What Memes Can Teach Us about Effective PR

Public relations is a much more complex task than it once was. In general, people are much savvier when it comes to recognizing old PR tricks and are hesitant to pay attention to such blatant attempts. More importantly, the way people interact with the media has drastically changed over the last few decades. Rather than achieving passive consumption from consumers, successful PR strategies convince the public to interact with their intended message (serena). For modern businesses to successfully spread the positive image they want, they need to do more than create content. They need to understand why certain media types become viral and apply those lessons to their win audience engagement. 

A great example of how digital content can go viral is the life cycle of various YouTube videos. YouTube has been a driving force in content creation's democratization since now any potential creator can create viral videos without even meaning to (Allocca). This effect is a result of the new consumption behaviors that appear around the site's content. While audiences for previous media forms have assumed passive roles, YouTube proves that audiences now actively contribute and build upon ideas when sharing them (Allocca). Many of these videos spread in a way that can be described as memetic. For those who are not savvy in modern-day internet parlance, a meme is a piece of Internet culture, usually a joke or image, that has spread to the point of becoming viral (TodayIFoundOut). The term originated from noted evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. In his book The Selfish Gene, he theorizes that human culture evolves similarly to biological life and coined the term meme as a cultural transmission unit (Popova). To Dawkins, ideas do not simply spread; they evolve, often transforming and branching off to create new ideas. These ideas qualify as memetic if they successfully jumped between brains through the process of imitation (Popova). For example, the video Nyan Cat, which gained 50 million views on YouTube in 2011 alone, is not simply memetic because of how many people watch it and how people interact with it. Instead of merely sharing the video, people have taken the idea and mutated it, recreating it with remixes and parodies, or creating videos explicitly about watching the original video (Allocca). In other words, they are spreading and evolving the original meme through the process of imitation.

With this new understanding of cultural diffusion, public relations professionals can begin to reassess how they interact with the masses. The first step is to create content that is worth imitating. One of the essential qualities in a viral video is uniqueness (Allocca). While it is challenging to create something genuinely original, public relations officials can still make fun content that captures peoples' interests. In 2008 the company HubSpot created a musical marketing video called "You Oughta Know Inbound Marketing" and posted it on various social media sites. The video appeared on nineteen separate blogs on the first day. That number increased to 43 blogs after twelve days (Seiple 8). Another detail PR professionals should concern themselves with when creating content is the format. In general, social media content proves most effective when it is short and to the point. One case study that exemplifies this is the now-defunct application Vine, which allowed users to share 6.4-second videos between users (Kallgren). While Vine was only active for four years, it was responsible for spreading several viral ideas, to the point of introducing new vocabulary to the lexicon and helping to establish a new generation of content creators, many of whom outlived Vine itself (Kallgren). Vine demonstrates that memetic ideas can exist in a short run time and that pieces of culture can be brief direct in their message in a way that encourages memorization and replication. 

After creating an interesting piece of media, public relations professionals should consider how to spread their message. While modern social media makes it easier for ideas to apply regardless of where they originated, culture units still require exposure from opinion-makers to become viral. Many viral videos on YouTube started with relatively little interaction with a larger audience, only for views to significantly increase after exposure from an influencer. These influencers can take the form of an entertainment figure, an evening talk show host, or simply someone with a massive social media following (Allocca time). Thankfully, social media has made connecting with these types of authorities much more accessible. PR managers should invest in connecting with different influencers on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Specifically, they should cultivate working relationships with journalists, bloggers, or influencers who specialize in their field. Interacting with these trendsetters beforehand will make them more receptive when the time comes to pitch an idea (Seiple 5). In some cases, if there is already a strong relationship, simply pinging influencers when posting content can attract their attention (Seiple 8). 

Finally, public relations should make sure that the content they publish is in a manner that invites people to interact and replicate it to become memetic. For an exemplary case study of how to accomplish this, look no further than Coors light's #Could Use A Beer campaign. In this example, Coors promised six-packs to people who used their hashtag and explained who could use a beer and why on Twitter. They also created a humorous video of people sneaking away from Zoom meetings to grab a beer (Cyca). Coors replicated the necessary conditions for viral marketing; they made short, unique content that people would enjoy. Coors also used hashtags to get people to interact with their brand. The giveaway also put Coors brand in a positive light and used the attention to increase their cultural capital (Cyca). Companies should make a point to monitor mentions of their brand and interaction with their social media on sites such as Twitter and Facebook (Seiple 18). 

To evolve with consumers, Public Relations must take these lessons to heart. In the digital age, a company's public image will be decided online through public discourse, regardless of whether the company in question initiates it. By understanding how cultural artifacts go viral in an online space, PR professionals will be able to spread a positive image through constructive interactions with their user base.

References

Allocca, Kevin. "Why Videos go Viral." TED: Ideas Worth Spreading. Nov. 2011. https://www.ted.com/talks/kevin_allocca_why_videos_go_viral#t-99198

Cyca, Michelle. “7 Of the Best Social Media Campaigns (And What You Can Learn From Them).” Social Media Marketing & Management Dashboard, 3 Nov. 2020, blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-campaign-strategy/.

Kallgren, Kyle, director. Is Vine Cinema? | Brows Held High. YouTube, YouTube, 22 July 2020,        www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSgHE9Wz1QM. 

Popova, Maria. “How Richard Dawkins Coined the Word Meme: The Legendary Atheist's Surprising Religious Inspiration.” Brain Pickings, Brain Pickings, 19 Mar. 2021, www.brainpickings.org/2013/10/02/richard-dawkins-meme-appetite-for-wonder/. 

Seiple, Pamela. How to Leverage Social Media for Public Relations Success. HubSpot. https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hub/53/docs/hubspot_social_media_pr_ebook.pdf, PDF file.

serena. “Using Interactive Content to Increase Marketing and PR Campaign Results in 2019.” Medium, Medium, 31 May 2019, medium.com/@serena/using-interactive-content-to-increase-marketing-and-pr-campaign-results-in-2019-83ba37d544c2. 

TodayIFoundOut, director. Where Did the Word Meme Come From? YouTube, YouTube, 14 Mar. 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbLh9R-0Pt8&t=28s.