The anatomy of a meme
If you’ve worked in or around marketing for any length of time, you’ve undoubtedly heard the term "meme" thrown about. I first heard the word back in university when I was doing my undergrad in communications. The text I was reading described it as a compressed packet of information which could be transmitted and decoded at the other end, much like sending a file over a network. A catch phrase is a good example of this - "Eat my shorts" would mean very little to someone who had never seen the Simpsons, for instance.
Since then, it’s been more often associated with viral videos, games and other web phenomena. The transmission of a piece that has become viral is really interesting to look at, and Darren Barefoot - a fellow Canuck - just wrote an interesting case study of following a meme as it grows on the marketing blog OneDegree.
While 40,000 page views doesn’t seem like much, what’s interesting is the fact that he only sent six emails (albeit, highly targeted emails) to reach that number.Â
In order for something to spread virally, it must be both promoted and remarkable. An unremarkable idea will never spread no matter how loudly it’s shouted, and a brilliant idea heard by no one will inevitably stagnate.Â
This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 1st, 2006 at 3:58 pm and is filed under Online Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
August 2nd
2006 at 1:30 pm
Hey, umm, “Fuel”,
(How about an author name on posts so I can say hey properly)
Thanks for the link - glad to see you stopped by. I really liked Darren’s post when I first saw it PARTICULAR because it was such a clean experiment.
40,000 new visitors would be HUGE for most companies - particularly given that the how viral would take a decent creative mind a day or less to build.
Now, the trick is in repeating the trick! Every so often something has perfect timing and spreads like wildfire - I’m not that means ALL such campaigns can expect this time of response.
Cheers,
Ken Schafer - One Degree
August 8th
2006 at 11:30 pm
I heard you guys were making some games for Candystand. Could it be?
August 10th
2006 at 1:21 pm
Hey Ken,
The author name shows up on the main page… didn’t realize it was anonymous on the individual posts.
Millie - it could be. Stay tuned, and I’ll keep you posted.