After last month’s look at the do’s and don’ts of viral videos, this time we’ll be taking a look at another piece of the viral marketing puzzle – “memes”. An internet meme (pronounced MEEM) is a simple action, image, phrase (or a combination of these three) that is imitated, shared and spread around the web. With the internet’s unique ability to rapidly spread and create new content, word of mouth can turn a catchy phrase or comic image into an online phenomenon that is viewed by millions. If you successfully attach some kind of marketing message to the meme, you get huge visibility at little or no cost.    

The internet meme is simply the latest evolution of one of the oldest techniques in marketing – the catchphrase, a memorable, often comic phrase that describes the product or service in a way that is likely to stick in the mind.

Like any other form of viral marketing, the history of memes is one of accidental success stories and many carefully planned failures. But by looking at the successful memes, you can see the recurring elements that have made them successful, and try and replicate them for yourself. Here are five of the essential elements of a successful marketing meme…

A successful meme is simple. No more than ten words, normally alongside a simple image or action that is easy to copy. One of the most successful memes in marketing history is the “Got Milk?” campaign in America, which is credited with reversing a twenty year decline in the milk industry. “Got milk?” works because it associates a simple catchphrase and image (“Got milk?” and a line of milk on the upper lip) with celebrities and cultural icons.
Of course, the endorsement of David Beckham is out of the range
of almost all companies, but the lesson to learn here is from the simplicity of both the phrase and the image at the centre of this successful meme.

Of course, if the meme is simple, this makes it easy to remember, but it takes more than this to make it catchy. Almost all memes are humorous and/or cute; finding the comic angle is usually essential to making it memorable.

A successful meme isn’t an introduction or a teaser for a product – it conveys a complete idea in the ten words or a single image. With the famous “Should’ve gone to Specsavers” series of adverts, the catchphrase contains the entire idea – good glasses prevent embarrassing situations. This meme has advanced to the point where it has become a catchphrase in everyday life – when someone does something that reflects poor eyesight, quite often one of their friends will say “should’ve gone to Specsavers” without even thinking about it. On the internet, photos of embarrassing situations are often captioned with the phrase by people with no association to the company.

If you can make your meme part of everyday language, that’s a real marketing victory! Try and make your meme something that could be reused in a wide variety of different situations, and you’ll be on the path to success.

This is the crucial part of a meme, the thing that allows it to spread virally around the internet. Try and make your meme something that invites imitation. Often this is made by using a phrase that can be used in many different ways. In the case of “Should’ve gone to Specsavers”, the meme is a punch line – a punch line to a joke than can be told in thousands of different ways, but that always has the same ending. Another example of imitated memes are the catchphrases from certain TV phrases – “I’m out” from Dragons’ Den, “You are the weakest link” from the show of the same name and “You’re fired!” from the Apprentice. Every time someone says one of these catchphrases, they are indirectly marketing the show.

An interesting example of an offline meme working too well was an early Tango advert  , where an orange man would jump on an unsuspecting Tango drinker and smack both his ears (the catchphrase being “You Know When you’ve been Tangoed”). This was imitated in playgrounds around the country so much that the company changed the advert – rather than smacking ears, the man gave a smacking great kiss to the people he jumped on!

Whatever form your meme takes, it must have a phrase that applies to a commonplace situation, or an action that can be parodied and imitated.

It is no good having the catchiest meme around if no one can see it and spread it. Your website, promotional materials and business cards are all good starting points, but there are numerous other ways of getting the message out there. Internet forums, like Something Awful and 4chan, have historically been the starting point of many memes. They can also start or spread through social media sites (such as Digg, Mixx and Reddit) and social bookmarking sites (Delicious and StumbleUpon). And of course, if your meme is a video, YouTube is the place to put it, though look in to other niche video sites as well; starting on the smaller sites is a good way to build a “snowball” effect so that it gains some visibility on the bigger social media sites.