Memes, megaphones, and marketing

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Hey honeys and hustlers,

Memes are the quirky cousin who shows up at family gatherings, says something wildly inappropriate yet hilarious, and somehow charms everyone in the room. These bite-sized pieces of visual humor have become such powerful megaphones in marketing, yet many social media professionals don’t like them. I recently started posting memes on Threads to see if something more light-hearted would resonate with my desired audience. They require much less effort than a social video (at least, with my current workflow) and still serve the same purpose – interrupting someone’s scroll to get them to leave a comment or click a link.

Memes are essentially cultural shorthand. They communicate complex ideas through simple, relatable visuals that trigger immediate emotional responses. When your audience sees a familiar meme format, their brain is already primed to:

• Get the joke without extensive explanation

• Feel like they're part of an inside joke

• Connect with your brand on a more human level

It's like speaking in code that only the cool kids understand—except now everyone can be in on it. Memes work because they leverage several psychological principles simultaneously. Here's why memes are essentially marketing steroids (the legal kind):

• They're Inherently Shareable: People share memes at rates that would make your carefully crafted whitepaper weep with jealousy. Why? Because memes make the sharer look clever, in-the-know, or simply entertaining. And we all want to be the person who shares the funny thing first.

• They’re Platform Agnostic: A good meme works almost everywhere. The same core concept can be tweaked for LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, or Threads. A full video podcast, for example, doesn’t have the same flexibility, which is why shorts (and various styles of short videos) are so popular.

We've all seen brands try to use memes and fail spectacularly. You know the ones—they give off major "How do you do, fellow kids?" energy. When I started posting memes, I discovered something interesting: the content that performed best wasn't necessarily what I expected. The memes that resonated most deeply captured universal frustrations in the creator economy, poked gentle fun at writing and sports media trends that we're all secretly exhausted by, and highlighted the gap between creative expectations and reality.

The most powerful memes in marketing aren't just funny—they're true. They articulate the thoughts your audience has but hasn't put into words yet.

Memes are the sugar that helps the medicine go down—or in marketing terms, the pattern interrupt that gets your actual message past your audience's mental filters. When I’m posting a short-form video, I know that its sole purpose is to direct people off the platform. That is still true when I post a meme, but the ask doesn’t feel as direct or forward. The ROI and legality may be tricky, but the results and resonance are worth the risk. I wouldn’t make memes your sole marketing campaign strategy, but I can definitely see why they have a place in many brand social accounts.