Memes And Advertising Are Increasingly Intertwining, Yet Many Brands Fail To Match The Success Of 'Fall Guys'

When you ask someone about a particular company, what most people immediately think of is their advertising. This is intentional, as the company’s identity is essentially rooted in its advertising, and effective ads keep the brand top of mind. But traditional advertising has largely failed to penetrate the meme space on social media.

Although both ads and brands permeate social media, only a few have successfully captured the essence of memes. More often than not, these cringey attempts at using memes to appeal to consumers tend to backfire, and companies find themselves the subject of How Do You Do Fellow Kids? memes. Despite a few exceptions, most brands, specifically on Twitter, fail to have an engaged community manager who can properly meme.

The reason corporate brands fail to connect when their content falls flat is typically due to poorly masked advertisements hidden behind memes. Many brands simply take a format and attempt to apply it to their product, which is easily the most innocent form of poor meme usage. However, some brands completely miss the mark and try to jump on a trend for an entire scheme of advertisements. A notable example of this was when Planters created a campaign around Mr. Peanut's Death, giving life to "Peanut Jr," which many perceived as an attempt to hop on the bandwagon of Baby Yoda.

The primary reason most of these ads end up being so cringey is that they simply don't understand the edge in memes. Although not all memes have to be edgy to be appealing, the failure to understand the value of this element and why it's a strong component of internet discourse keeps companies floundering in desperate attempts.

Exceptions to this rule are those select few brands that see the value of memes and advertising that engage with the way their communities interact. Of course, brands making successful memes, or becoming a meme themselves, is still a type of advertisement in a way. The most notable success story is @Wendys, run by Amy Brown during its prime, the notorious Twitter account for the fast-food chain.

From a sassy interaction in 2017 to a mixtape about fast food, Wendy’s became a prominent success story on engaging with the internet as a brand. Other companies have had similar success, such as @Steak-umm (run by internet culture writer Nathan Allebach), who successfully managed to shift the brand's online presence from just another company to a real-life individual that engaged with a receptive audience. Outside of the food industry, gaming companies are another sector that tends to properly meme alongside consumers.

From giants like CD Projekt Red and Blizzard Entertainment to smaller developers like Crows Crows Crows and Mediatonic, the gaming industry shares many parallels to others in terms of positive or negative online engagement. Usually, the larger a gaming company, the more likely they are to replicate the milquetoast engagement of cringey corporate brands. This reflection makes perfect sense, as AAA games tend to be an expensive creation, and adding "edge" to marketing could ultimately hurt sales and the bottom-line.

Although Blizzard has famously made nods to its communities, such as dialogue in the World Of Warcraft Death Knight starting zone regarding duels to referencing Gremlin D.Va in an Overwatch emote, they never cross the line too heavily, preferring to err on the side of caution. Meanwhile, indie developers more willing to take risks often add a little spice to their brand, as Mediatonic has done recently with their Twitter account, @FallGuysGame.

Falls Guys Ultimate Knockout is one of the newest and most innovative versions in the battle royale genre, and its platforming and minigame twist has created an instant success. The game itself is a lot of fun, but Mediatonic has quite cleverly handled the games' Twitter by hiring a community manager who's been active on the platform, creating memes and interacting with fans, including retweeting fan art of in-game costumes.

Perhaps the most notable example of this positive connection lies in its amplification of the community's perception of the yellow team’s all-too-common failure in team minigames. From Guess I’ll Die to Always Has Been memes, the Twitter account has proven its impressive ability to engage fans while simultaneously promote a product.

The most viral moment, however, was their soft flame war with TimTheTatMan, the online handle of Timothy Betar, a Twitch streamer who went viral for his difficulty in getting an in-game win. This led to record-breaking numbers on his stream in the last couple of days, as well as causing the hashtag "#TimDidIt" to enter into the platform's top trending tags. Though the game itself has been met with positive reception, it’s the community manager adding to these viral moments through engagement on Twitter that has helped skyrocket its success and renown.

OH MY GODI WAS HEREHE DID IT @timthetatman pic.twitter.com/s7d6RtFh9g

— Kevi 🍀 (@KeviSkillz) August 19, 2020

The takeaway from all of this is that while traditional advertising on Twitter still works, to some degree, a good community manager can truly amplify the brand through authentic memery. People such as Amy Brown, Nathan Allebach and the team behind @FallGuysGame know how to change the image of a brand into an active participant online. This redefines the brand's image into something other users can relate to, which, in turn, causes them to actively engage online, rather than passively scroll by. Not all brands should attempt to become edgelords or meme masters, but by placing a knowledgeable person at the helm, it can almost assuredly attract users to their products.

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