Meme Marketing
Social MediaAlso: Meme-Based Marketing · Meme Advertising
Quick definition
Meme marketing is when a brand uses internet meme formats, jokes or trending cultural references to promote itself on social media. It trades polish for relatability, aiming to look like a fellow poster rather than an advertiser. Done well it builds affinity. Done badly it reads as a brand trying too hard.
How it varies across Australia
Engagement on meme-style posts varies wildly by industry and audience age in Australia. Brands with younger, terminally-online audiences see strong short bursts of reach, while B2B and finance categories tend to see meme content flop or attract mockery. There's no reliable benchmark, only a fit test.
See social media engagement patterns across Australian industries →What it actually means
Meme marketing works like borrowing a friend's inside joke to make yourself sound funnier at a party. It can work if you actually understand the joke and the room. It backfires badly if you're the one person there who clearly wasn't invited to the group chat.
The format matters less than the timing and the voice behind it. A meme referencing a format from six months ago reads as out of touch, not current. This is why meme marketing rewards brands with a fast content pipeline and a social media manager who has real cultural fluency, not a content calendar built a month in advance.
It sits closest to user-generated content (UGC) and influencer marketing in spirit. All three trade the polish of traditional branding for a feeling of authenticity. But memes are riskier because humour is subjective and dated humour ages worse than a bad product photo. A brand's positioning and tone of voice need to already support jokes before memes make sense. Bolting meme content onto a formal, corporate brand voice creates a jarring mismatch that audiences notice immediately.
The upside, when it lands, is disproportionate reach relative to spend. Meme content is cheap to produce and can outperform paid content on organic reach because platforms reward native-feeling posts.
A meme is borrowed credibility. If your brand doesn't already have a personality, the meme just highlights that you don't.
How it shows up
Meme marketing shows up as a spike in engagement rate and shares on a single post that doesn't match the account's normal pattern, often outperforming paid content organically. It also shows up in comment sections, where the tone of replies tells you whether the audience is in on the joke or laughing at the brand rather than with it. A healthy sign is comments extending the joke. A bad sign is comments asking who approved the post.
The Australian context
Australian internet humour leans self-deprecating and dry, closer to the tone of a group chat roast than the more polished irony common in US meme culture. Brands that copy US meme formats without adjusting tone often land flat with Australian audiences, who are quick to call out anything that feels like it's trying too hard. The brands that do this well tend to already have a strong, distinct tone of voice across their other content, not just their meme posts.
Where people get this wrong
Related terms
Common questions
Does meme marketing work for B2B brands?
Occasionally, but it's higher risk. B2B audiences on LinkedIn respond to industry in-jokes and self-aware humour more than mainstream meme formats. It works when the brand already has a recognisable voice, not as a first attempt at personality.
How often should a brand post memes?
There's no set cadence. Meme content should appear when it's genuinely timely and relevant, not on a fixed schedule. Forcing memes into a content calendar is usually when they stop feeling native and start feeling like marketing.
What's the risk of meme marketing going wrong?
Misjudged timing, tone or context can make a brand look out of touch or opportunistic, especially if the meme references something sensitive. The reputational cost of a bad meme often outweighs the reach gained from a good one.
Is meme marketing the same as newsjacking?
They overlap but aren't identical. Newsjacking attaches a brand to a current news event or story. Meme marketing specifically uses internet meme formats and humour, which may or may not be tied to news. A meme can newsjack, but not all newsjacking is meme-based.
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About New Rebellion
New Rebellion is a marketing intelligence consultancy. We build tools, score Australian businesses on how their marketing actually performs, and publish Debrief every day. This dictionary is part of how we work in the open.
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