Corporations across America try
their best to use market strategies that use what is currently considered
popular and relatable to the most people at that point in time, and now-a-days this
includes the use of memes in their advertisements. Companies use memes in humorous
ways that try to appeal to a wide audience who can identify the meme and
appreciate the humor behind the advertisement. Companies often take these memes
and alter them to fit into their advertisements, which can often involve using
a popular meme in a way that alters the way the original meme looks and may
even changes its meaning all together. For example, the popular “doge” meme,
which are images of a shiba inu doing various things, often include silly sayings
such as “such cool” and “much wow” included with the images. This has been
adopted by Seamless, a food delivery company who made the advertisement: “Such
Takeout, No Calz, Very Amaze.” The Seamless Company turned a meme about a dog
into an advertisement about food which completely erases any trace of the original
meme, but because the original meme is so popular and well known people will
still know the reference and many will enjoy the advertisement. For the people who
don’t know the meme, they may think it’s just a weird advertisement. This may
not be an effective form of advertising toward that type of audience, but their
use of the meme didn’t distort their product, so they are still advertising nonetheless.
Besides Seamless using the “doge” meme, other advertisements that use memes
include Wonderful Pistachio’s use of the “honey badger don’t care” and “keyboard
cat” memes, Clear Channel's use of the “success kid” meme, Hipchat's use of the
“Y U NO” meme, and World of Warcraft’s use of the “Chuck Norris” meme. All of
these advertisements took a meme and changed its meaning to conform to their
product.
The use of meme advertisements has gained
popularity on social media, and has in some cases granted a company more
recognition and business. The restaurant “Denny’s” has become very popular on social
media for its use of internet memes on Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr. Denny’s
makes humorous posts with memes which have gained a lot of popularity, gaining
thousands of likes, retweets, and reblogs every day. The popularity has gotten
so great that some even consider the posts made by Danny's to be memes themselves, often being
shared and used by various people on social media. It could even be said that
Denny’s has become a meme for its crazy popular and strange but humorous posts.
This type of advertising has been very successful for them because it allows them to gain a new audience through the younger generations that use social media, while at the same time running normal advertisements of the restaurant on TV to maintain the audience that doesn’t use social media.
Companies’ use of memes is an
example of how advertising is so adaptive to the current trends and norms in
society that involve new forms of communication. Companies and organizations use
memes because they are easy to read, simple to digest, shareable, trendy, popular,
to the point, and relatable. Companies rely on memes for social media pressure,
and because they reach a wider audience that helps them gain more popularity. This
form of communication seems very simple, but it is very effective. It shows how
communication on social media is changing and how appealing to what’s popular
can be very beneficial for company advertisements. What is also shows is the
power of memes and how influential they have become in our society. They have
become so popular that celebrities and companies are using them to gain
popularity among everyday citizens. The fact that individual memes are also
short lived allows for new and better memes to be made every day based on what’s
popular at the time. In this way companies can easily keep up with changing trends
and stay on top of what’s popular among the biggest groups of people, which
should keep the production of memes alive and well for a long time to come. I think
the popularity of memes will only increase and adapt in the future to continue
to fit societal norms and desires.
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