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

20 Comments

  1. Rob Northrup

    Awesome discussion of what makes something meme-orable.

    I remember the old Cheers episode where Coach was teaching Sam how to study for his GED Geography test and he made up this song…

    “Albania, Albania,
    You border on the Adriatic,
    You are mainly mountainous,
    And your major export is chrome!”

    Whenever I hear anything about Albania, I think of this song…

    Seize the Day,
    Rob
    Personal Asset Protection For Small Business Owners
    Have You Covered Your Assets?

    reply to comment→
  8. Yann Vernier - ProfitsTactics.com

    This article is the clearest I have read on what makes a good meme and how to create memoreable and easy-to-pass-on business propostions.

    Highly leveraged from Paco Underhill’s book title, I wonder if something along the lines of “Why They Buy” could be an interesting starting point for you.

    I learn a lot from your posts, and really enjoy reading them. Thank you.

    All the best,
    Yann

    reply to comment→
  12. Duane Cunningham

    Hi Phil,

    Sensational post! Lots of very important messages there if you want to stick your head out from the crowd and be memorable!

    The thing you want to be able to create in your field is that when a person thinks of your product or service then automatically brand YOU is associated with it

    And in this post Phil gave some awesome examples of just how you might go about doing this

    But first comes attention…you have to capture their attention!

    Duane

    Learn Winning Persuasion
    Techniques that Work Like Magic by Tapping Into the Psychology of
    the Mind with Persuasion Expert Duane Cunningham!

    reply to comment→
  14. mark mallen

    Philip, That was a very helpful post.There are some great marketing tips hidden in there. I loved your reference to John Galt. The book Atlas Shrugged was actually a big influence on my visiting Colorado and eventually moving there.
    I love your explanation of what you do. It opens up the conversation that people often make buying decisions without consciously knowing why. Mark

    Marketingscoops

    Glacier Ice Cream

    reply to comment→

  15. Pingback: Consumer Behaviour » Memes and Marketing: Part iii

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Articles

Learning from Bus Buddhists
Learning from Bus Buddhists

In psychological terms, context is almost everything. Much as we like to think that we know how we will act and react in a given situation, without the richness of...

The Customer Loyalty Myth
The Customer Loyalty Myth

The suggestion that customers can be loyal is odd. Think about it for a moment; who are you really loyal towards?  Your family, your friends, your colleagues?  Loyalty exists for...