Even though very amusing, memes have become way more than just a source of entertainment. Nowadays they tend to be used in brand-creator partnerships, typically resulting in some quite unique and often fruitful advertising.
The Drum pointed out that meme pages represent a subset of the creator economy worth $105 billion dollars. Reid Hailey, the creator of the Instagram account, the memes of which you are currently scrolling through, said that what he enjoys most about being part of such an economy is the position owners of such pages find themselves in.
“What I’m most excited about is where we sit in the creator economy,” he told The Drum. “We’ve always been creators, but we don’t have a face. We’re more behind-the-scenes.”
In addition to the Instagram account with well over seven million followers, Reid Hailey is responsible for 35 more content brands under the wing of Doing Things Media, The Drum reports.
The story of Doing Things Media started in 2017, when, after winning early deals to work on ads for Gucci and the dating app, Hinge, Hailey started working together with a fellow meme connoisseur, Derek Lucas.
The two created numerous well-known accounts such as ‘Drunk People Doing Things,’ ‘Animals Doing Things,’ and ‘Recess Therapy,’ just to name a few, and set on the course of becoming the “one-stop shop for anything viral,” as Hailey told Forbes himself.
Forbes pointed out that Doing Things Media has worked with numerous well-known names over the years, including but definitely not limited to Bud Light, Crocs, and Netflix, creating roughly $10 million in revenue in 2020.
Such numbers show that using memes the right way must be working. And it’s not difficult to see why; some are often so widespread it might be harder not to be familiar with them if you are a somewhat regular user of the internet.
Some memes are so viral, even establishments you would least expect to use them actually do. Take the White House, for instance, which used the image of ‘success kid’ to promote immigration reform.
It’s arguably safe to assume that for avid internet users, the name ‘success kid’ alone is enough to make them think about the little human clenching a tiny fist. That’s because some memes, such as the ‘distracted boyfriend,’ the expanding brain,’ or the ‘this is fine’ dog, just to name a few, have become internet staples recognized all over the world.
One of the likely reasons for the rapid spread of memes is the fact that they transcend the barriers of territories and languages. That’s because some things are so universal, they can connect people even from the most different of cultures; just think about the ins and outs of relationships, the joys and worries of parenting, or the headaches of studying, for instance.
With the help of the internet, a meme can be shared with someone on the other side of the world in a matter of seconds. What is more, even if that someone doesn’t speak the same language, one can alter it by adding a language they know, thanks to online meme generators, and make it accessible to an even wider audience.
YPulse pointed out that meme generators used to be mostly full of images containing a single character in a colorful background. But as the times change, so do the trends of the entertaining, captioned images. Nowadays, it’s screenshots of people commenting their reactions to something or posts on platforms, such as X (formerly Twitter), that seem to take the lead.
According to YPulse, as much as 75% of those aged 13 to 36 share memes regularly nowadays, and most do it using social media. But no matter the age or the frequency of the action, by sharing memes, people not only help keep the meme advertising businesses going, but add to the creation of folklore, too.
It might come as a surprise, as folklore is typically something that’s associated with quilting or apocryphal stories, as folklorist Lynne S. McNeill points out in her TED Talk. However, in reality, folklore studies relate to the things the majority of people can do or are interested in.
“We can’t all paint like Van Gogh or Monet, but we can all manage a pretty decent stick figure or come up with some good bathroom graffiti,” the folklorist said, adding that that’s the folk culture side of things right there. “The types of artistic, expressive cultural production that everyone is capable of engaging in,” she explained.