Conveying a sense of humor is crucial to a campaign’s success. To truly connect with the Millennial audience, a modern brand must incorporate humor into their marketing strategy using a format of humor they understand—memes. Join expert memeologist Ben Huh as he explains the humor behind memes, and why brands with personality drive deeper audience engagement.

1. Ben Huh, CEO

2. This is Cheezburger

3. Cheezburger: Experts in memes, since 2007
Google Search Results for “MEME”
Search Volume Index
10.0
5.00 is born!
2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
Google Trends

4. The POWER of
HUMOR

5. The science of humor
“
Laughter is part of a universal language of
basic emotions that all humans share.
"Cross-cultural recognition of basic emotions through nonverbal emotional vocalizations", National Academy of Sciences, (2010)
Laughing 100 times a day is the
equivalent of 10 minutes of rowing
"Advances in the Clinical Use of Humor", Handbook of Humor and Psychotherapy,
William Fry & Waleed Salameh (1987)
Laughter allows a person to “forget”
about pains and aches.
"Effects of Laughter and Relaxation on Discomfort Thresholds", Journal of Behavioral Medicine, Rosemary Cogan, (1987)
Laughter strengthens the immune system by
increasing infection-fighting antibodies
"The Laughter-Immune Connection", American Association of Therapeutic Humor, Lee Berk, Dr.P.H., M.P.H. & Stanley
Tan, M.D. Ph.D. (1996)

6. The power of humor

7. The power of humor

8. The power of humor

9. The power of humor
“
The best ideas come as jokes.
Make your thinking as funny
as possible.”
— David Ogilvy

10. Humor is part of every brand persona
Humor
OFFLINE ONLINE Encourages
Sharing!
Presence of Humor
Brand Persona

11. Personality drives brand loyalty
Achieving
BRAND LOYALTY
Developing
Defines Encourages
FUN ENGAGEMEN
CONTENT PERSONA T

12. Personality drives purchasing
64% 32%
say they’re more likely to have made a purchase after
make a purchase from a seeing an image on a
brand that interacted with social
them on social media
image-sharing site
Bizrate Insights
InboxQ, May 2011

13. Humor is part of every brand personality

14. How to be funny
Make Something Funny
CURATE or REMIX or CREATE
what you find funny an existing meme a new meme

15. Cultural RELEVANCY

16. Be culturally relevant

17. What are people doing online?
U.S. Monthly Time Spent WHERE DO THEY GO?
On most heavily used Internet sectors (MILLIONS OF HOURS) Social
Social Networks/Blogs
Networks
Games
WHAT DO THEY DO?
Email
Portals
Share
Videos Images
Search
WHAT KIND OF IMAGES?
Memes
0 100M 200M 300M 400M 500M 600M 700M 800M 900M
Nielson NetView June 2010

18. Internet culture is mainstream culture
Traffic growth of
TOP 7 Internet culture sites
201M
122M
2011 2012 Quantcast

19. Memes are social content
Sharing on Cheezburger
40,000
35,000
Daily Average
30,000
25,000 239%
20,000 Increase in
15,000 sharing!
10,000
5000
0
2011 2012 Quantcast

20. Internet culture influences what we buy
84% of Millennials believe user-generated content has
influence on what they buy . (Bazaarvoice)
65% social networks when making a purchasing decision .
of users aged 18-24 considered information shared on
(eMarketer)

21. The power of images
IMAGES
Compared to text links,
image posts from
are more likely Cheezburger get
to be promoted
on Facebook
20X
The Virality
than status
and almost
updates or links.
2X
*edgerankchecker.com
The Reach

22. Why people share social content
It’s Effortless & Fun

23. Trending memes of 2012 so far
Trending
Memes of 2012
so far

24. Trending memes of 2012 so far
THE MEME: Ermahgerd

25. Trending memes of 2012 so far
THE MEME: If You Know What I Mean

26. Trending memes of 2012 so far
THE MEME: Overly Attached Girlfriend

27. Trending memes of 2012 so far
THE MEME: Twilight Bashing

28. Our PLATFORM

29. How we deliver: the process
Step 1
Determine your campaign’s
meme framework
Step 2
Develop effortless and fun
meme tools
Step 3
Harness a community
to spread the meme

30. Your campaign, our platform
I
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31. STEP 1: Determine your meme framework
There are dozens of meme frameworks:
Captions, stamps, triptychs, comparisons…

32. STEP 1: Determine your meme framework
Find the key component that will
make the meme successful.
In this case, it’s LINE CHARTS

33. STEP 2: Develop effortless and fun meme tools

34. STEP 3: Harness a community to spread the meme
Cheezburger creates a site that encourages the
community to engage with the meme

35. Questions?
Ben Huh, CEO
@BenHuh
ben@cheezburger.com