Consumer Behaviour

Tinnitus expert Jennifer Battaglino mentioned that she would like some suggestions on how to apply memes in her marketing so I thought I would add to yesterday’s post on what makes for a good meme by talking about the ways in which you might use them.

Incidentally, questions like Jennifer’s are enormously helpful to me when I’m thinking what to write, so thank you for all your questions and comments (this is very much an interactive process – I hope it feels like it!)

The key is to think about any aspect of your business in terms of how readily it will be assimilated by your customers and potential customers and passed on. 

At the more obvious end are things like your brand name and website address; how easy are these to recall accurately first time?

Next come the slightly more subtle elements; is your logo distinctively expressed?  Does it have a unique feel to it that will reinforce it in the mind; does it conjure an image when people think of the company name?  The more your name is seen as a picture the more likely it is to be remembered.

Tag lines are incredible useful for creating memes; in fact one could argue quite reasonably that memes are what tag lines are all about.  They can seem extremely glib and silly when you know your business is about far more than a short catchphrase; but remember that the guy who makes baked beans cares about every aspect of his offer too; the recipe, ingredients quality, packaging, product consistency, value for money, heritage, and so on.

Remember that stories can work well as memes; on Kevin Hogan’s public speaking course he pointed us towards a website that had audio stories.  One, for a life coach, told the remarkable story of the lady’s childhood; it was mesmerising, gripping, horrific and totally memorable.  I have no need for a life coach on the other side of the Atlantic so her service was of no interest to me, but I remember that story vividly and could probably trace the lady if I suddenly felt a need for her services.

No hang on readers; that won’t do.  Give me a second.

OK, now I feel justified.  One google search with the words “life coach” and the key moment of her story and there she was, just a Google away.  The lady’s name is Rhonda Britten and her story is there as an audio file (a small link saying “Hear Rhonda’s Story”) it is a superb example of the power of story too. 

And whilst you’re there, take a look at what else she’s done that works well from the perspective of memes.  Her face is there, lots of people remember a face, and she calls her site “Fearless Living”.

Fortunately, not all of us have a story like Rhonda’s, but there may well be stories centred around what we do or why we do it.  One of the reasons bad service experiences are remembered and can spread so poisonously, is that the events around them work wonderfully well as stories. 

You have everything a story needs when a company lets you down: a setting; good guys and bad guys, twists and turns, and always some resolution and a moral (even if it’s just “never use this firm in your life”).

But here’s the thing: you can create stories about your business without waiting for something to go wrong.  Make your presentations memorable, go way beyond what people expect.  A lot of companies focus on customer satisfaction.  That’s fine.  But it’s not memorable.

On the other hand, what if after someone buys something from your shop, you’ve taken their money and everything has gone fine, you say, “Hold on a minute”.  You go into the store room and come out with a box containing something.  “I just got these in and I’d be really interested to know what you think of them.  Please take this, I think you’ll enjoy it, and if you get the chance let me know what you think next time you’re passing.”

Not many shops give you something after the deal is done (rather than as an incentive to buy); now you have something potentially meme-able; a reason for that person to tell their friends about what happened to them in your store.

I hope that gives you a few more ideas.

Philip Graves

Philip Graves Marketing incentives, Marketing, memes, Rhonda Britten, selling, stories, story

When it comes to marketing it’s important that your product, brand name, company name and proposition work as memes. 

That means making as many aspects of your offer as memorable and as easy to pass on as possible.

And as we saw yesterday, whilst having both is nice, memorable often beats meaningful.  Our heads are full of junk that we’ve heard from brands (and elsewhere) that have become etched into our unconscious, and we all know we’ve heard jokes, quotes or ideas that, at the time, seemed to us utterly brilliant, and yet a couple of hours later they’ve gone.

So what is it that makes a meme work well?  I’ll give you my personal opinion of what can help:

• Rhythm and rhymes create narrower options of associations thereby making it more likely that the whole phrase will be recalled accurately (if you can remember the first line, the rhythm and rhyme will lead you directly to the second line).
• Frequency / repetition – when something is repeated in the same way (style, tone, accent, cadence) it increases the likelihood of it being recalled.
• Music – music is very memorable.  I recall reading about one study that found people asked to sing a popular song didn’t just recall most of it, they even started on the right note.
• Alliteration – when we ‘know’ that one initial letter is repeated often in a phrase it narrows down the false associations we could divert to.
• Stories – for a longer message a story, with its forumlaic structure, is far more likely to be recalled than the same message in none contextual form.
• Utility – if there is a benefit to you of storing the meme you’re more likely to repeat it to yourself and therefore embed it more effectively.
• Quirkiness – the more something sounds like something else the greater the chance that you’ll make an error of association when you recall it.
• Intriguing – if it really intrigues you will lock it away whilst you look for answer, and you’ll remember it long after you have the answer too (“Who is John Galt?”).
• Concise – the shorter the better.

To give you an example of a (non-marketing) great meme; I was listening to someone advise someone else on how to undo a wheel nut.  “Righty tighty, lefty loosey”, he said, and I’ve never forgotten it. 

• It’s quirky: it actually contains ‘words’ that I never say in connection with anything else.
• It’s useful: I say it to myself on the rare occasions I’m poised over a nut of some kind and I know I’ll turn it the right way.
• It rhymes and has a good rhythmic feel.
• It has a little alliteration.

Pretty good, huh!

In his hugely enjoyable blog, JJ Jalopy posed the question, what do you say when people ask “what do you do”.  The more meme-able your answer the better.

I came up with, ”I help businesses understand customers better than their customers understand themselves”, which does moderately well on intrigue, no better.

In a recent post several people picked up on, “see your business through the eye of your customer’s unconscious mind”; again moderate intrigue is the best I can do.

“The psychology of shopping” is perhaps the best I’ve come up; it has alliteration on its side, is short and still a little intriguing.

How can you tell if what you have is memorable?

Recently someone recommended I read a book called Management Revisited.  Except that’s not the name of the book he recommended.  That was how my brain remembered it, but it (I) remembered it incorrectly. 

The moral of the story… if someone makes a mistake when they recall your name, company name, product name or slogan, then it hasn’t taken root as it could have done. 

If it’s not remembered accurately first time it’s very unlikely to work as a meme.  It will die like a fish on dry land.

And because frequency is a factor it’s worth resisting the temptation to change key parts of your communication too often.  Get it right and then give it the time to become familiar.

As you can see, it’s something I need to work on myself.

Philip Graves

Philip Graves Marketing Marketing, memes, psychology

Memes are a fascinating concept and vitally important to anyone with an interest in marketing. 

Defined as “… that which is imitated, after GENE n.) “An element of a culture that may be considered to be passed on by non-genetic means, esp. imitation.”

Crucially for someone with something to market, what meme theory says is that one aspect that contributes to effective marketing is how easily whatever it is you’re doing can be copied.

“Beanz Meanz Heinz” means roughly nothing.

But it’s very memorable and very easy to copy, so it gets propagated by people.  It enters your mind, gets remembered instantly and accurately, and stays way beyond the point where it serves any useful purpose to you (if it ever did). 

When it comes to buying beans the simple fact that the brand Heinz is familiar to your unconscious may well be sufficient for it to seem better (for which read a safer, less risky option) than any other available.

Some people go so far as to suggest that our entire mental world is made up of memes.

It is perfectly possible to hold (or host) conflicting memes, and certainly possible to host memes that aren’t particularly constructive or useful; some may even be damaging to us.  For example, supposing you believe that the readings from tea leaves can guide your future and they tell you not to seek medical attention for a condition that could be treated effectively by, say, antibiotics.  Your stupid tea leaf reading meme would be the prime cause of your death.

Some people dispute the theory of memes, saying that if everything is a meme, and copied for its own sake of being copied, then nothing makes any sense at all. 

But this ignores what I consider to be the key issue with memes; that of timescale. 

In my view, over an appropriately long timescale, only good memes will survive.  Good memes are those that serve a useful function for the people who host them.  But just as for genes, that timescale is many thousands of years, rather than the compressed periods people typically consider.

Lots of beliefs were fundamentally accepted in their day and now have no place in our brains.  There was a time when it was widely accepted that the sun and planets revolved around the earth.  Someone suggested it, it seemed a reasonable explanation for stuff in the sky changing, and even probably made the people who passed it on seem clever.  Now we don’t think of that thought, it’s been bumped by a different, more useful meme, that tells us our planet revolves around the sun.  Of course, most of the memes that died out are thoughts we have no historical record of and certainly no memory of – which helps us delude ourselves that everything we think is absolutely right.

So why is this so important to marketing?  I’ll tell you next time…

Philip Graves

Philip Graves Marketing Heinz, Marketing, memes, slogans