International Media Trends

Meme-culture and Meme Marketing

            Memes have a larger impact than what I first initially considered. Everyone finds entertainment in something and memes have provided it. The best part is that you don’t have to be on Reddit or 4chan and religiously look through each forum to find them. Memes have become prevalent on all major social media platforms as well as one app that is innovative and of its own kind: IFunny. All these outlets of media have a way of forming a new sense of culture through memes.

            Product knowledge is largely contributed by memes. “Smells like broke in here” is an amazing example of a meme that suddenly became infused with culture. Many of my fellow students walk to class every day with a pair of Airpods in only a week after the memes became popular about the product. This meme turned the product into a status symbol, a way to say, “yea, I have money – why don’t you?” Wireless earbuds aren’t a new idea, with many products that are very similar to Apple Airpods. Yet, many people buy them because of the exclusiveness, mainly attributed to the $159 price tag on the product.

            “Wanna Sprite Cranberry?” began as an advertisement which later evolved into a meme. Following the commercial, the Coca-Cola company admits that its sales for the Sprite Cranberry has nearly doubled since 2013. While the commercial garnered plenty of attention, its evolution into a meme caused it to become an icon. Its not the first commercial to have been turned into a popular meme. Flex Tape and the other Flex products are promoted by Bill Swift, who has become a meme through his over the top acting in the Flex product commercials.

            Products are undeniably affected by memes. If a company can make its product into a meme that positively reflects upon itself, it will become a marketing gold mine. There is no sense in copyright striking people for turning your commercials into memes when all these YouTubers are doing is providing free airtime for your product. All three of the previously mentioned memes are beneficial to their product. Forbes even covered how to effectively use memes to market your brand. The importance of knowing your memes and knowing how to create memes should be integrated into every business’s media department.

            Memes for products are generally good, however, memes based upon an individual can be damaging to their image. Julie Thompson, an intern at Family Online Safety Institute, wrote an article specifically tailored towards understanding the negative impact memes can have. Her article specifically follows C.D. Hermelin’s struggles with becoming a meme after his picture was taken with him in a park using a typewriter. The basic concept is that once the photo was posted online, he was ridiculed by people worldwide and the basic human compassion was lost within the Internet.

            Other memes may target certain racial, gender-specific, or sexual based issues. These memes come in a form of dark humor that could even be viewed as hate speech. Memes such as “rape sloth” and antivaxxer memes are dark in nature and have led to the controversy of whether sites like Reddit and 4chan should be removed from search engines due to the content of some memes. However, these sites are not promoting this content to be created but are merely a location for the memes to be posted.

            A concerning issue about the future of memes comes from the European Union’s Article 13. Any country under the EU will be subjected to the law passed, which many critics are afraid will bring for a new form of internet censorship. This is supposed to be an update to a two-decades-old copyright law, but there are many citizens worried that this will affect their ability to create memes and other entertaining material through the means of pictures, GIF, and video. As stated before, memes have such an impact on culture that it could be devastating to companies that succeed from the impact of their products becoming memes. Even Article 13 has become a meme, with many Americans mocking the poorly constructed law.

The meme culture in America is so influential that many people even talk in memes as a part of their day to day vocabulary. Some memes are so famous that mimicking a meme is just completely regular to some people. If I go up to someone and say that I missed class because my alarm didn’t go off, they might simply respond with, “oof!” I might complain about how the crosswalk light took forever to change and a friend may respond with, “it be like that sometimes.” These instances are not meant as a way for people to speak faster or get a point across quicker. Memes have just been so far integrated into American culture that our style, our products, and even the way we speak has changed to reference the memes we find popular.