The post-00s official account operator is using cat memes to bravely enter the workplace

"Cat meme" has become the secret to the operation of brand official accounts. What magic does "cat meme" have that can become the traffic code for brand official accounts? In addition to cat meme, what other tricks have the official accounts of previous companies used?

This year's official corporate account has finally become what the post-00s wanted.

Recently, on platforms such as Douyin, Bilibili, and Xiaohongshu, the official accounts of many companies/brands have been taken over by operators born after 2000, changing their previous content style and joining the army of cat meme videos.

The beginnings of the stories are all the same: "I am reborn as an operator in xx company", "Post-00s operators bravely enter the workplace", "About the incident where I took over the company's account with millions of followers on the day I joined the company", "The boss said he would let me go if I couldn't make a hit product"...

The video content is often told from the first-person perspective of workers, using cat memes to narrate their dramatic and hilarious workplace experiences.

Happy cat, banana cat, chipi cat, aggrieved cat, dancing cow cat... These popular kitten animated images are accompanied by simple sound effects, scene pictures, texts and editing, and soulfully interpret the beautiful mental state of working people.

According to the observation of the editorial department of Xinbang, large and small corporate/brand accounts such as SF Express, Tmall, Jie Rou, Tianbing, and Yangxing Technology have achieved good communication effects through cat meme videos, and their traffic and number of fans have skyrocketed.

For a while, the post-00s using cat memes to operate company official accounts became a traffic password. There were also operations interns who became famous overnight for making cat meme videos, and were converted to regular employees and started working as CPU bosses (dog heads).

How did this trend become popular? What kind of magic does the cat meme have? In addition to the cat meme, what other tricks have the official accounts of previous companies used?

01 Post-00s use cat memes to take over corporate accounts

In fact, cat meme videos were first popularized by a Japanese UP host "ねこのつぶやき" (cat's soliloquy). The UP host used a lot of cat emojis in the video to talk about the series of changes in his values ​​after he brought his children to China to live.

The cat emoticons not only vividly express her emotions and thoughts, but also add a lot of cuteness and funny elements to the video. With this unique and humorous narrative method, "ねこのつぶやき" gained 200,000 followers in a week and led the trend of imitating cat meme videos.

Soon, this trend spread from personal cat meme vlogs to corporate marketing. SF Express, Tianbing Ice Cream, Yangxing Technology, Jie Rou and other companies were the first to try out cat meme videos.

Looking at the cat meme videos released by major official accounts, the content is often bizarre, sad and funny, and very dramatic.

A 2000s employee joined an ice cream factory and showed off 15 ice cream bars in one day. His boss thought he was robbed. After confessing the truth to his boss, he became the top seed in the department's ice cream eating competition. Colleagues from other departments were like: How can we have fun with this? ! ‍‍‍‍Another 2000s employee ventured into the electronics industry and became an agent operator by accident on his first day at work. Then, with a nearly "crazy" cat meme video, he received the highest number of views in the company's official account history. ‍‍‍‍

Similar workplace dramas are still being staged. On April 15, the Xiaohongshu account "SF Express" posted a cat meme video titled "Post-00s Crispy College Students Bravely Enter the Workplace: I'm an Operations Officer in a Fortune 500 Company", which has received over 180,000 likes. As the saying goes, "One should never forget the well digger", after the first cat meme video went viral, "SF Express" quickly posted another one titled "After I posted the cat meme, my boss allowed me to empty the gift library", and launched a lucky draw to thank the "Internet family".

In just 7 days, the number of followers of "SF Express" on Xiaohongshu increased by 80,000, and the protagonist in the cat meme video was directly promoted to a regular employee.

Of course, not all operations managers can take charge of the company’s big accounts as soon as they join the company. On April 2, the Douyin account “足力健老人鞋” released its first video, which used a cat meme to tell the story of how the boss asked him to open a new account and go from 0 to 1. So far, the video has received 232,000 likes.

The Xiaohongshu account "Jie Rou Diary (Working Version)" turned the official corporate account into a TV series about a rookie in the workplace, from "Rebirth: I'm an operator at Jie Rou", madly taking advantage of the company to achieve paper towel freedom, to "Eight virtues of workers", "Rebirth: My head-on confrontation with the chairman", etc., achieving over 10,000 fans in 3 days.

The official account of Genji Foods on Bilibili also released a series of videos in the form of cat memes, ranging from eating spicy noodles when just starting work to using data to convince the boss and taking netizens to visit the production line, which made tens of thousands of netizens willing to "watch the advertisement". The official Lumila also used seemingly nonsensical cat meme videos to attract young people who are willing to try new things and support domestic products. Once the product link was posted, the amount sold in one day was equivalent to the amount sold in the past month.

Among a bunch of "post-00s operations", there are brands that go against the trend and have also achieved good communication and interaction effects with the video of "middle-aged uncle forced to cut cat meme".

To sum it up in one sentence: No one can resist cat memes! Many netizens said that as long as they see cat memes, they want to click in and take a look.

The expression and status of the cat meme are clear at a glance, and anyone who sees it can quickly interpret its meaning.

In addition, this cute and adorable way of describing actual experiences and their own reactions allows those in lower positions to complain and fight back against those in higher positions in a lighthearted and humorous way. For example, when faced with the KPI set by the leader that the new account should increase its followers by 100,000 in a month, the reaction of the "confused cat" was appropriate, vividly showing the employee's reaction to the unreasonable request of the boss.

American cultural studies scholar Jenkins proposed the concept of "participatory culture" in "Text Poachers". The main characteristics of participatory culture are: low threshold, encouragement of creation and sharing, creation of a learning atmosphere, imparting a sense of accomplishment, and promoting a sense of community.

The participatory culture on social media platforms is mainly manifested in netizens actively creating emoticons, Internet buzzwords, spoof videos, etc., and spreading and disseminating them.

Looking back at the logic behind the popularity of cat meme videos, netizens are like the "hunters" described by Jenkins, actively using cat memes for secondary creation, creating new meanings, and thus triggering a new round of viral spread.

02 Going crazy and playing the victim, which official account has a more beautiful mental state?

Long before the cat meme took over the official account, the marketing genius of the post-00s generation had already emerged. Weilong Food is a snack brand. In January this year, their new post-00s editor produced a promotional video for the Year of the Dragon that made people's eyes dark.

From the park gate to the factory office building, they are all occupied by the dancing image of Toothless from "How to Train Your Dragon". With the background music with a strong sense of rhythm, Weilong Food can be said to be an abstract biscuit factory in ancient Greece. In the second half of the video, the editor born in the 2000s directly invited the boss himself to appear, making him look weak, pitiful and helpless surrounded by a group of Toothless.

"Wei" Long = Wei Long. Although the homophonic pun is only 14 seconds long, the video has been played 5.55 million times on Station B. In the comment section, a number of brand official accounts volunteered to let the company's editor show off his skills.

Netizens who like to watch the fun: "Support every dream" It's no wonder that other brand official accounts are jealous. The next day, a post-00s editor presented a production line promotional video for Weilong Food, which was played 2.87 million times. The style of the video is still abstract. The images of Wu Yazi and the boss are directly pasted onto the production line in the workshop. For a moment, it is hard to tell whose mental state is more beautiful.

After a series of activities, Weilong Food not only accumulated 167,000 fans on Bilibili, but also allowed more netizens to discover that the childhood snacks they ate when they were young actually came from his company.

Playing tricks and making fun of ghosts have always been the "traditional art" of Bilibili. In addition to Weilong Food, other brand official accounts are also busy competing with each other. For example, Xtep brainwashed netizens with nonsense literature that came out of nowhere: "Fujian is the only province in the country called Fujian, and Xtep, which came out of here, is also the only brand in the country called Xtep."

Kaiping Leiji Taoli Bread was even more generous, spending 300 yuan to hire someone to edit the video to make an episode of Animal World, and let netizens see whether it was worth it.

In addition to the ghost animal carnival, the operators of brand official accounts also played their cards directly and revealed their own bad attributes in the workplace. When faced with the soul-searching question of the boss "Xiaohongshu data is not very good", the operator of Yang Guofu Malatang seemed to be humble and said "Boss, please have tea", but the true feelings were revealed in the WeChat notes and avatar stickers, which can be said to be well versed in the art of fooling people.

Some brand operators, like Panpan Beverages, also act like a spoiled brat online to gain followers, saying bluntly that "the tasks assigned by the boss are too difficult" and hope that workers will help workers.

However, thanks to these two chat screenshots, Panpan Beverage gained 30,000 followers on Xiaohongshu overnight. This kind of wimp-like sharing mentality has also become the traffic code for the official brand account of Xiaohongshu.

"After a month of hard work, I noticed that my followers increased by +1." Sometimes they go crazy, sometimes they play the victim. The operators' beautiful mental state reproduces the daily life of workers in the workplace. The key is to bring a human touch to the official account. The head of Panpan Beverage's operations once told the editorial department of Xinbang that this "human touch" operation is due to the freedom of the account given by the company. In his opinion, as long as it does not affect the brand image, the speed of chasing hot spots is more important than reporting to the leaders.

03 Content innovation is the key to brand official accounts when copying and following trends

Whether it is a cat meme, a ghost animal, or a crazy and pitiful expression... it seems to be mocking the boss and making fun of the company, but in essence it is eliminating the symbolic sense of the brand official account and narrowing the distance between the brand and netizens.

Behind this is the general trend of brand rejuvenation, which has become a targeted KPI for official account operators. As a result, more and more brand official accounts are following hot topics at an amazing speed. Among them, there are many traditional brands that have been operating for many years and made their fortunes offline. Although they have a certain degree of national recognition, their communication volume has gradually declined in the rapid development of Internet social media.

The reason why cat memes can become popular in the official account operation circle is related to its low creation threshold. It is also similar to the previous official accounts competing to release ghost animal short videos, which use public emotions as a handle to make netizens empathize. These provide a creative background for traditional brands to renew themselves and attract young audiences.

However, if the brand logo is removed or replaced in the video, there is no essential difference in this type of video, and it can be mass-produced. Therefore, with the explosion of similar cat meme videos, the audience is prone to aesthetic fatigue and lack of innovation, resulting in a decline in content data.

Taking the data performance of "Jie Rou Diary (Working Edition)" as an example, Xinhong data shows that in the past 30 days, interactive data such as likes, collections, and comments have all dropped to a few hundred to a few thousand, which is a certain gap compared to the previous popular notes with over 10,000 likes.

The stagnation of traffic and lack of stamina caused by the routine content are also reflected in the operation of different official accounts. In the past 30 days, the video playback volume of Weilong Food, Xtep, and Taoli Bread’s official accounts on Bilibili has mostly remained at around 10,000. Even for similar ghost animal videos, it is not guaranteed that all videos will have more than one million playbacks.

Regardless of the account type, the classic topic of content innovation is still frequently discussed and updated, which requires official account operators to think about innovation rather than blindly copying and following popular topics.

For official brand accounts, lowering their status and actively interacting with users gives the account a strong personalized feature. This not only breaks netizens' stereotype that brand officials are serious and distant, but also attracts more netizens to join this communication carnival, completing a brand relay race in the form of co-creation.

"Yang Buhuai" suggested that the operation of official accounts should be de-daily, and daily communication should not be carried out. Low-quality or worthless daily updates will consume the brand. It is recommended that the official should have content every time it speaks out, let the outside world speak more, and let the brand be talked about.

In today's context, the official account of a brand is also a way to get the brand talked about. The head of Panpan Beverage once said that he would actively use the official account to interact and joke in the comment area of ​​​​the internet celebrity blogger to seek cooperation opportunities. "We are not trying to ride on the popularity, but to change consumers' stereotypes of our traditional brands. In fact, we can also be very trendy." With the emergence of batches of young consumers, the stories of brand official accounts bravely entering the Internet may become more and more novel and interesting.