To humour or not to humour? Brands today are contemplating this very question when creating and sharing branded content. Increasingly in the Web 2.0 era of social media, online memes that portray humorous cultural tropes are used to communicate between users. Typically used by general social media users, marketing managers are jumping on the meme bandwagon to promote their company. When utilising this strategy, the memetic branded content can closely mimic that of user-generate content, thus almost going unnoticed and being perceived more positively than traditional interruption advertising. Since the aspect of meme marketing and its influence on brand attitudes has been seldom researched, this exploratory netnographic report aimed to uncover how memes can influence positive brand attitudes – using Ryanair as a case study. The evidence indicated towards a typology of five meme classifications that Ryanair utilise within their marketing efforts: political, customer clapbacks, sport, pop culture and parody. The subsequent findings suggested that the most influential types of meme category in order to promote positive brand attitudes were customer clapback and sport related memetic branded content. Yet, the implications discussed noted that from an ethical standpoint, making jokes at a paying customers expense can be seen as harmful and thus alludes towards a darker side of meme marketing that will need to be explored more in-depth in the future.
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Okoro, Jamila
Rights Holders: Okoro, Jamila Supervisors: Asmussen, Bjoern
Department of Marketing
MSc Digital Marketing
2023
© Okoro, Jamila Published by Oxford Brookes UniversityAll rights reserved