The A-Z of Meme Marketing in 2023 at #SMLive Season 6 

Arihant Jain & Nikhil Jain give us insights on meme marketing, what the future holds, how the brand functioning works, and some great tips in this session of #SMLive 2022 

Memes are the core of every person's day-to-day life. And these same memes have made a smooth segway into the marketing industry as well. Where top brands and celebs don’t shy away from collaborating with them either. In a chat with Social Samosa on world social media day, Arihant Jain CEO – WubbaLubbaDubDub, and Nikhil Jain Co-founder – Stonks Studios, share their opinions and thoughts on meme marketing and how it will look like in 2023.  

Future of Meme Marketing:  

Arihant Jain said, “What I believe and what WubbaLubbaDubDub’s data forecast is, meme marketing in 2023 is going to see a rise in ‘hyperlocal.’” He further stated that this is because earlier brands created memes for some niche audience or for the masses. But as there’s an entire mass of audience sitting in tier 2, 3 & 4 cities, memes in their language and pop culture are going to take over.  

This has already seen a start as there are plenty of creators and tools who are creating content in multiple languages and are reaching the audience.  

Today the meme pages of Instagram alone are over 25K in the country, this number wasn’t close to this just a few years ago. Every city in the country today has at least one meme page of its own. Arihant thinks that this is what the brands are going to target in the coming years.  

He also added that in the coming years, the wave is going to be ‘meme first.’ Earlier when commercials were made, the TG was TV-first, then it became YouTube-first following with Instagram first. Now it’s becoming Meme-first.  

His advice to brands on generating maximum ROI is creating regional-specific memes and pushing them to the correct target audience will push their brand forward.  

Arihant further talked about forecasting that his brand has done is ‘meme licensing.’ With better pricing and scaling, the meme marketing industry in India can reach up to $200Mn to $500Mn by 2025.  

Following up on what Arihant said, Nikhil Jain advised marketers to get behind and invest in meme creators as these are people who can give them organic reach.  

Also Read: Diving into the OTT Marketing Pool at #SMLive 2022

Brand Functioning:  

Nikhil says that the functioning of brands when it comes to meme marketing is drastically different for the Indian market compared to that abroad.  

Giving examples of celebrities like Hrithik Roshan, Salman Khan, and others, he also mentions that the industry and brands are slowly and steadily approaching the meme market in a better light as they are more eager to collaborate with memers.  

Talking about the price structure in the meme industry, Arihant gives a basic idea of how the market works. He says the pricing can start from as small as INR 10000 and can go up to crores depending on the type of client they are working with. He further adds, “Anyone living in any city can start making money from memes, as every small shop around you will need memes in the future.” 

He further gives advice to meme creators on approaching brands by first associating themselves with an agency. It will become easier for them to get into the brand’s lists and get an initial approach.  

Nikhil then touches on the subject of how memers can avoid the thin line between ‘funny’ and ‘insensitive’ by saying, “If you have been into the market, then you might have a pretty good understanding of the said line. Having a keen eye on what kind of content you are putting out is important.”  

Talking about the brand logo on the meme and viral memes, Nikhil shared his thoughts, saying that the audiences are sharp in catching what is branded and what isn’t. There are a lot of meme templates that may not go viral because it is associated with a brand – more than a brand logo, one can own a certain piece simply by using a particular font or certain imagery.  

Adding to the same, Arihant states that sometimes when the brand is very new, a logo indicated in a meme makes a lot of sense as the brand can get visibility because of the meme.  

On following the crowd and hopping on every trend or meme and how brands sometimes go overboard with it, Nikhil said, “I strongly believe that some meme trends are just for creators and not for brands.” 

Concluding the session and giving his insights when working with high-end brands and the challenges faced by creators, Arihant states that brands sometimes confuse their TG. He adds that creators have to have a niche approach while dealing with high-end brands. Treating a high-end brand with the same template that everyone is using isn’t the way to go. 

Arihant Jain and Nikhil Jain shared their thoughts at the 6th edition of #SMLive, Social Samosa’s marquee annual conference, organized on World Social Media Day.

You can watch SMLive Sessions here!