In a story the seemed perfect for SoylentNews (itself named after a meme), Pacific Standard discusses the current trend in TV and some print ads of hijacking internet memes in an attempt to appeal to an audience that has grown up on the web.
The meme, from early text only memes to the recent animated gif rage, is a staple of the net. Today, there are entire websites dedicated to cataloging memes, and other sites dedicated to extending them.
Turnabout is fair play, I suppose, since many memes grew out of TV commercials, TV shows, movies, and even games.
However, there is no agreement that going full circle and adding memes to advertising works, but that hasn't stopped big players from trying it. Fiat's new ad campaign, titled "Endless Fun" is a series of four television spots, each designed to look like animated gif loops, where we see images of bananas floating in outer space, men wearing horse masks, a guy twerking in a rabbit costume, the words "I CAN HAZ TURRBO".
But the feedback on the net is often negative: "This is the advertising equivalent of when your parents try to bump and grind at your high school dance. It's mortifying." All too often the commercials get the memes slightly wrong, but that may be on purpose, trying to avoid legal issues. The memes used also tend to be a little dated, but that too is probably by design.
Fiat/Chrysler's Chief Marketing Officer said of these ads "I thought they were crazy. Crazy weird. Crazy fun. Crazy cheap to produce as well. Maybe a new culture of commercial".
While his advertising ambitions may be a bit overstates, I suspect his cost conscious side is spot on. YMMV.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 13 2014, @06:57AM
I, for one, welcome our new meme advertising overlords.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 13 2014, @07:06AM
I'm allergic to memes you insensitive clod.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday July 13 2014, @09:45AM
Well, to be on-topic, here's the advertiser's business plan:
1. Use memes in advertisements.
2. ???
3. Profit!
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by meisterister on Monday July 14 2014, @05:25PM
How is this offtopic? He used a meme in the discussion about memes.
(May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
(Score: 1) by waximius on Monday July 14 2014, @05:32PM
...Memeception.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 13 2014, @07:21AM
Cheaper advertising costs means lower product prices, we all win!
(Score: 3, Funny) by davester666 on Sunday July 13 2014, @07:40AM
You must be new to Earth.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 14 2014, @12:32AM
> You must be new to Earth.
Or just too deadpan for you and at least one moderator.
(Score: 1) by Horse With Stripes on Sunday July 13 2014, @09:06AM
1. Wait for the Internet to overuse a meme.
2. Poorly execute said meme in an advertisement.
3. ????
4. Profit!
(Score: -1) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 13 2014, @09:58AM
5. Misspell meme as meam or something like that
Karel Kulhavy, Twibright Labs [twibright.com]
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Sunday July 13 2014, @11:04AM
4. Profit!
I automatically boycott any advert using a meme. I never watch ads on TV either, they are too annoying and insulting. I use AdBlock too, natch. Advertisers are just making their output less and less effective and more desirable to block, and react by escalating the arms race even more. It's a feedback loop.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Sunday July 13 2014, @12:32PM
"I never watch ads on TV either, they are too annoying and insulting."
AKA the DVR effect. One thing TV is good at is narrowcasting to an ever smaller and more optimized audience which tends to shrink the audience even smaller and more hard core, repeat a zillion times and you get subcultures with almost no crossover where sports fans and daytime courtroom dramas already have bizarre behavior. Also you get the comical example of "american culture" where 29 in 30 might not be able to tolerate, even for free, the supposed definition of our culture. Many people watch TV, but very few people watch any given show.
Given the TV shows are already small bizarre subcultures, latching onto internet memes seems a perfect match.
The ultimate expression of modern television would be 3000000 channels each with exactly 1000 rabid viewers who mindlessly buy everything advertised and hate the content on the other 2999999 channels.
Also never overlook signalling. So maybe 2G1C isn't the best meme to sell Starbucks Coffee, OK the point of a commercial like that might be to sell the ad agency as "hip and relevant" and by extension the guys who hired the ad agency. Overall net profit, at least to that ad agency, might be higher.
(Score: 2) by rancid on Sunday July 13 2014, @04:13PM
If you're watching TV you're seeing ads in the form of product placement.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 13 2014, @09:25AM
I don't always buy cars, but when I do it is not because they're funny.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday July 13 2014, @09:47AM
One does not simply use memes in advertising.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by ButchDeLoria on Sunday July 13 2014, @10:34AM
We need to push Tubgirl to advertising execs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 13 2014, @10:56AM
Step 1: A car with two girls, one cup holder.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Sunday July 13 2014, @11:58AM
Birds Custard?
Or some caramel syrup in a squirty bottle? (that was my g/f's idea, thanks!)
Dulux paint?
(I'm pretty colourblind, forgive any inaccuracies.)
Hmmm, I just looked at the car advert. It's not a million miles away from the faux "Citron" adverts in Harry and Paul season 3. (Just ``Harry Paul Citron'' will find them on youtube, I'm sure)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 13 2014, @02:40PM
What? No love for goatse?
Surely goatse could be a great ad foundation for windows 8...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 13 2014, @01:10PM
In Soviet Russia memes advertize YOU!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Sunday July 13 2014, @03:47PM
I worked in interactive advertising for about a decade because after the Dot-Bomb it was about the only game in town in NYC. The first thing to realize is that your average creative director is on at least a dozen accounts at once, all over budget and past deadline at any given time. On any given account you have a team of art directors, copywriters, and other specialists who are also over-allocated and stressed (I knew one guy who lived for two months on a case of Luna bars a client had given him because he didn't have enough time to sit down for even fast food). That's the physical, daily reality of life at an agency. And on top of that, clients want a home run every time, a magical creative campaign that will become a meme that sells their widgets like hotcakes (think, Mastercard's Priceless meme -- "A baseball game, $100, hotdogs, $15, spending time with your son...priceless!"). But should you ever come up with such a meme, it's a clap on the back, no bonus, and ten minutes later it's "what have you done for me lately?"
So co-opting cultural memes to create campaigns around is a means to cope with that reality. It serves the same purpose as code libraries for developers. It's stupid, corny, and annoying to most people. But agencies do it because they're all trying to keep their heads above water, and if it helps them placate the clients who are paying the bills, they'll do it in a heartbeat.
The main challenge for traditional advertising agencies these days is that not only has the buying public moved on from traditional media like print, radio, out-of-home (think billboards), and TV, but they've also moved on from interactive, which they spent the last 15 years uncomfortably and resentfully adding to their total offering, to social media. And social media is more appropriately the domain of PR firms. In fact, if you've been watching job postings in the last 5 years PR firms have been on a social media hiring spree. If you know what to look for, you can see the result all around us in online forums, Twitter, Facebook, what-have-you; astroturfing/brand advocacy/propaganda is everywhere.
So, in effect, PR firms are starting to eat the traditional agencies' lunch.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday July 13 2014, @08:11PM
No doubt that explains why several advertisers will come out with the same ad concept at roughly the same time, each of them thinking they had a smart and original concept.
Most annoying one that comes to mind is the quick clips of a dozen people saying a small snippet of the message, all spliced back to back. (Or worse the same snippet over again). Came out in big-budget ads, quickly spread to small market ads as each (cough) "creative director" thought he/she could do the same damn thing better.
Gawd I'd be pissed to see the creative work I paid for suddenly being thrown at me by my competitors and find out later they used the same agency.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.