Pop-Tarts created one of the first memes of the year at the inaugural Pop-Tarts Bowl when it sent its mascot into a larger-than-life toaster, resulting in a giant edible Pop-Tart ripe for content creation. Cheez-It then pulled a similar stunt at the Cheez-It Citrus Bowl, describing its own mascot as “non-edible.”

Memes of the gnawed and gnarly Pop-Tart body are part of a trend of memes relating to corporate marketing. The Grimace shake, Barbenheimer, “M3GAN,” and MSCHF’s Big Red Boots all ranked among Rolling Stone’s top memes of 2023. These memes are invitations to join a conversation about a brand, but how do they become so popular—and how can marketers capitalize on them?

Memes are a subset of viral content, but they are distinct. Memes take an original phenomenon or piece of content and allow others to build off of it. The Barbenheimer meme wasn’t just the fact that two big movies were released at the same time. It was unique creative content that juxtaposed the two releases.

“The ‘meme’ part is the reworking of the asset, giving the asset new meaning. The reworking of the asset is really how we differentiate a meme from ‘viral marketing,’” said Marcus Collins, PhD, clinical assistant professor of marketing at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. According to Collins, memes don’t just achieve virality—they achieve “cultural contagion” as people create their own versions.

That cultural contagion makes memes a powerful marketing tool. “When you share the pen, you invite people to build onto your work, which enables the network effect that we all want to benefit from,” Collins said.

For example, McDonald’s Grimace shake wasn’t just one piece of content being reshared. It was a mosaic of new TikToks and tweets that each added something new. “In doing their own version of it, [creators] were contributing to the cultural discourse by the reworking or refashioning. That’s far more powerful than things just spreading along,” said Collins.

Can marketers create viral memes? Not exactly. Because memes are the derivative content that build on a phenomenon, marketers can only create the conditions for that content spiral. That original content needs to be organic, easy to identify, and reworkable through different cultural lenses so it can spread and create a network effect, said Collins.

People are inclined to share content that:

• Evokes emotion (like Grimace threatening danger)
• Provides social capital (the way the MSCHF boots showed that creators were aware of fashion and tech trends)
• Tells a story (like the Pop-Tart holding a sign that said “dreams do come true”)

But there is some risk in becoming a meme. The Grimace Shake was a success story for McDonald’s, but it could have been a marketing liability as people associated the mascot and the shake with death.

“Any time you are leaning into humanity to become a vehicle for your marketing communications, you relinquish some control,” Collins said. “However, when you hold on to control, it decreases the likelihood of people being invited to build on it.”

How can brands jump on existing memes without seeming “cringe?” It’s difficult. Once marketers oversaturate people’s feeds with iterations of a meme, that trend may already be over. To be relevant, new content needs to add to the conversation in some way. “It’s your point of view on the world that gives you license to use [a meme],” Collins said.

For example, when Hillary Clinton said “Pokémon Go to the polls” at a campaign rally in 2016, she was ridiculed for seeming out of touch. Clinton used the virality of the Pokémon Go mobile game for wordplay, but she didn’t add a point of view or perspective relevant to her, and as a result her language felt stale.

How do marketers stay relevant? They have to tune into the cultural conversation. That means scrolling through social platforms and seeing how people talk about your brand and engage with existing campaigns. It also means going a step further and seeing what other kinds of content your potential audience resonates with.

“You don’t know what’s going to catch on. You don’t know what people are going to gravitate toward. So you have to stay very, very close to [your audience],” Collins said.

This was originally featured in the eMarketer Daily newsletter. For more marketing insights, statistics, and trends, subscribe here.