The roots of memes are associated somewhere in the theory of biological evolution. Dawkins (1976) introduced the idea of memes and elaborated how memes work among individuals during their interaction. In his book The Selfish Gene, Dawkin (1976) presented the meme as an imitating unit responsible for the transmission of information, data or ideas. The practical execution of genes and memes are relatable as the genes get transferred from one body to the other through the process of intercourse and memes get transferred from one human brain to other human brain through the process of replication when different human beings interact with each other (Dawkins, 1976).
The evolutionary past of the memes did not have numerous information cascading mediums such as social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook and many others. Modern communication technologies and new ways of interaction on internet have enabled the transmission of memes to be executed even more briskly among different individuals (Blackmore, 1999). Memes are catchy in their nature such as they may comprise of subliminal sense of humor, fear appeal or any message accepted by a large audience as a collective interpretable idea (Ashley, 2013). Due to the catchy nature of memes, different products and brands can be induced into different textual, audio, video or graphical memes in order to seek instant attention of the audience (Cozma, 2015). Also, for the sake of increase in sales by inspiring their customers some of the businesses took into account the importance of the replicability of the memes when used as advertisement purposes (Rintel, 2013).
Murray (2013) adapted a lifecycle model of the memes presented by Bjarneskans (2005) and introduced it into memes advertisement in order to get to know that how do meme ads work and convey the message related to the brand or product to the relative audience. Meme ad lifecycle consists of six different stages such as transmission, decoding, infection, storage, survival and retransmission thus providing a continuous loop of meme ad circulation among the consumers (Neol Murray, 2013)
Through meme ads consumers are able to manifest their internal meanings and perceptions towards the brand that is introduced in the respective meme ad, thus reflecting their experiences in redefining a new positioning of that brand (Dora Horvath, 2017). Therefore, the representation of ideas on such large scale can be considered as a helping tool for assessment of the redefined image of any brand, when exposed in meme ads. For this purpose, a qualitative approach can be applied such as mind mapping to find out the second order or third order meanings aligned to the brands by consumers (Dora Horvath, 2017).
Also, Murray (2013) in adapted lifecycle of meme ads presented different properties of each stage of the lifecycle, thus providing a solid ground for a quantitative approach to analyze the impact of meme ads on the brand image. In the meme ad lifecycle the first stage holds the factors like mutation, fecundity, simplicity, primordial drives, repetition and media selection, while second stage holds the factors like visibility and meme-complex fit, on the other hand third stage holds factors like Baits, Originality and digestibility while fourth stage holds the factors like assimilation, elaboration and external storage while fifth stage comes with the factors like immunity and sociotype fit, at the end last stage holds the factors like hooks, gatekeeping hosts, celebrity hosts and retro mutation (Neol Murray, 2013).
Hypotheses
- There is no significant relationship between components of meme ads’ lifecycle and brand image.
- There is a positive relationship between components of meme ads’ lifecycle and brand image.
- There is a negative relationship between components of meme ads’ lifecycle and brand image.
- Memetic ads tend the consumers to associate different meanings to relative brands.