Memes, themes and advertising
Understanding memes
A meme is an idea, behaviour, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture. The term “meme” was coined by Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist, in the final chapter of his 1976 book “The Selfish Gene.” Dawkins used the term to describe how cultural information spreads in the same way that genes do, through a process called “memetic transmission.” He probably never realised how popular the term itself would be come!
Memes can take many forms, including images, videos, jokes, and catchphrases. They are often created and shared online, and they often have a humorous or satirical quality. Some examples of popular memes include the “distracted boyfriend” meme, the “Two Buttons” meme, and the “Mocking SpongeBob” meme.
Memes can be seen as a way for people to express their thoughts and emotions through a shared cultural language. They can also be a way for people to bond and connect with others who share similar interests or experiences.
A meme may be defined as a unit of cultural imitation. Dawkins describes the choice of word:
“We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. ‘Mimeme’ comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like ‘gene’. I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to meme.”
In referring to the selfish gene, Dawkins is not referring to a gene for selfish behaviour, but the way the process of natural selection acts on genes to influence their replication, and whether the gene as a unit gets passed on to a next generation or not.
The theory of evolution proposed by Charles Darwin has three main components: variation, selection and the hereditary process/retention. Characteristics which are useful for survival in any given environment will tend to increase, while those which are a poor fit for that environment will fail to replicate, or not replicate so much.
The philosopher Daniel Dennett has likened the evolutionary process to an algorithm, and just like a set of instructions, it can be “mindless”. Indeed Dennett has described the theory of evolution as a scheme for creating Design out of Chaos without the aid of Mind:
” The appearance of design is created by the random process of selection acting on replicators. We cannot know how evolution will unfold, but we can, in the words of complexity theorist Stuart Kauffman, “…find deep and beautiful laws governing that unpredictable flow……stand back and watch the pageant.”
Just as living organisms are selected by the sieving process of survival based on those best matched to the environment, similarly ideas are also selected, with some being more successful than others. The concept of the meme is explored further by Susan Blackmore in “The Meme Machine”:
“When you imitate someone else, something is passed on. This ‘something’ can then be passed on again, and again, and so take on a life of its own. We might call this thing an idea, an instruction, a behaviour, a piece of information….but if we are going to study it we shall need to give it a name. Fortunately, there is a name. It is the ‘meme’”.
Blackmore states:
”Memes are instructions for carrying out behaviour, stored in brains (or other objects) and passed on by imitation. Their competition drives the evolution of the mind.”
Our ability to imitate and copy ideas, language, religion and traditional customs, habits, skills, fashion, theories, ways of making pots or building arches, recipes, phrases, music, and stories, means that memes also exist in a pool to be selected based on their value, competing for space in our minds and cultures. While genes travel longitudinally down generations, memes can travel both down generations but also horizontally, with crazes or songs passed by imitation in the playground. While memes can be located in the brain of a biological host, they can also exist independently of a biological host, in forms such as books, recorded music, and film.
In the preface to Blackmore’s book, Dawkins gives an example of just such as craze to show how memes and their selection and copying may work:
“When I was about nine, my father taught me to fold a square of paper to make an origami Chinese junk….I went back to school and infected my friends with the skill, and it then spread around the school with the speed of the measles….I do not know whether the epidemic subsequently jumped to other schools….But I do know that my father himself originally picked up the Chinese Junk meme during an almost identical epidemic at the same school 25 years earlier.”
In this case the meme is the set of instructions on how to fold paper, rather than the junk itself. The reader can probably remember similar crazes from childhood, memes spreading rapidly in a receptive meme pool. Or the meme may be a song with incredible success at spreading, like the song “Happy Birthday to You” known by billions around the world, acquired and copied by imitation.
Just as occasionally genes are not faithfully copied, mutated memes can also occur when the unit of culture is not exactly copied. The mutation may be more popular or ignored and fade away. If the fidelity of copying is poor due to embellishment or error, a process of “Chinese Whispers” may occur and the end-product ends up eventually totally different to the original, or just occasionally the improbable happens, and the inaccurate copy is a significant improvement. So the meme “send reinforcements, we are going to advance” can end up with the altogether less helpful “send three and fourpence we’re going to a dance”!
Blackmore continues:
“Remember that the same shorthand applies to memes as to genes. We can say that memes are ‘selfish’, that they ‘do not care’, that they ‘want’ to propagate themselves, and so on, when all we mean is that successful memes are the ones that get copied and spread, while unsuccessful ones do not. This is the sense in which memes ‘want’ to get copied, ‘want’ you to pass them on and ‘do not care’ what that means to you or your genes. This is the power behind the idea of memes. To start to think memetically we have to make a giant flip in our minds just as biologists had to do when taking on the idea of the selfish gene. Instead of thinking of our ideas as our own creations, and as working for us, we have to think of them as autonomous selfish memes, working only to get themselves copied. We humans, because of our power of imitation, have become just the physical ‘hosts’ for the memes to get around. This is how the world looks from a ‘meme’s eye view’”.
She explains further:
“Memes spread themselves around indiscriminately without regard to whether they are useful, neutral or positively harmful to us. A brilliant new scientific idea, or a technological invention, may spread because of its usefulness. A song like Jingle Bells may spread because it sounds OK, though it is not seriously useful and can definitely get on your nerves. But some memes are positively harmful — like chain letters and pyramid selling, new methods of fraud and false doctrines, ineffective slimming diets and dangerous medical ‘cures’. Of course, the memes do not care; they are selfish like genes and will simply spread if they can”.
Another example of a harmful meme might be scams, like the “missed delivery” text. It only has to be successful a few times to succeed, survive and replicate.
In the words of Blackmore:
“There are many reasons why some memes succeed and others fail…….First, there is the nature of human beings as imitators and selectors… ….Psychology can help us understand why and how this operates. There are the properties of our sensory systems that make some memes obvious and others not, the mechanisms of attention that allow some memes to grab the available processing capacity, the nature of human memory that determines which memes will be successfully remembered, and the limitations of our capacity to imitate……The other kinds of reasons concern the nature of the memes themselves, the tricks they exploit, the ways they group together and the general process of memetic evolution that favour some memes over others…..Putting together all these reasons we may be able to see why some memes succeed and others fail.”
Successful memes
There have been many successful memes over the years that have gained widespread popularity and helped to build brand awareness and engagement. Here are a few examples of successful memes:
1. “Keep Calm and Carry On” — This slogan, which originated as a motivational poster during World War II, has been adapted and used in various forms as a meme, including t-shirts, posters, and other merchandise.
2. “Doge” — This meme, featuring a Shiba Inu dog with comic sans text superimposed over the image, gained widespread popularity in 2013 and has been used in various marketing campaigns.
3. “Distracted Boyfriend” — This meme, which features a photograph of a man looking at another woman while his girlfriend looks on in disgust, gained widespread popularity in 2017 and has been used in various marketing campaigns.
4. “Success Kid” — This meme, which features a photograph of a baby with a determined expression, gained widespread popularity in 2011 and has been used in various marketing campaigns.
5. “Hide the Pain Harold” — This meme, which features a photograph of a man with a forced smile, gained widespread popularity in 2014 and has been used in various marketing campaigns.
These are just a few examples of successful memes that have been used in marketing campaigns. It’s important to note that the success of a meme can depend on a variety of factors, including timing, relevance, and cultural context.
Using memes for marketing
Using memes for marketing can be an effective way to connect with your audience and generate engagement on social media. Here are a few tips for using memes in your marketing strategy:
1. Stay up to date on the latest memes: Make sure you are familiar with the memes that are currently popular and relevant to your target audience. You can do this by following relevant social media accounts and paying attention to what is trending.
2. Use memes appropriately: Memes can be a powerful tool for connecting with your audience, but they can also be easily misused. Make sure you use memes in a way that is appropriate and respectful, and avoid using them to offend or alienate any groups of people.
3. Be creative: There are many different ways to use memes in your marketing, so get creative and think outside the box. You could create a meme featuring your brand or product, or use an existing meme and add your own twist to it.
4. Use memes sparingly: While memes can be a great way to connect with your audience, it’s important not to overdo it. Use memes sparingly and as part of a larger content strategy to avoid coming across as overly promotional or spammy.
5. Monitor and track performance: As with any marketing tactic, it’s important to monitor and track the performance of your meme campaigns. Use tools like social media analytics or Google Analytics to see how your memes are performing and make adjustments as needed.
So if you are looking to build an audience for a product or idea, understanding memes and how they spread, can be an effective tool. Just as survival of the fittest sifts the best-suited individuals to survive in the gene pool, a similar process determines which memes succeed and spread.
