WAYS OF APPROPRIATING:
MEMES IN CORPORATE ADVERTISING
Corporate entities always search for ways to make their brands appeal to their audiences, and because memes are so popular, companies appropriate them for advertising. However, because “practitioners view Internet Ugly use as an earned privilege,” these corporate meme schemes often backfire (Douglas, 335). Each unique meme contains its own dialect and appears in certain contexts, which companies do not try to understand or engage with before incorporating the meme into a campaign. When a meme is forced into the corporate sphere, the avant-garde creative spirit disappears, as audiences can tell that its purpose has morphed from humorous commentary to making money for the company.
KnowYourMeme: Eyebrows on Fleek
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A memorable quote uttered by Vine user Peaches Monroe in a selfie video to show off her stylishly groomed eyebrows. "Fleek" can be defined as "smooth, nice, sweet," and often describes someone's positive feelings about their physical appearance.
In the specific case of the IHOP Twitter account, the advertisements have evolved since the company joined Twitter in 2012, always appropriating and often mutilating old memes for their captive consumer audience. A tweet from 21 October 2014, simply stating, “Pancakes on fleek,” garnered thousands of retweets, likes and replies (IHOP Twitter).
The IHOP corporation’s main motivation is to sell its products, and the related Twitter account’s main purpose is to make the corporation seem relatable to the subset of internet participatory culture that uses memes as vehicles of communication. The meme scheme works for a moment of internet fame—tweets like “Pancakes on fleek” get lots of attention from the digital audience, but not all of it is positive. “We get the advertising we deserve. We deserve garbage,” one article laments, reflecting on corporations’ overuse of certain memes, including variations of “Eyebrows on fleek” (Biddle). In fact, there is increasing pushback against these corporate advertising campaigns, including a Twitter account entitled “Brands Saying Bae,” which chronicles every instance of the word “bae,” a slang term that refers to one’s significant other that corporate Twitter accounts toss carelessly out into the cyber void (KnowYourMeme).
When corporations latch onto memes, they edit out the rough parts to fit in with the smooth corporate aesthetic. Most Internet Ugly memes die when this happens; they “get slicked up and diluted for use in commercials, products, and political agendas” (Douglas, 334). When IHOP appropriated the Doge meme, this is exactly what happened. The IHOP iteration of the meme does not make use of the doge’s picture, but appropriates the unique grammatical structure to fit the situation. The tweet appeared in early 2016, four years after Doge first appeared, as an advertisement for National Pancake Day. Four years might not seem like a long time, but in the life and death of internet memes, four years is an eternity. By 2016, the Doge meme had become a mainstream meme—the ultimate cause of meme death.
KnowYourMeme: Doge
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The Doge meme first appeared in its current recognizable form in 2012, complete with its own truncated, sarcastic grammar. Doge memes typically follow the format of the original, as seen above, though they can be altered to fit different situations depending on the point the creator wants to convey. The original picture shows a “doge” with a concerned expression, and the words surrounding him warn the viewer to stay away.