Internet Meme Marketing

By growing up on the internet, memes have evolved and become a central part of online and social culture. I also have because a space for digital marketing and social media across many different platforms. It allows people to communicate in witty and quick forms rather than traditional ways of communicating. They often adhere to humor and shared cultural online dynamic understanding. For my topic of marketing and digital audiences’ memes are essential and important since they reflect how consumers think, feel and interact with brands. By using Patrick Davison’s framework memes can be analyzed through their ideal behavior and manifestations. One popular but slightly dated meme is the Distracted Boyfriend meme (Know Your Meme). This meme depicts a man looking back at another woman while walking with one. In the image, the woman he is walking with looks angry as she sees the man admiring another. This meme relates strongly to marketing because it represents how consumers are often tempted by new products or budding trends instead of staying loyal to a brand or in this case a significant other. The ideal of this meme is distraction and shifting attention. The behavior comes from a stock photo that went viral in 2017. It quickly spread across platforms like Twitter, now X and Instagram. Users labeled each character to depict choices. Its manifestations vary pretty widely from relationship triangle jokes to brand comparisons. Another example is the Drake Hotline Bling meme (Know Your Meme) otherwise referred to as “Drakeposting.” It depicts Drake rejecting one option and favoring another. Similar to the last meme this depicts taste rather than relational. The ideal is preference and judgement. It comes from his 2015 music video and spread as a two image reaction meme. Its manifestations are commonly used to compare products or ideas in a light hearted way. Finally, the “ The Woman Yelling at a Cat meme (Know Your Meme) represents conflict and misunderstanding. Its ideal is emotional exaggeration. It comes from a reality TV scene and is paired with a viral cat image. This spread across social media and combines two different images from different sides of the internet. Its manifestations vary through the use of captions usually depicting arguments between people or brands. Furthermore, these memes appeal to young online natives and are easy to adapt to different scenarios. They are a reflection of current and past trends and communicate ideas with images which make them relatable tools in the digital marketing space.