Why 'Memevertising' is injurious to brand health
In a LinkedIn post, Azazul Haque, Group Chief Creative Officer at Creativeland Asia, flags the use of memes without context in ads
In a LinkedIn post, Azazul Haque, Group Chief Creative Officer at Creativeland, writes about the recent spate of commercials that lean on the power of memes, which does more bad than good for brands.
I saw the new Swiggy Ganji Chudail Video and realized Swiggy is struggling to deliver a message as much as it struggles to deliver a product.
Memevertising—if I may call it this—marketing communication approach is in a way injurious to the health of any brand. It's actually like having a cigarette. You get the kick but it kills the brand slowly.
Also, because though by using what's trending, memevertising creates a piece of content that might make you laugh, but the problem is that you remember the joke not the brand or its benefits.
We will remember Ganji Chudail but not the context of why Swiggy is using it, specially as a brand that needs to fix huge problems.
Swiggy and Instamart are two separate products to start with. Even being in the industry for so long, I can't differentiate between Swiggy and Instamart.
Content like Ganji Chudail makes a brand like Swiggy even more confusing. What they are trying to convey gets totally lost, like the CRED campaign. Till date everyone knows the name CRED but doesn't know the product, let alone what CRED brand stands for!
So just using topical subjects to create funny content without any brand lens is injurious to brand health. Like cigarette, it gives the brand (specially brand managers and CMOs) a kick but kills the brand, slowly!
The views expressed here are solely those of the authors and do not in any way represent the views of exchange4media.com
