The icanhazcheezeburger.com guys didn’t invent the meme whereby cats are captioned with silly phrases: the meme’s most famous early days took place on the magnificently debauched Something Awful forums and 4chan message boards, although some will argue that lolspeak originated earlier than that in the online gaming world. Wherever it began, Eric Nakagawa and Kari Unebasami did very well out of the deal, and people have been trying to emulate their success ever since. Some have done quite well, notably those who have attempted to capitalise on “FAIL,” but the task of having a meme catch on isn’t terribly easy.
We tried it once. Those of you who weren’t reading our site or any of our other properties in 2006 / 2007 might not remember Drivl, but we did some work for the straight-outta-left-field blog in my earlier days as a Mozzer. Speaking of which, it’s my two-year anniversary as a staff member here today!
At Drivl, we tried to coin “toile” – pronounced “twahl” – as a term for vomiting. We may have had more success given some more time, as Drivl was developing quite the following. We also had the advantage of coining an onomatopoeia, but as it stood, “to toile” never quite caught on. Making people use a new word when they already have a good set of words in place isn’t easy.
This said, not every meme becomes (or needs to become) a huge hit to elicit some commercial success. Within niches, a meme can create a solid enough following that it is successful in some facet of Internet marketing. Meme creation and promotion is chasing many of the same goals as is “regular” viral marketing; however, this form of marketing is more delicate and requires a lot more patience and tact.
Memes are slightly dangerous ground because of their tendency to become annoying. Quickly. I know you’ve sniggered at how much I like the FAIL phenomenon, and as much as I think you’re missing the inherent joy of schadenfreude, I understand that all pop-cultural catchphrases and trends aren’t for everyone. Utilising memes as a marketing tool, therefore, is tricky. As far as is possible, a meme marketer must achieve a tolerable level of niche saturation.
I am going to make a positive example of one of my favourite SEOmoz members here. Martin Bowling has become rather infamous for his supposed like of the alco-pop bevereage Zima. I didn’t know what Zima was before and I’ve still never tried it, but somehow, a story developed whereby Martin was linked with the drink. What apparently started as a silly joke on Twitter (I admit to never having seen its true origin) has developed into a plan to possibly create a URL shortening service. Indeed, the idea has taken flight and, within our industry, the meme is gaining weight.
To my mind this works, especially given Martin’s popularity and the fact that the zi.ma domain name encompasses the traits of the best URL shortening sites. The idea also works because it came about the right way: it wasn’t forced. It began as a joke; the joke took off due to it catching on with its intended audience. Most successful examples began this way.
Thinking back, it’s relatively easy to think of situations in which you have seen people try and force memes. Just mentioning something over and over again or attempting to brand a business in an unnatural way is not going to work. In this manner, our attempt at coining “toile” wasn’t particularly successful because we had nothing to back it up. We just thought it would be funny. It’s highly unlikely that, in the earlier days of the Internet, someone suddenly figured that pictures of cats with silly captions would have a website sell for a couple of million dollars. If they had, it’s also likely that the meme never would have taken off.
Having watched people attempt to equate products, ideas and themes with themselves and their companies in forced ways, most prominently through social media, I have to attest to how futile and, frankly, annoying it is. From a marketing perspective, it’s suicide because instead of the expected positive response, mentions of the cultural feature only elicit ridicule.
Of course, a talented marketer can begin a campaign with a meme in mind and make it look natural. If we’d been smarter, we’d have begun gradually incorporating our usage of “toile” in regular posts until our readers (who were quite numerous at the height of Drivl’s popularity) picked it up. Memes don’t have to come about by accident, but they should at least look that way.
To equate this to something truly SEO-related, think of the theory of keyword over-optimisation. In a social sense, people are search engines who are acutely aware of keyword or keyphrase over-optimisation, and they rate a person or a brand lower if they think their pushing of certain keywords is unnatural. If the promotion is unnatural, all sorts of marketing measures should be taken to make sure it doesn’t appear to be. However, at its best, meme marketing takes place on its own and simply needs a good eye to pick which ideas are likely to become viral phenomena.
