A meme by any other name...

Every once in a while I have a conversation which reminds me how old and out of touch I really am.  I had such a conversation recently when I was discussing memes with my children.  Both my son and my daughter are in college and frequenters of the social media you would expect them to frequent.

I had heard the term meme before this conversation but had never had a firm grasp of what a meme was.  I expected to learn it was something along the lines of an emoticon, something born and bred of the social media or internet age.  Both of my kids got exasperated trying to help me understand what a meme was, and what it wasn't.  A meme is often humorous but isn't a serial internet joke.  A meme is often visual but isn't a picture that was repeated with different sayings associated with it.

This valiant effort continued via text long after they had returned to college.  In his latest attempt to enlighten me, my son Brian wrote: "a meme is first a character associated with a specific personality or idea.  Then different jokes or statements are generated that correlate or comment on that idea, usually in a crowd-sourced setting.  The statement and image are combined to create an easily digestible and typically humorous post."  While that was helpful, it really just supported my theory that my kids are much smarter than their old man!

I decided more research was called for.  What I found, surprised me.  Like Angela Caldin, in her blog linked below, I was surprised that the term meme has been around far longer than Facebook.  First coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book, The Selfish Gene, meme refers to cultural characteristics that are passed down the generations.  Any characteristic of a culture, be it language, music, images, etc. that can be transmitted from one generation to the next in a way analogous to the transmission of genetic information. In other words, memes are like cultural genes.

So why are memes important to marketers.  In our marketing-driven culture, we are dealing with memes all of the time (at least how I understand it!)  There are people of a certain age, that if I said, "Two all beef patties, special sauce..." they would be able to continue to cite the list of ingredients in a Big Mac, always in the same order and probably with a certain cadence.  To have your marketing message become a cultural talisman is a marketers Holy Grail.  Let me rephrase that, because I am pretty sure that the Ford Motor Company isn't so happy with the meme-status of the Edsel.  To have your brand become a POSITIVE cultural talisman is what every marketer works toward.

Just like no advertiser should create ads in order to win awards, becoming a cultural icon should be a by-product of excellent marketing, not a goal of it.  Still, becoming a meme, a positive meme, is a great thing for a brand.

Now can someone explain to me what gangnam style is?

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