Playing with memes is a high-level marketing technique!

Why are entertainment marketing now so keen on using memes? This article will help you understand the reasons behind brands using memes. This article is also recommended for companies or individual business owners.

Playing with memes seems to have become a must-have for brands in the era of entertainment marketing, as it can help gather topics and increase traffic. And this year, brands have taken playing with memes to the next level.

At a time when popular memes are emerging frequently, brands want to seek emotional resonance with netizens, use the methods of creating and playing memes to hit users' high points, and play the two together in order to achieve a viral effect.

With the popularity of memes, some brands have their own memes, such as "Have a bottle of 1982 Sprite", KFC's "Crazy Thursday" and "V50", etc. These memes are highly recognized by users and have a wide range of influence, and have already subtly formed the social currency symbols of the brands.

Brands that are good at capturing online hot spots can often catch popular hot spots and use popular memes to bind with the brand. How can you make memes more attractive? What is the significance for the brand?

1. Use the stalks to create new stalks and realize the superposition of stalk potential

Leverage marketing is common. If a brand wants to leverage its own hot topics to create new ideas, it needs to have innovative content to attract consumers. By leveraging these hot spots with natural traffic, brands can not only capture traffic but also stimulate the freshness of content.

2. Where to play with memes and "update" endorsements

Like the "Why do you insist on going to Beijing? Who is in Beijing?" meme that was previously played out by major brands, official media, cultural tourism, and KOLs? Just when the popularity of the meme was about to fade, Qunar Travel took action and officially announced that the "protagonist" of the popular meme, Lin Gengxin, was the brand spokesperson, launched a big promotion for low-cost travel life, and borrowed the meme to create new memes from three aspects:

• In the video materials, there is no mention of "Rose Story" in any sentence, but everyone who sees it knows that the brand wants to take advantage of the popularity of the drama. The content also continues the "father-daughter interaction" in the plot. The actor who plays Fang Taichu and Lin Gengxin interpret the joy of vacation travel together, and play the "Who is in Beijing" joke clearly. Summer vacation is the peak period for students to travel, and the construction of the father-daughter life scene is also easier to achieve emotional resonance and influence consumers' preferences and choices.
• The brand links consumers' lives with the name of spokesperson Lin Gengxin, using the homonyms of "Lin Gengxin" and "zero renewal" to call on those working people living in steel and concrete to break the phenomenon of zero renewal in their lives and go out to renew their lives.
• By bundling the low-price promotion with Lin Gengxin's name, the brand not only called on consumers to update their lives, but also emphasized the "update" point of travel information. At the same time, spokesperson Lin Gengxin transformed himself into a travel expert. In addition to providing consumers with low-cost and high-quality travel, he also took netizens to see the world, realizing remote interaction.

Qunar plays with memes from three dimensions, integrating consumer life, brand low-price promotions, spokesperson updates and hot content, thus achieving brand promotion, display of advertising information and interaction between consumers and brands, killing two birds with one stone.

3. Take over the flow and play with consumers

Similar to Qunar's memes, some brands are trying to play with consumers by taking over popular memes that are already circulating on the Internet. In addition to demonstrating the brand's keen marketing insights, it also brings the brand closer to consumers in a relaxed and humorous way.

4. The work ID card meme has been popular among the public, and brands are busy

For example, in the article we sent out a few days ago (portal: The work badge meme is popular, and brands are "crazy" about it!), we reviewed the situation after the work badge meme became popular, and brands rushed to take advantage of it. More than 30 brands participated, contributed wonderful creativity, and generated countless traffic. At the same time, consumers continued to find work badge memes related to their surnames on brand official websites, public accounts, Weibo and other channels, truly realizing the work badge meme for all.

On the one hand, the brand's participation in this has shown that it can create joy through memes and communicate with its target audience. On the other hand, it seems that the brand has taken over the traffic from the hot spots on the Internet and is going with the flow. In fact, this kind of leverage can also make consumers feel good about the brand's marketing behavior, which in turn feeds back to the brand and transfers the goodwill to the brand.

5. Use social media to turn memes into content co-creation

Obviously, the reason why the whole nation is playing with memes is that there are many homophones, the threshold for participation is low, and playing with memes is fun. Another reason why the whole nation is participating is that it is driven by social attributes.

Netizens post memes to follow the trend, 5G surfing, and herd mentality. Some people are afraid of being eliminated by society and keep paying attention to memes to refresh their knowledge base. When netizens find a hot meme that they are interested in, they will also participate in it with a sense of ownership, which will generate a sense of participation and gain.

6. Luckin Coffee uses popular online memes to attract the public to co-create content

For example, not long ago, Luckin Coffee incorporated popular place name puns in the cultural and tourism circles into the marketing of its new tea drinks, contributing well-known puns such as "Shenzhen is not afraid of its slanting shadow" and "How can it be as delicious as this Chengdu?" At the same time, it combined with online puns about "City is not City" to guide netizens to participate in the co-creation of content with brand logos. In addition to stimulating netizens' creative enthusiasm, it formed an interaction between the brand and consumers, thereby increasing the brand's exposure and enhancing the public's sense of identity with the brand.

7. Based on the characteristics of brand marketing, pre-embed stalks to leave room for users’ imagination

One important reason why memes are widely spread and have a profound impact is that brands are well versed in the art of communication. They take advantage of the trend of the whole nation being keen on playing with memes, preset possible online hot spots in marketing, and guide netizens to spontaneously explore and participate, thus achieving a point-to-surface effect.

8. Know how to plant the seeds to keep the topic going

It is still Luckin Coffee. In the joint venture with Moutai, the brand has buried more than 20 topics related to the joint products and joint behaviors, such as "Is drinking sauce-flavored latte considered drunk driving?", "Will young people like Moutai?", "Can sauce-flavored latte attract young people with Moutai?", "Luckin Coffee releases raw material production record video", "Luckin Coffee is real Moutai" and so on. (Portal: Sauce-flavored latte is packaged in an independent red cup? Luckin Coffee has embarked on the road of "branding of popular products")

At the same time, during the explosive period of content dissemination, the memes are continuously dug out at the right time points, and the memes continue to explode, so that the marketing activities have continuous traffic, which also keeps the marketing hot and extends the dissemination cycle.

There is an obvious phenomenon that in recent years, the number of brands participating in playing with memes has continued to increase, and there are many marketing cases that have gone viral. Whether it is using memes to create new ones, or taking advantage of the situation to attract traffic, or turning playing with memes into content co-creation for the whole people, as well as pre-burying topic memes according to brand promotion goals, all prove that contemporary brands are keen on playing with memes.

From the user perspective, on the one hand, the younger generation uses memes as a way to express their attitude towards life, values ​​and socialize. In the face of information overload, meme culture maintains its simplicity and can convey complex emotions in a more relaxed way, attracting consumers' attention and achieving emotional identification.

On the other hand, for consumers, instead of passively accepting hot memes, it is better to embrace cultural trends in the social context, participate enthusiastically, enjoy the feast of content, release their own pressure in an entertaining way, and use memes as their daily entertainment and emotional outlet.

From the brand level, with the emergence of the phenomenon of universal participation, playing with memes has become a daily routine for more people. At this stage, if brands want to gain more traffic, playing with memes is the only choice. This is a change for brands to adapt to changes in consumer aesthetics and preferences. Attracting consumers to pay attention to brand-related memes can also narrow the distance between brands and users, increase brand affinity and exposure, and turn UGC content into a medium for brand-user interaction in continuous interaction, and form brand assets in continuous precipitation.

Author: Mr. Bingfa

Source: WeChat public account: "Marketing Art of War (ID: lanhaiyingxiao)"