incorporate any means into
your videos?
Matthew LeVeque: We did some within the social platform, but not videos. They are more like
still image, sort of cultural memes that we modified for the campaigns that we're working on.
Meng Lyu: Good to know. I don't have any more questions. I think I have enough answers.

53

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Abstract (if available)

Abstract Social media is infiltrating every aspect of people’s lives. Along with the thriving development of social media, memes are becoming one of the ubiquitous content forms as well. With a significant number of meme accounts emerging, they are gradually accumulating a vast follower base online, thus making them influential on today’s social media platforms. Meme marketing also emerges with the growth of popularity among the meme accounts. ❧ Memes have some general characteristics which are strictly related to the functionality of meme marketing. This thesis includes five case studies to explore the merits of meme marketing for brands and upcoming influencers. The author also explores the advantages of using memes as a part of a brand’s social media content. As more and more successful meme marketing cases occur, PR professionals must understand how memes and meme marketing work in this digital era.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Lyu, Meng (author)

Core Title Memes, meme marketing, and how brands and influencers can leverage them on social media

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Strategic Public Relations

Publication Date 09/22/2020

Defense Date 09/22/2020

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag influencers,meme,meme marketing,OAI-PMH Harvest,social media marketing

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Yang, Aimei (committee chair), Floto, Jennifer (committee member), Gretzel, Ulrike (committee member)

Creator Email lyum@usc.edu,rexlyu1995@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-376403

Unique identifier UC11666473

Identifier etd-LyuMeng-9011.pdf (filename),usctheses-c89-376403 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-LyuMeng-9011.pdf

Dmrecord 376403

Document Type Thesis

Rights Lyu, Meng

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA