Brand blunders risk the meme treatment
Consumers find new way to complain about products and negative experiences
Once the infamous Kendall Jenner Pepsi ad was released and roundly criticized last month, it was only a matter of time before the memes started.
One Twitter message featured a screen shot of the moment in the commercial when Jenner hands a can of Pepsi to a police officer who is responding to a protest. The caption: “Throw this away for me. I’m rich.”
Memes — those playful, satirical photographs with clever, sometimes biting captions under them — have long been used on the Internet to ridicule the latest celebrity gaffe or highlight a political misstep. However, a surging number of disgruntled consumers are now using memes to target companies to complain about broken products, poor customer service and other negative experiences.
That has big brands scrambling for cover. After all, the viral nature of a meme can have a faster and furtherreaching effect than a single news article.
“The brand becomes a temporary punching bag for many, many people,” said Jay Baer, founder and president of Convince & Convert, a digital marketing advisory firm. “People will pile on even if they haven’t actu- ally been aggrieved.”
When a Tesla Model S electric car erupted in flames in 2013, memes immediately popped up. One showed a couple holding each other near a burning Tesla, with the caption, “Keep warm on a cold night.”
Tesla’s chief executive, Elon Musk, quickly confronted the issue on the company’s blog. He explained that the car had driven over a large metal object from a tractor-trailer, and he rattled off statistics that showed people were five times as likely to experience a fire in a gas-powered car as in a Tesla. The memes soon stopped.
It was the perfect response, said David Pachter, a co-founder of JumpCrew, a social marketing firm in Nashville, Tenn. “But not every company has an Elon Musk,” he said.
Samsung faced a raft of memes last year when reports surfaced that the batteries in its Galaxy Note 7 phones were catching fire. One meme showed a bomb-defusing expert in military gear getting ready to plug in his Samsung phone, with the caption, “How to safely charge your Galaxy Note 7.”
Last month, Samsung pushed the reset button with its new Samsung Galaxy S8 phone and virtual-reality headset — and simultaneously released a #DoWhatYouCant video, which became a hit online. The video features an ostrich that dreams of flying, thanks to the Samsung VR headset and phone.
“They’ve packaged a brilliant ad with an inspirational message,” said Monica G. Sakala, founder of SOMA Strategies, a digital agency. “They’re successfully changing the story away from the fire memes and disaster of the last phone.”