Hanging out at the memeplex

Annelies Verhaeghe, Joeri Van den Bergh and Niels Schillewaert

First published in Research World April 2009

Understanding how memes evolve and spread amongst teenagers is key to the success of youth brands.

Puberty is a key period in the development of a young persons’ personality during which the formation of identify is especially salient. Teens interact with their peers and caregivers to decide on their values and identity and choose brands and products that represent those aspects of their identity that they are constructing and want to accentuate. Products have a symbolic value in externalising and representing their thinking and values. In line with Dawkins’ description of memes, our research identified three types of transmitters among teenagers:

• Language is the primary memetic infection. Memes can include words, sayings, phrases, gestures and pronunciations.
• Fashions and skills include clothes, haircut, make-up, piercings and colours kids wear to express they belong to a certain group. Skill memes include behavioural patterns and hobbies such as skating, car tuning, playing in a band.
• Beliefs are attitudes and convictions which are adopted by members of a group such as justice, animal rights, independence and personal status.

Youngsters create their identity by collecting and assembling a personal set of memes, which results in ‘memeplexes’. They adopt memes from lifestyle groups they want to associate with and if there is a big overlap between their memeplex and that of a certain lifestyle group, they will be perceived as members of this subculture.

Teen memes are valuable for brands. Brands can act as references, personalities or icons. If your brand succeeds in becoming a meme(plex), it can profit from such natural communication. Brands can also surf on popular memes among youngsters to communicate more effectively to them; marketers can adopt common teen-memes in advertisements or product offerings.

Exploring teen memes
We studied identity construction and subcultures among Belgian and Dutch youngsters using memetics and mass ethnography, which employs innovative methods that combine principles from visual ethnography, nethnography and qualitative research with ethnographical elements.

• User-generated visual ethnography is based on using pictures to observe an individual’s environment. Research participants are asked to photograph and comment on aspects of their life. They are given tasks to help us collect enough material to discover important memes. As clothes are an important carrier through which kids express their identity, they were asked to take pictures of what they wear or do not wear on different occasions. Participants communicated via research blogs where they could upload their pictures and comment on their photos through visual tags (positive, negative, neutral) to help us understand the different memes that were important to them.
• Nethnography. Kids spend an increasing part of their lives online, participating in social networks, and keeping close track of their life on weblogs, Twitter and Facebook. We used nethnography to help us understand their memes and identity. Participants became our ‘friends’ in their different social networks and we observed nicknames, profiles, pictures, clan memberships and online conversations to detect the memes they used in their online environment.

The findings were further validated via online focus groups and traditional quantitative surveys.

Overlapping subcultures
Our research revealed 11 subcultures and memes: fashion boys/girls, players/breezersluts, conservative yet party-oriented gabbers, nerds, gothics, emo’s, hippies, punks, alto’s, skaters and rappers.

For example, the memeplex of players/breezersluts is characterised by the belief that it is important to accentuate their sexuality and to frequently change boy or girlfriends. For girls, this is exemplified by wearing mini-skirts, low necklines and lots of make-up. They like luxury brands like Armani and Bikkemberg, live in the present and want to have fun. This is reflected in binge drinking or by their linguistic memes such as talking about ‘scoring girls’. By studying the overlap between the memes of different subcultures, we found that subcultures, and their memes, can be grouped along two dimensions:

• Me versus we. Some subcultures have memes that stress the individual over the group. They are egocentric and think they are superior to other kids. Fashion boys/girls (more expensive and exclusive clothes), players (more feminine/masculine look), nerds (top of the class), gabbers (best in jumpstyle dancing) and rappers (best rapper) are more ‘me’ oriented. At the ‘we’ end, the subgroups believe that the group is superior as typified by the memeplexes of punkers (fight for justice) and hippies (make the world a better place).
• Change versus conservatism. Social groups on the ‘change’ end contain memes that reflect openness. They are extravert, like to explore unknown territories, be challenged, and have activities which take them outside of the home. They are aware of new social trends. Rappers, skaters, fashion boys/girls and alto’s score high on this dimension. Conservative subcultures have memeplexes that keep things the ways they are, constructed with memes that come from a fantasy world. They value spirituality and mystery, prefer to stay at home and relax with their friends and participate in restricted niche events organised for their own group such as nerds with LAN parties.

How memes spread
Being part of a subculture means a youngster has adopted the group’s memeplex, and rejected the memeplex of groups that deviate from their ideas. Similar to the survival of the fittest genes, to assure the transmission of their own memes they will not adopt the memeplexes of another subculture but will be more open if the meme structure of another subculture is related. By considering the dynamics of friendly and hostile memeplexes, one can anticipate the spontaneous transition of memes.

Friendly memeplexes: The closer two subcultures are on either dimension, the greater the overlap between their memes and the more likely they will infect each other. Alto’s and skaters will probably transmit memes because they are on the ‘change’ dimension, have memes that reflect openness, and borrow elements from friendly memeplexes. They are therefore often seen as trendsetters. The further teenagers are located on the conservative side of the spectrum, the less memes they adopt from other subcultures and the slower their memes evolve.

Hostile memeplexes: The less meme subcultures have in common, the less easily they adopt memes from each other. Fashion boys (at the me/change part of the axis), will, for example often refer to gothics (at the we/conservatism part) as their non-group. Thus, youngsters protect their memes by not interacting with subcultures that have an opposing memeplex.

Kids actively promote their personal memeplexes so memes spread spontaneously, but taking a more pro-active approach, they also communicate memes through the content they generate on their social networks, uploading pictures of brands that are part of their personal memeplex that support their identity. Online polls of subcultures on the ‘we’ side contained more society-related memes like politics and environment whereas polls of ‘me’-groups mostly dealt with their appearance and getting feedback on their profile or pictures.

Memetic branding
How can marketers use memes and their evolutionary dynamics in branding and communication with kids? Here are four guidelines for marketing managers:

1. Make your brand a targeted meme
If your brand is adopted as a significant carrier by kids to transmit their memes, it will have a better chance of survival and success. Winning, enduring and replicating brand memes depend on their fitness for a subculture. Complexity, sophistication, novelty or vividness through brand activation, communication and conversation may be attractive but not sufficient for memes to spread. A meme is more likely to replicate if it fulfills a subculture’s needs, so brands need to offer targeted branded utility such as content or extra services to match the needs and tastes of specific groups. Memes should also be simple so they can lucidly convey messages to complete their mission for reproduction.

Some subcultures are more likely to adopt specific brands as memes. Groups located on the ‘me’ side of the axis are more brand sensitive and buy brands that positively differentiate them from their peers whereas ‘we’ oriented subcultures possess more memes that relate to styles and characteristics such as colours and shapes. For brands to be accepted as a meme, it is easier to target ‘me’-oriented subcultures and brand managers should identify leading subcultures (according to the product categories), such as fashion girls and boys, rappers and skaters and alto’s.

2. Utilise natural meme spreading
Once your brand is adopted by a subculture, the brand meme will spread naturally: friendly memeplexes will integrate other ‘close’ memes in their memeplex. By analysing the transition of memes among subcultures on the ‘me’ side of the spectrum, we observe a clear pattern: fashion boys and girls spot the trends and make these memes common in their social group. They infect players and gabbers who imitate them and finally nerds adopt them usually because their mothers buy their clothes and try to give them the best chance of social success by imitating groups that are close to their social group (gabbers and players) or the mainstream youth culture.

It is important to understand the spread paths and neighbouring subcultures to benefit from the natural evolution of memes. To enhance the spread of brand memes, the right communication memes must be used to stimulate their acceptance in certain subcultures, and avoid combining memes from hostile memeplexes, which will limit their proliferation.

3. Adopt mainstream memes
Most kids are mainstream but adapt memes from various subcultures. The ultimate for a brand is to be adopted as a mainstream meme that is friendly for other subcultures so that a brand will be incorporated in the identity of a large group and have a bigger chance of survival. While the number of brands that are part of the mainstream memeplex are limited, brands that are not a meme can still profit from popular style memes. Sweatshirts with hoods (from skaters) have become popular mainstream memes.

4. Develop meme-insights and manage conversations
A good understanding of the memes for each specific brand and product is crucial for success. The best way to achieve this with kids is through applying an integrated research design of connected research tools and mass ethnography. Because social media and mobile technology are integrated in kids’ lives, memes reproduce much faster than with other demographic groups and may mutate for better or worse to strengthen or harm a brand. This means that managing conversations by observing, joining and facilitating is imperative if brands want to benefit from meme reproduction.

Memes are a key marketing tool because they spread in a viral fashion among youngsters. Knowing which memes form part of your target group’s identity and which ones do not is critical for youth marketers. Infections, viruses, and hostile memeplexes generally have negative connotations, but can be a blessing in the hands of a knowledgeable memetic brand expert!

Annelies Verhaeghe is R&D consultant, Joeri Van den Bergh is co-founder of InSites Consulting and Prof. Dr. Niels Schillewaert is R&D director & managing partner at InSites Consulting and associate professor in Marketing at Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School.