Memes that Evoke Emotions: A Neurodesign Strategy for Brand Communication and Experience

Abstract

A meme is a component of a culture or system of behaviour passed from one individual to another by imitation or other non-genetic means. Nowadays, memes are predominately observed in social media like Facebook, WhatsApp, etc. Memes communicate various messages either directly or indirectly in a codified manner. Although the memes are used for sharing social messages, strategies for brand communication using memes are less explored. Memes probably have potential to evoke responses in human brain and activates emotions. Therefore, objectives of this paper are—to analyse the effect of different design elements used in memes and the effect of memes on emotional responses and to demonstrates few strategies for brand communication using memes. A total of 20 memes were analysed to identify design elements such as character, images (human, animal, emoticons, etc.), taglines, dialog cloud, logo, etc., which helps in composition of memes. Later, the level of emotion generated by memes used for brand communication was measured using Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) scale. It was observed that character image and taglines are effective elements that are evoking different types of emotions among participants. This was a minimalistic neurodesign strategy for brand communication which might be beneficial for effective brand communication.