The 1982 Sprite is really here!

Sprite successfully used the 1982 meme to market its new product. This article analyzes the successful cases of brands using online memes for marketing, as well as the advantages of meme marketing. The analysis in this article is easy to understand and provides reference for brand marketers.

In most marketing circles, meme marketing represents extremely high traffic, continuous brand culture output, and marketing drive to boost sales. The ability to create memes is also known as the standard of brands in today's era.

However, if a brand wants to spread the meme more widely after creating it, it needs to spend more marketing costs to deepen the user's memory, which can only work after repeated deepening. Leveraging the power of others is to find the connection point between the hot online meme and the brand, and follow the trend, which can save more marketing costs for the brand.

1. Go with the flow and use elements that young people like for marketing

For example, the phrase "Let me have a glass of 1982 Sprite to calm my nerves" became popular during a Spring Festival Gala and has been widely circulated among the public, and has become a way for young people to joke with each other. As time goes by, this phrase has not been forgotten by consumers and has even been mentioned in the era of meme culture.

Recently, Sprite took it seriously and really launched a "1982 Sprite", which made netizens sigh that "some jokes actually come true while being played around", which also makes ordering a bottle of 1982 Sprite no longer a joke.

What’s even more interesting is that in order to reduce unnecessary misunderstandings, Sprite specifically pointed out: "Sprite of 1982" certainly does not refer to the "Sprite" produced in 1982. We cannot travel through time and space to the past. We are just paying tribute to a joke from the past.

Sprite's explosive gameplay can be said to be deeply popular. Coupled with the new interpretation of the brand's multiple products, it cleverly links the popular memes that have been popular for many years with the brand's new products, making the popular memes a reality and forming a strong connection with the brand, and also making Sprite's marketing stand out in the world of memes.

2. From "joke" to "real product", use Internet memes to promote conversion

Stalk marketing is all about chance, catching people off guard. Sprite, on the other hand, turned a popular "joke" into reality, giving people a sense of déjà vu of a dream coming true. It is easy for people to think of "having a bottle of 1982 Sprite to calm their nerves", effectively expanding the brand's communication and promoting marketing conversion. It is clever and magical.

Originally, memes were just a way for the public to express their emotions and attitudes. With the increase in user recognition, meme culture has become a consensus among the public and a popular cultural symbol, and has rapidly developed and become popular, such as Tai Ku La, Shuan Q, Who is not a baby, and My youth is back.

Popularity represents traffic, youth, and vitality. This also allows brands to see the traffic code hidden in the meme culture. They want to lead the new marketing gameplay and have started to play "meme marketing".

Most of the time, brands play with memes by surprise. For example, after netizens accidentally discovered that M&M'S green beans and Ning Jing looked alike, they started to play with memes and invited Ning Jing to be the brand ambassador of M&M'S beans. After He Guangzhi's line "I am really a rose with thorns" became popular, He Guangzhi identified himself with Luckin Coffee's product "Thorny Rose Latte" and became the "forced product experience officer" of the Luckin brand, which became popular on the Internet.

3. What is the brand playing with memes?

Sprite launched a new product, "Sprite 1982", which truly achieved the transformation from a joke to a product, and effectively achieved a strong connection between the brand and the popular online meme, thereby boosting product sales. "Official memes are the most deadly", what exactly are brands playing with memes?

It is a younger way of expression. If a brand wants to achieve good communication effects, it needs insight and the ability to communicate.

First of all, in an era where young people are king, if brands want to "control" user consumption trends, they need to understand users' communication methods and preferences, and break down the communication barriers between brands and audiences in a more powerful way.

Secondly, use the culture of memes to enter the context that young people are accustomed to, actively communicate with them, communicate with users in a daring and playful image, integrate into the youthful context, and give marketing content multiple attributes. On the one hand, it can make brand marketing more personalized, interesting, and fashionable. On the other hand, the brand can narrow the distance between the brand and the audience and increase the brand's affinity through more youthful expressions.

It is a brand attitude and culture that is more luxurious and fashionable . Marketing expression is brand attitude. In addition to teasing the audience and giving marketing content personal characteristics, brand memes are also an opportunity to highlight brand attributes, highlight brand characteristics, and realize the precipitation and construction of brand culture.

In many cases, brands give marketing personalized fun, in fact, is also to create a more relaxed and pleasant communication atmosphere, on the one hand, it can attract consumers' attention, let users appreciate / research the brand marketing. On the other hand , it weakens the utilitarian nature of the advertisement itself, hides the brand's marketing purpose, and cleverly implants the brand symbol / advertising information into the minds of consumers.

4. How to make the brand’s marketing more interesting?

The purpose of brands using memes is to spread the word, and the ultimate goal is to achieve brand-effect integration. All of this is closely related to the breadth and depth of content dissemination. How can we use meme marketing to attract users' attention and achieve wider dissemination?

Marketing should be done in moderation. There is only a fine line between playing with fire and becoming extremely popular. If you want to avoid a marketing failure, you must master the scale of marketing and pay attention to the fact that some boundaries cannot be crossed. Although black and red are still red, whether black and red can bring positive effects to the brand is something that the brand needs to consider. It can be said that the scale of marketing is the basis for brand communication to produce positive effects and achieve secondary communication.

Focus on guiding UGC content. The popularity of a hot topic on the Internet can be used by a brand, which greatly amplifies the entertainment effect, stimulates people's imagination and creativity, and produces a large amount of high-quality UGC content, which not only continues the popularity of the Internet, but also pushes brand marketing to a new climax.

Therefore, if you want to make the brand's marketing more interesting, you need to focus on the guidance of online content, use original content with more personality and attitude to infect more people, and let more young people who are willing to express themselves use self-mockery to relieve stress to deal with the internal competition and anxiety in life and work, so as to promote the production and dissemination of UGC content.

Stalk marketing is a relaxed and fashionable expression. Often, marketing is easily labeled as cold and utilitarian, but nowadays, stalk marketing is a more down-to-earth way for brands to surf and play with consumers to narrow the distance between the two.

At the same time, meme marketing is also an effective strategy for brands to use more fashionable, personalized and interesting expressions to highlight brand tone and brand attitude. It also allows brands to achieve emotional resonance with young people, truly become friends with users, and establish a more people-friendly brand image.

5. Final Thoughts

Whether it was Sprite in 1982 that made the hot meme come true, or Luckin Coffee borrowing Internet memes to make He Guangzhi a passive spokesperson, or using homophonic memes to create memes for the brand, they are essentially the same. On the one hand, it grabs the user's attention and can expand the scope of communication. In the process, it establishes a brand image that dares to play and knows how to play, and enhances the brand's influence. On the other hand, it uses a more attitude-oriented and youthful marketing method to help the brand win over the target audience and help the brand expand its customer base. At the same time, it is also a market strategy for the brand to drive sales and drive the brand's curve growth.

Author: Mr. Bingfa, Source: WeChat public account "Marketing Bingfa (ID: lanhaiyingxiao)"