What Can Memes Do For You?
Dysrupt is a 💎✋ marketing firm and not above the occasional meme trend. With all the news of r/wallstreetbets, RobinHood, $GME, etc. we want to take a step back and deep dive on this often used internet term with an interesting history - *meme.
Origin
Meme as a term predates internet culture. Originally coined by Richard Dawkins in 1976 in his groundbreaking book The Selfish Gene.
Dawkins conceived of memes as the cultural parallel to biological genes and considered them, in a manner similar to “selfish” genes, as being in control of their own reproduction and thus serving their own ends. Understood in those terms, memes carry information, are replicated, and are transmitted from one person to another, and they have the ability to evolve, mutating at random and undergoing natural selection, with or without impacts on human fitness (reproduction and survival). - link
Dawkins himself defined meme as a noun that "conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation."
The Selfish Gene was groundbreaking due to meme kicking off a deeper investigation in **academia around the extent of evolutionary processes that are unrelated to genes.
Memes though are units of cultural significance. If they are repeated then they carry more significance than those that fail to replicate.
Here is a silly example: the cleaning crew in a hotel folding the toilet paper into a triangular shape is a meme. This happens worldwide now - even in some gas station bathrooms - and is an artifact of culture. It is a transfer of information in the network of humanity. This is a recent invention of culture which now carries a significance. Namely that the room was cleaned by a professional who spared no expense as they even decided to fold the toilet paper end into a small triangle.
In this light, the modern use of meme just being easily shareable phrases, images, gifs, etc. is a limited use of the term. It can extend to anything that is imitated within culture. Everything from the mundane - Fork, Knife, Spoon placement on a table - to the absurd - Qanon.
r/WallStreetBets and Community
We are a marketing firm and the recent explosion of meme stocks has been a fascinating watch in the power of community and how it empowers a movement. If you are in the business of brand building, you are trying to gain attention and direct it to action.
r/WallStreetBets created a movement of directing a group of disjointed individuals via the glue of memes. These memes allow the group to have a shared language and jokes that bond via an in group mentality. Their “units of imitation” are simple to replicate and share.
The brazen ridiculousness of all the terms makes them even more mockable which requires sharing and imitation and bonding of the in-group.
I’m an Advertiser and Don’t Care about Stonks
Budweiser made a meme with its “Wassupp” ad. TikTok’s Duet feature and many other product features on platforms are meme engines. (Memegins?) Share buttons are littered throughout the internet. Every piece of content screams to be replicated.
Yes r/WallstreetBets has a lot of weird language but after about 15 minutes you’ll start typing 🚀 🌕 with little thought and will start judging the 📜 ✋ in the midst who cost you tendies.
Easy to imitate and through the imitation the group improves upon the original idea. The successes are repeated and become even more shareable and immitatable. This is the evolutionary process Dawkins keyed into. Failure is easy to define as it is just content that is not replicated and shared.
The flywheel is that the sharing and imitation increases further sharing. Understanding how to bring this to your brand, your community, can be key to kickstarting your own movement.
What’s the Difference Between a Bad, Good and Great Story?
Bad stories are forgotten. Good stories are remembered. Great stories are retold.
The retelling and sharing within culture is the power of brand advertising.
In fact, this might be the easiest way to differentiate between brand and direct response ads. Direct response ads are judged on product sales and perhaps help define a brand.
Brand ads should be judged on the great story criteria - are they retold? Shared? Imitated? Sales will come from causing this replication.
* How to pronounce: meme rhymes with gene.
** Aaron Lynch in his book Thought Contagion defined 7 patterns of transmission for memes: Quantity of parenthood, Efficiency of parenthood, Proselytic, Preservational, Adversative, Cognitive, Motivational.
Read next
*This article originally appeared in Forbes on February 26th, 2024. Link HERE
Innovation doesn't always scream; sometimes, it whispers. This is a lesson I've internalized as the founder of Dysrupt, where we've navigated the fine line between groundbreaking advancements and the comfort of familiarity. The 3% rule of change, championed by the late Virgil Abloh, a visionary in both fashion and design, offers a compelling lens to examine this balance. Abloh's ethos, focusing on the transformative power of subtle alterations, challenges the conventional push for radical innovation. It's a principle that resonates deeply in the tech world, particularly when comparing the strategic approaches of Apple's Vision Pro and Meta Quest Pro.
Abloh's influence extended beyond the realm of fashion; he was a cultural icon who redefined creativity, making his principles universally applicable, including in technology. His 3% rule—the idea that significant innovation can be achieved with minimal changes—underscores the importance of nuanced, thoughtful alterations.
The 3% Rule In Technological Innovation
Abloh's 3% rule is epitomized by the advent of Apple's "spatial computing." This term, much like "horseless carriage" in its day, melds the familiar with the novel, bridging the gap between traditional perceptions and forward-thinking technology. It suggests a nuanced evolution rather than a complete overhaul, offering a linguistic framework that makes new technologies more accessible and understandable.
Spatial computing, as introduced by Apple, allows for the integration of digital enhancements into our physical environment, enabling users to place virtual screens within their actual surroundings. This approach is contrasted sharply with Quest Pro’s goal of creating a fully immersive virtual environment, which, while technologically impressive, may alienate users who prefer a connection to their physical world.
This distinction is demonstrated in Casey Neistat's review of the Vision Pro in Times Square. Neistat's experience underscores the unique proposition of Vision Pro: the ability to seamlessly blend digital content with the real world, enhancing one's immediate environment rather than replacing it. By choosing what to see and where to see it, users retain control over their experience, embodying the essence of the 3% rule by making technology adapt to the individual's needs and preferences.
Expanding The NBA Viewing Experience
The divergent paths of Vision Pro and Quest Pro are nowhere more evident than in their partnership with the NBA to redefine the fan experience. While the Quest Pro aims to place fans directly courtside with its fully immersive VR experience, Vision Pro takes a different route. It introduces an enhanced viewing experience that transcends traditional limitations, offering "better than courtside" content. This approach leverages spatial computing to allow fans to enjoy multiple screens in their living space, offering various angles and aspects of the game in high definition, without losing touch with their immediate surroundings.
Meta Quest Pro's ambitious VR technology has the potential to transport fans into the heart of the action, offering an unparalleled sense of presence at live games. This full immersion into a virtual courtside experience represents a significant leap in how technology is used to bridge distances and bring the game to the viewer. However, this approach, while groundbreaking, may not align with all fans' desire for a more integrated viewing experience that maintains a connection to their physical environment.
Apple Vision Pro, in contrast, capitalizes on AR's potential to subtly enhance the real world. By allowing users to overlay multiple screens onto their physical space, Vision Pro offers a customizable viewing experience that can be tailored to each fan's preference. Whether it's accessing different camera angles, real-time statistics or social media feeds, Vision Pro provides a multidimensional viewing experience that enriches fans' engagement with live sports. This "better than courtside" experience doesn't remove fans from their reality; instead, it enhances it with layers of digital information and entertainment, embodying the essence of the 3% rule.
The Future Of Viewing
The introduction of Apple's Vision Pro into the marketplace heralds a nuanced shift in how viewers engage with broadcast entertainment. This principle, which advocates for impactful innovation through minimal adjustments, suggests a future where broadcasters will increasingly lean into subtle, AR-enabled enhancements to enrich the viewing experience. Instead of propelling audiences into fully immersive virtual realities, the trend is toward augmenting the physical environment with digital overlays that complement rather than replace the live viewing experience.
This evolutionary step, subtly integrated by technologies like Vision Pro, signals a move toward more personalized and contextually rich experiences within the familiar confines of viewers' existing environments. It represents a pivot in strategy for broadcasters, who now have the tools to create and distribute content that enhances reality, offering audiences the ability to customize their viewing experiences with information, graphics and interactive elements that were previously unimaginable.
This approach does not aim to upend the viewer's world with drastic changes; instead, it seeks to introduce enhancements that seamlessly integrate with their reality, offering a glimpse into how minimal shifts can have a profound impact on the collective viewing experience. In this emerging landscape, the 3% rule becomes a guiding principle for broadcasters and technologists alike, emphasizing that sometimes the most meaningful innovations are those that refine and redefine our experiences without displacing them.
Subtle Shifts, Major Impact: A More Effective Approach To Innovation
In the age of social media marketing, there are seemingly endless possibilities for advertising your brand’s products or services online. With over 4 billion active social media users worldwide, there is so much potential to expand your audience, generate leads, and significantly increase revenue.
Facebook and Instagram have long been advertising pillars for brands big and small. But with the global shift to video marketing, a new juggernaut has taken over: TikTok.
Why Your Brand Should Use TikTok Ads
TikTok is a video-sharing social media app with more than one billion active monthly users in over 150 countries. It was the worldwide top mobile app download in 2020 (850 million) and 2021 (656 million), and it is the first non-Facebook app to reach 3 billion downloads worldwide.
There is no overstating the potential for audience reach on TikTok. Over 50% of the UnitedStates population usesTikTok, and it is now more popular than Instagram among Gen Z consumers. In one internet minute, TikTok users watch 167 million videos. Global user spending on the platform totaled $2.3 billion in 2021, up 77% since 2020.
All of these numbers are staggering, especially because the global version of TikTok was only released in 2017. The world’s biggest brands, such as Apple Music, Fenty Beauty, Nike, and Netflix, have created TikTok campaigns to promote their products.
Because of TikTok’s advanced features for ad creation and a powerful targeting algorithm, the ads platform can lead your brand directly to the most highly lucrative groups of users.
Here is how you can get started:
Steps ToSet up a TikTok Ad Campaign
1. Create an Ads Account on TikTok
To create an account, you need an email address or phone number along with your country, time zone, and Business Name.
If you wish to use this and other TikTok For Business products, your Business Name must match your official documentation, or your application will not pass account review.
2. Create an Ad Campaign on TikTok
Once you’re logged into TikTok Ads Manager, click on the campaign tab at the top of the dashboard and choose create.
First, consider your business goals and choose the advertising objective that will help you meet them. If you want more people to be aware of your brand or product, reach will help you do that. If you want to send interested visitors to your website, traffic is the best option.
3. Set Your Budget
Choose a descriptive name for your campaign. Note that TikTok Ads has a limit of 999 campaigns per account.
Next, set up your campaign budget. Lifetime Budget (the maximum amount you are willing to spend during the entire run) and Daily Budget (the maximum amount each day) must beat least $50.
4. Set Your TikTok Ad Placements and Targeting
Next, you can choose among the targeting options offered by the platform. You can define the exact parameters such as specific devices, locations, interests, ages, languages, genders, and other details to target. This way, your ad will show up for your exact intended audience.
You may also opt for automatic placements and let TikTok’s algorithm determine where your ad would perform best.
After choosing the placements, enter every necessary detail by following the prompts to begin running your ad. It should include relevant categories, URLs, images, and display names. You may also choose up to 20 keywords that would describe your app or website. All of these details will match your products to the best audience.
For a granular advertising approach, you can create a custom audience by uploading TikTok userIDs using a ZIP, TXT, or CSV file.
5. Set Your Schedule
Once you’ve created your ad campaign, you can bundle it within an ad group and set a budget and schedule for their runs. The minimum Daily Budget and Lifetime Budget for ad groups is $20.
Next, you can choose to schedule the start and end times that your ads will appear. You can be as specific or flexible as you want—your scheduling decisions should depend on your target audience’s app behavior.
You can opt for day parting, wherein you can set specific periods within the day (from half an hour to 24 hours) to run your ads.
6. Set Your Optimization Goals and Bid Strategy
Next, you should choose your optimization goal (Reach, Click, or Conversion) and set your bidding strategy accordingly. These are critical metrics that you want to achieve from your campaign.
Reach
Reach is the simplest goal—to put your ad in front of as many people as possible and expand awareness of your brand, product, or service.
These ads are billed per CPM (Cost Per Mille), which is the price you are willing to pay for 1,000 impressions. The algorithm will deliver your ad to the broadest audience possible within your budget.
Click
The next level of ad optimization is Click, where the aim is to entice your audience to follow a link to your website, landing page, blog post, or YouTube video that will expand on the specific details of your ad.
Clicks are billed as CPC (Cost Per Click), which means the algorithm will show your ad to users most likely to click at a cost close to your bid.
Conversion
When you choose Conversion, the algorithm will serve your ad to the audiences most likely to convert via a favorable action, such as a purchase, subscription, form submission, or app download.
Click Library and select Conversions to create conversion events. For example, you can set conversion tracking for the number of app installations that your ad triggers. Just type in the name of your conversion event, enter the link to your app download on the App Store or Google Play Store, then choose a tracking partner that will measure your ads’ conversions.
The set payment method for Conversions is CPM, and the default bidding method is oCPM (optimization Cost Per Mille). Your bid represents the amount you are willing to pay for 1,000conversions.
Set Delivery Type
Next, you can choose your ad delivery method. This setting determines how quickly your ad will be delivered and the speed at which you will spend your budget.
Standard Delivery means your budget will be spent evenly throughout the campaign. This optimizes your overall ROI.
Accelerated Delivery means the system will prioritize a large volume of results in the shortest possible time. This ensures the highest exposure for your ads.
6. Create YourAds
With TikTok AdManager’s creative tools, you can create image and video ads in just a few minutes. The video creation process is reasonably straightforward. You can use square, vertical, or horizontal images and videos for your TikTok ads.
You can upload your own images and videos from scratch or use templates that you can customize and over 300 free background music options.
You can opt for some of the most popular and influential video ad campaigns on TikTok:
Hashtag Challenges
You can collaborate with TikTok’s marketing team to create a sponsored Hashtag Challenge (HTC) to boost brand awareness and user engagement. Successful HTCs have sparked industry trends and cultural movements that last long after the campaign periods have ended.
Brand Takeovers
Brand takeover ads instantly appear when a user opens up the app. It includes a clickable link that will lead to an external app, website, or another TikTok video. These ads only show up for users once each day, and they fetch premium prices that international brands shell out for.
Here is an example of a brand takeover on TikTok:
In-Feed Ads
Full-screen in-feed ads appear on users’ native news feeds on the For You page. These ads can be up to 10 seconds long, with a prominent Call-to-Action (CTA) to prompt an action from the user. Your CTA can redirect to your app, website, landing page, product page, blog post, or other relevant links.
The average cost for in-feed ads is $10 per CPM, a relatively affordable option compared to takeovers and HTCs.
Here is a great example of an ad that links to an app download for cartoon effects:
7. Optimize Your TikTok Ads
Every element of your TikTok ad should be optimized to encourage user engagement and clicks. This means you must use high-resolution images, icons, and videos (720p or higher) that will appear to their best advantage in full-screen across all devices.
Each ad should focus on just one CTA to ensure that users will take the appropriate action. The simpler, the better. For example, if you are advertising a brand new product, link to the relevant product page on your website. If you want to encourage users to download your app, link directly to the link to Google Play Store, and do not clutter the ad with any other information.
TikTok is a video platform, and its users expect to be wow-ed on a visual level. This means you have limited opportunity to make an impression with words. Ad descriptions at the bottom of the screen have a 100-character limit, so the most critical ad details must be in the video itself.
You can use TikTok Video Editor to incorporate blocks of relevant text on your ad, but again, ad real estate is very limited. TikTok's best practices recommend video ads to be 21 to 34 seconds long—not much time to read more than a few lines of text.
It would be best to experiment with a wide range of creative elements and targeting options before narrowing your campaigns and ad groups to these elements' most successful combinations.
You should also take advantage of other built-in ad tools. The Automated Creative Optimization tool at the ad group level will allow you to upload up to 5 videos or 10 images, 1CTA, and 5 ad texts to combine your creative assets into numerous ads.
Throughout your campaign, varieties of these ads will be tested to ultimately present the best combination so you can reach your target audience.
With the Landing Page to Video tool, you can capture high-quality image materials from any landing page URL that you feed into it. You can combine these images with music to create video ads automatically.
8. Track Your TikTok Analytics
Through TikTok AdsManager, you can generate reports for all of your campaigns. Just go to the Reporting page and click Create and then Custom Report. You can choose which Dimensions (ads, ad groups, placements, campaigns) and Metrics you want to include in your report.
TikTok Metrics include to following:
-Clicks
- Conversions (and Real-Time counterpart)
- Cost Per Result (and Real-Time counterpart)
- Cost Per Acquisition (and Real-Time counterpart)
- Cost Per Click
- Click-Through Rate
- Conversion Rate % (and Real-Time counterpart)
- Real-Time Conversions
- Real-Time Result Rate
- Total Cost
You can also schedule automatically generated reports to be sent to your email address daily, weekly, or monthly.
Conclusion
TikTok has a vast audience reach across the United States and worldwide. Your brand should take advantage of the tremendous advertising potential on this platform.
TikTok also provides users and advertisers with a comprehensive array of automation and design tools. You don’t need to be a video editing expert to set up and eventually master the creation and optimization of effective TikTok ads.
This step-by-step guide is an excellent resource that will guide you through your marketing efforts on TikTok.
Make the Impossible Profitable with dysrupt
With dysrupt's analytics, intelligence, and high-end customer service, brands can count on solutions and unique perspectives that will take their operations and revenue to the next level. When it comes to rebranding, Dysrupt's insights can lead to a sharp and startling curve in consumer behavior.
Now that the digital ecosystem has become more complicated than ever, dysrupt is here to help brands navigate the continuous evolution of the landscape. We work on solving complex marketing problems and designing successful customized marketing solutions. Dysrupt can help the impossible to become profitable.
