Why Memes Are the Real Marketing Superpower | Bathroom Break #65 🚽

0:01Welcome to a new special series called The Bathroom Break. That extra 10 minutes, you either have to listen to marketing tips or use the bathroom or both. But I don't recommend both, but that's your choice. This collab is going to be super fun. We have Daniel Murray from the Marketing Millennials and me, Jay Schwetelson, from the Do This Not That podcast and Subjectline.com. Each episode in the series, we are going to go over quick tips about different marketing topics. And if you want to be in the bathroom, fine, just don't tell us about it. Thanks for checking it out. We are back with another bathroom break.

0:36I'm here with the Jay Schwells and I'll do this, not that podcast. The number one podcast. So go check it out. I am Daniel Murray. I want to start off this podcast because I've been thinking about this and I don't know what, where you sway like on condiments. Like, are you a condiments guy? A sauce? Like, what do you have? Like any condiments that you love or hate? Well, it's a funny question. Funny you bring that up. when so i used to live in new york when i moved down to florida like the i was i was 15 years old so one of the first things i did was i went to mcdonald's i was hungry and i got a burger and i almost threw up because in florida they put mustard and ketchup on your burger just automatically but in new york they only do ketchup and i thought that was actually the most disgusting thing i've ever encountered in my life are you a mustard and ketchup on a burger because you are we're stopping the podcast immediately i am a i i had one thing i don't know if you i'm a big mayo guy i love mayo on a burger um mayo on anything not real now you use fake mayo right like avocado mayo or whatever um mayo um but mustard i'm not a big mustard on a hot dog a hot dog's fine yeah i haven't had a hot dog and i'm not a big like gray poupon guy and a lot of people like who who do you know that likes Grey Poupon.

1:53Who even says that? Hey, Daniel, what's up? I like Grey Poupon. No one's ever said that to you. Oh my God. What are we talking about? Well, I know what we are going to talk about. We're going to talk about memes. We just lost half the audience. I'm not listening to an episode about memes, but let me tell you why we are. Whether you're a business brand and you're a boring conservative industry, we can't use memes wrong. Consumer brand absolutely should be using memes memes are critical now to have in your toolkit i am talking to the king of memes right now daniel has built a gigantic media business and he's fueled it a lot with memes i'm talking to the right guy so daniel what is your take on memes firstly i'll say this it is the language of the internet um if you look at your dms on instagram right now or like what your friends have sent you like it's not ebooks it's not white papers it's not long posts it's usually a meme or a some sort of video format that someone's sending you so like part of the internet is that memes get shared with people and if you want to spread the word memes is a good way to do it so big fan of memes do i think everybody should do it i think it all starts with like what's your brand what's your voice like how you how you feel as brand if you're not like don't want to add any fun to your brand then or any humor then it's fine but i think there's ways to do it that um could work in both camps um one way i've seen and i've worked with clients to do this is that um like if you're scared of like copyright or you're scared about using like trending like imagery is you could take like trending images and put like your employees in there you can put pictures of like pictures of off the internet of of it that are not copyrighted you can have um you can make your own cartoon character for this so like you can make memes in a format that that work for you also that people sleep on me memes are really good great ad format for businesses because they get seen in the feed people recognize it so it's a really good way to like say things and one thing i'll also say why memes are really great is it shows you understand your audience like if you like if you can take a pain point and connect it with an image um it's just a way to show like you understand your audience at a deeper level and you want people to say that's so me so when i create a meme i try to reverse engineer the comment section or the dm so what i mean by that is like what do i want them to say at the comment section like i do they want to do i want them to say this is hilarious do i want to say that's so me like do i want to say like i feel this do i want them to say like how are you getting in my mind like this is like you want to like when you're creating a meme have some sort of reaction so i try to switch up like what reaction i want but the way i know I know you asked this before, like the way I know things are going to work is like I see if you have five or six pain points and one liners and hooks that you know are going to work and you just match them with different images, usually they will they will hit with an audience.

5:15Yeah, and I think it's so important for whatever your brand is, business or consumer, that you have to mix up your formats. You can't just go, okay, we have this carousel, did really well, non-meme, obviously carousel. Let's keep posting that carousel format because that's when it becomes wallpaper. And so it's not like, oh, this is off-brand. We can't use memes. That's ridiculous. Memes, to Daniel's point, are the language of the internet. So I'm curious about something, though. What has been changes to memes? I see you post a lot of video memes now and not just static image memes. Is that what everyone should be doing or is there another format?

5:52No, I think, like you said a second ago, I think it's changing up the format. I think, and it depends what platform you're on too, like Instagram. Like if you're trying to get net new follower growth or seen by net new followers, video memes are very good at like getting served too. because a lot of people are watching reels versus scrolling feed and seeing static. I think Instagram and LinkedIn are very like really reward carousels. So like if you can have swipe through of different like pain points, that's a good format too. I think I always say it's like what when you're doing something like this, what is your capabilities of like doing it?

6:34If you're really good at doing video stuff, like do video. If you're really good at static stuff, do static. But yeah, I've been testing out on video because platforms like LinkedIn and Instagram reward video memes. But I also put on static memes. Static memes seem to get more predictable likes and shares where video memes have more potential to be seen and go viral than a static. And if you are out there, you're like, well, I don't know how to figure out what's going to do well or not do well. or you think that you have come up with the world's greatest new template that nobody's seen that's going to do well, that ain't it.

7:14I'll tell you what I do, what we do is we look for images or videos of other memes that have in other industries, totally random, nothing to do with marketing, what I do for a living, and that have circulated massively, you know, millions of views, millions, whatever. And then we recaption it because we know that that image hit or that video hit. It's just a matter of now spinning it for the industry that we're in. It's the easiest thing because people are people. And if people reacted to the image for one reason, they're going to react to the image again, as long as it's for your industry. And like when you spin it for your industry, like algorithms are smart now that it's going to serve your audience.

7:53So like if you put like your audience, let's say marketers or IT professionals or whatever it's going to, it will like especially in instagram it will serve it to the people who care about those things because the goal of these platforms are to get people to stay on the platform like when people say to me like why is this not performing or that not performing it usually is like the idea it didn't hit or like the hook didn't hit or the content wasn't that good it's really like the algorithm is not going to push something that is um not working like that's why got to understand the rules of the game.

8:29Like for example, in Instagram, if you add watermarks to something, it's going to get deducted in the feed. And that could be a reason you got deducted. Or if you on LinkedIn, like if you post, if you take it down and post and you put it back up, it's going to get downgraded in the feed. I don't know if they haven't told me that, but it's seen it multiple times. Like if you repost the same meme in the same day or same post in the same day, it's going to get deducted. So you just got to know the rules in the game when doing these things as well. Yeah. I would say one other random rule that I would always think about is let's say you had a meme that crushed it, you know, six months ago or a year ago, and you want to do it again, which is a great idea.

9:05You want to resize that image. You don't want to take the image, download it, repost it again, because they won't like that. You take the image, resize it a little bit different, make it a little bit different, and then post it. And then it should take off. All right. Back to the original question about condiments and stuff. So like if you hit Taco Bell, which I feel like you probably crushed Taco Bell at least weekly. You're like, I haven't been there in 10 years. Do you get all the sauce? Do you get the encoigo? I'll tell you something. Actually, Ari's the biggest Taco Bell fan, and I'm the biggest not Taco Bell fan.

9:37I love Taco Bell. I like Taco Bell breakfast. I've never had that. It's really good. I grew up in San Diego, so Mexican food was like, you could choose by the local burrito shop or Taco Bell. We're going to the local burrito shop. Look at you, all bougie. So I know it actually probably came out cheaper than Taco Bell at that point. But yeah, I'm not a Taco Bell fan. But other places, like Chick-fil-A sauce, I'm going to add Chick-fil-A sauce. Now you crush it. Now Taco Bell is not going to sponsor this podcast. You still. What a fail. All right. But this podcast wasn't a fail. Listen, if you share this on your Instagram story and you tag at Jay Schwedelson, which is my horribly long name, or you tag at the marketing millennials.

10:22We will then reshare it to our story. And then we'll just, everyone will just be sharing stories. It'll be amazing. How exciting will that be? We appreciate you. We'll see you at the next one. Later. Daniel, come on, man. I got to get back to work. Get out of there. All right. While he's still in there, this is Jay. Check out my podcast, Do This, Not That for marketers. Each week we share really quick tips on stuff that can improve your marketing and hope you give it a try. Oh, here's Daniel. he's finally out back from my bathroom break this is daniel go follow the mark in the light podcast but also tune into this series it's once a week the bathroom break we talk about marking tips that we just spew out and it could be anything from email subject line to any marking tips in the world we'll talk about it just give us a shout on linkedin and tell us what you want to hear peace out later