Delicious internet memes Posted by Tomi Heikkinen , Friday, March 13, 2009 at 12:46, in Labels: internet memes, marketing, microsegmentation, relating to customers

A brief thought about one of my new favourite little themes of current marketing: internet memes.

Internet memes, as you know, are catch-phrases or neologisms (newly emerging words that might become part of mainstream language) circulating in the Web and used mainly by youth and young adults - active web users. Some forerunner marketers use them in their viral marketing efforts, often trying to introduce a new meme with a purpose of enhancing the promotion of their service or product. Best memes however are not created by marketers, but rather by "users" themselves.

Internet memes concern two other favourite marketing subjects of mine, microsegmenting and microtargeting in a social web context, e.g. tiny sub-cultures like specialized discussion forums that are numerous in the Web. I'll cover these in more detail in another post in the future. But in regard to these microsegments, rather than trying to innovate their own internet memes, marketers should actively scan the Web for the particular memes that are popular among their target segments, and pay homage to these, co-incidentally being careful not appearing as trying to rip off and commercialize the original, uncommercialized meme. Instead the purpose is to communicate to the target segment that the marketer is relating to it.

A fictional, very simplificated case-example: A current very popular internet meme is the (mostly) picture-based "rage" or FFFFFF- meme, used when something goes wrong or is negatively unexpected and causes anger, or rage as it is. A laptop manufacturer X, the marketer in this case, is trying to develop its brand recognition among young, 16 to 25 y-o men with certain other characteristics. The marketer's strategy includes campaign and a TV commercial. The ad has two guys sitting in a park, using their PCs without direct power supply, relying on their batteries. Both are happily going about the business, enjoying the sun etc. Suddenly, the other guy's laptop beeps, signalling imminent battery depletion before going off totally. The guy blinks and starts to curse "FFFFFFFFFFFFUUU-". Cut the audio before the -ck and show a black screen with a text: No need to rage: laptop X model Y now with a next-gen battery. And cut back to the other guy, smiling sappily, using his laptop X.

To a consumer, who is outside of the target segment and does not recognize this particular meme, the ad might seem odd, albeit usual piece of marketing, since funny ads have been around for ages. However, when targeted correctly, I'd wager this ad would cause some very positive reactions among the target segment. By recognizing the used meme and understanding that X is using the same language as they are, the target audience would feel that the big, corporate laptop manufacturer X is really relating to it.

Of course, this kind of marketing strategy requires a very quick process of meme identification, advertising production and finally implementation - the marketers need to be on the edge and enjoy the services of very lean and efficient suppliers to make the marketing efforts work in time, when the meme is still active and used. Also, the target segment in these cases would most likely always be very limited, so a full TV ad wouldn't be cost-efficient. But user-created internet memes could be a key instrument when companies seek mediums to relate to young consumers in general, and specified microsegments or internet sub-cultures in particular.