A meme is quite simply a concept, behaviour, or a silly idea that spreads virally. The earliest known usage of the word meme is in the book The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins published in 1976. Just as genes replicate genetic data, memes replicate cultural ideas.

Memes have become the ultimate viral marketing vehicle as truly successful ones spread like wildfire online. It’s no surprise then that Marketing & Advertising professionals have shamelessly jumped on the band wagon.

They are possibly the magic ingredient when it comes to successful viral marketing (yes we know this black art has it’s critics) and guerrilla marketing campaigns. Marketers love them as successful meme’s create cost effective marketing “buzz” for their product or service.

Meme marketing is known as memetic marketing and applied memetics is the science of understanding what makes them successful, which is the “holy grail” of viral marketing, or so we are told.

Viral marketing is more art than science and some would say it’s load of snake oil ridden rubbish as some of the best virals are completely unintentional. Take Carly Rae Jepsen (@carlyraejepsen), we doubt she ever expected her hit pop record “Call Me Maybe” to become one of the biggest memes on the internet. Well this is exactly what happened thanks to this tweet by Justin Bieber (@justinbieber):

You know you’ve hit a chord when Barack Obama, the leader of the most powerful country in the world is featured in your meme. While it starts slow, it quickly gets going. Over 8 million views to date. Some marketers would give their first born for 8 millions views on Youtube.

For some of the Internets Best Memes visit:

Know Your Meme

@knowyourmeme

http://knowyourmeme.com

Memestache

http://www.memestache.com

Top 10 Internet Memes

http://www.squidoo.com/top-10-internet-memes