SPECIAL SERIES == The MEME PLAYBOOK You Didn’t Know You Needed 💡 <== | BATHROOM Break #65 COLLAB: The Marketing Millennials + Do This, Not That

Daniel Murray: Welcome to a new special series called The Bathroom Break, that extra 10 minutes, you either have to listen to marketing tips or use the bathroom or both, but I don't recommend both,

Jay Schwedelson: but that's your choice. This collab is gonna be super fun. We have Daniel Murray from the Marketing Millennials and me, Jay sch Wetson from the Do This Not That podcast and subject line.com.

Jay Schwedelson: Each episode in this series, we are gonna go over with. Tips about different marketing topics and if you wanna be in the bathroom, fine, just don't tell us about it. Thanks for checking it out.

Daniel Murray: We are back with another bathroom break. I'm here with the J Swen of Do This, not that podcast, the number one podcast, so go check it out.

Daniel Murray: I am Daniel Murray. I wanna start off this podcast 'cause I, I've been thinking about this and I don't know what, where you sway, like on condiments, like, are you a condiments guy, a sauce? Like what do you have like any condiments that you love or hate?

Jay Schwedelson: Well, uh, it's funny question. Funny you bring that up when, so I used to live in New York when I moved down to Florida, like the, I was, I was 15 years old, so one of the first thing I did was I went to McDonald's because I was hungry and I got a burger and I almost threw up because in Florida they put mustard and ketchup.

Jay Schwedelson: On your burger just automatically. But in New York, they only do ketchup. And I thought that was actually the most disgusting thing I've ever encountered in my life. Are you a mustard and ketchup on a burger? Because you are. We're stopping the podcast immediately. No,

Daniel Murray: no. I am a, i I add one thing. I don't know if you, I'm a big Mayo guy.

Daniel Murray: Oh, I love that. A mayo on a burger, um, mayo on anything but not real mayo. Now you use

Jay Schwedelson: fake mayo, right? Like avocado mayo or

Daniel Murray: whatever. Uh, Mayo. Um, but mustard, I'm not a, I'm not a big mustard guy on a hotdog. Oh, hotdog's fine. Yeah, I haven't had a hotdog in like a while. And I'm not a big like, grape poupon guy.

Daniel Murray: I know like a lot of people like grape pup.

Jay Schwedelson: Who, who do you know that likes Gron? Who even says that? Hey Daniel. What's up? I like grape Poupon. No one's ever said that to you. Oh my God. What are we talking about? Well, I know we are gonna talk about, we're gonna talk about memes. We just lost half the audience.

Jay Schwedelson: Like, I'm not listening to an episode about memes, but let me tell you why we are. Whether you're a business brand and you're a boring, conservative industry, we can't use memes. Wrong consumer brand absolutely should be using memes. Memes are critical now to having your toolkit. I am talking to the king of memes right now.

Jay Schwedelson: Daniel has built a a, a gigantic media business and he's fueled it a lot with memes. I'm talking to the right guy. So Daniel, what is your take on memes? Firstly,

Daniel Murray: I'll say this, it's, it is the language of the internet. Um, if you look at your dms on Instagram right now or like what your friends have sent you, like, it's not eBooks, it's not white papers, it's not long posts.

Daniel Murray: It's usually a meme or a, some sort of video format that someone's sending you. So like. Uh, part of the internet is that memes get shared with people and if you want to spread the word, memes is a good way to do it. So big fan of memes, do I think everybody should do it. I think it all starts with like, what's your brand, what's your voice like, how you, how you feel as brand.

Daniel Murray: If you're not like, don't want to add any fun to your brand then, or any humor, then it's fine. But I think there's ways to do it that, um, could work in both camps. Um, one way I've seen, and I've worked with clients to do this, is that, um, like if you're scared of like copywriter, you're scared about using like trending, like I imagery is you could take like.

Daniel Murray: Trending images and put like your employees in there. You can put pictures of like pictures of off the internet of, of it that are not copyrighted. You can have, um, you can make your own cartoon character for this. So like you can make memes in a format that, that work for you. Also, that people sleep on me.

Daniel Murray: Memes are really good. Great ad format for businesses because they get seen in the feed. People recognize it. So it's a really good way to like say things. And one thing I'll also say why memes are really great is it shows you understand your audience. Like if you like, if you can take a. A pain point and connected with an image.

Daniel Murray: Um, it's just a way to show like you understand your audience at a deeper level and you want people to say, that's so me. So when I create a meme, I try to reverse engineer the comment section or the dm. So what I mean by that is like. What do I want them to say at the comment section like I do. They want, do I want 'em to say, this is hilarious?

Daniel Murray: Do I want 'em to say, that's so me? Like, do I wanna say like, I feel this, do I want them to say like, how are you getting in my mind? Like, this is like, like you wanna, like, when you're creating a meme, have some sort of reaction. So I try to switch up like what reaction I want. But the way I know, I know you asked this before, is like, the way I know things are gonna work is like I see if you have five or six.

Daniel Murray: Pain points and one-liners and hooks that you know are gonna work and you just match them with different images, usually they will, they will hit with an

Jay Schwedelson: audience. Yeah. And I think it's so important for whatever your brand is, business or consumer, that you have to mix up your formats. You can't just go, okay, we have this carousel, it did really well.

Jay Schwedelson: Non meme, obviously carousel, let's keep posting that carousel format. 'cause that's when it becomes wallpaper. And so it's not like, oh, this is off. Brand. We can't use memes. That's ridiculous. Memes to Daniel's point are the language of the internet. So I'm curious about something though. What has been changes to memes?

Jay Schwedelson: I see you post a lot of, uh, video memes now and not just static image memes. Is that the, is that what everyone should be doing or are we, or is there another format?

Daniel Murray: No, I think, like you said a second ago, I think it's changing up the format. I think. And it depends what platform you're on too. Like Instagram, like if you're trying to get net new follower growth or seen by net new followers, um, video memes are very good at like getting served too.

Daniel Murray: 'cause a lot of people are watching reels versus scrolling. Feed and seeing static. I think Instagram and LinkedIn are very like really reward carousel. So like if you can have swipe through of different, like pain points, that's a good format too. I think. I always say it's like, what, when you're doing something like this, what is your capabilities of like doing it?

Daniel Murray: If you, if you're really good at doing video stuff, like do video. If you're really good at static stuff, do static, but. For some, like I've been testing out on video because platforms like LinkedIn and Instagram reward video memes, but I also put in on static memes. Static memes seem to get more predictable likes and shares where video memes have more potential to be seen and go viral than a static.

Jay Schwedelson: And if you are out there and you're like, well, I don't know how to. Figure out what's gonna do well or not do well, or you think that you have come up with the world's greatest new template that nobody's seen that's gonna do well, that ain't it. I'll tell you what I do. What we do is we look for images or videos of other memes that have in other industries, totally random.

Jay Schwedelson: It's nothing to do with marketing or what I do for a living, and that have circulated massively, you know, millions of views, millions, whatever. And then we recaption it. Because we know that that image hit or that video hit, it's just a matter of now spinning it for the industry that we are in. Um, it's the easiest thing 'cause people are people and if people reacted to the image for one reason, they're gonna react to the image again, as long as it's for your industry.

Jay Schwedelson: And like when you

Daniel Murray: spin it for your industry, like. Algorithms are smart now that it's gonna serve your audience. So like if you put like your audience, let's say marketers or IT professionals or whatever it's going to, it will like, especially in Instagram, will serve it to the people who care about those things.

Daniel Murray: 'cause the goal of these platforms are to get people to stay on the platform. Like when people say to me like, why is this not performing? Or that not performing. It usually is like the idea it didn't hit, or like the hook didn't hit or the content wasn't that good. It's really like the algorithm is not gonna push something that is, um, not working.

Daniel Murray: Like, that's why you gotta understand the rules of the game. Like, for example, in Instagram, if you add, um, watermarks to something, it's gonna get deducted in the feed. And that could be a reason you got deducted. Or if you, on LinkedIn, like if you post, if you take it down and post and you put it back up, it's gonna get.

Daniel Murray: Downgraded in the feed. I don't know if they haven't told me that, but it's seen it multiple times. Like if you repost the same meme in the same day or same post in the same day, it's gonna get deducted. So you just gotta know the rules in the game when doing these things as well.

Jay Schwedelson: Yeah, I would say one other random rule that I would always think about is, let's say you had a meme that crushed it, you know, six months ago or a year ago, and you want to do it again, which is a great idea.

Jay Schwedelson: You wanna resize that image. You don't wanna take the image. Download it, repost it again. 'cause they won't like that. You take the image, resize it a little bit different, make it a little bit different, and then post it and then it should take off. Alright, back to the original question about condiments and stuff.

Jay Schwedelson: So like if you hit Taco Bell, which I feel like you probably crushed Taco Bell at least weekly. Are you like, I haven't been there in 10 years. Do you get like all the sauce? Do you get like

Daniel Murray: the, I'll tell you, I'll tell you something. Actually, Ari's the biggest Taco fan. Biggest nod. Taco Bell. I love Taco Bell.

Daniel Murray: I like Taco Bell breakfast. Uh, I've never had that. It's really good. But, uh, I grew up in San Diego, so like Mexican food was like, you could choose buy like the local burrito shop or Taco Bell. Like we're going local burrito shop. Look at you. Oh, bougie. So I know. It actually probably came out cheaper than talk about that point.

Daniel Murray: Right, right. Um, but yeah, I am not a Taco Bell fan, but other places I like, like Chick-fil-A sauce, I it's gonna gonna add Chick-fil-A sauce.

Jay Schwedelson: Now you crush it. Now Taco Bell's not gonna sponsor this podcast. You what? A fail. All right. But this podcast wasn't fail. Listen, um, if you share this on your Instagram story and you tag at J Schwa, which is my horribly long name, or.

Jay Schwedelson: You tag at the marketing millennials, we will then reshare it to our story and then we'll just, everyone will just be sharing story. It'll be amazing. How exciting will that be? Uh, we appreciate you. We'll see you at the next one later. Daniel, come on man. I gotta get back to work. Get out of there. All right, while he's still in there, this is Jay.

Jay Schwedelson: Check out my podcast. Do this, not that for marketers. Each week we share really quick tips on stuff that can improve your marketing, and I hope you give it a try. Oh, here's Daniel. He's finally

Daniel Murray: out. Back from my bathroom break. This is Daniel. Go follow the Marking Millennial podcast, but also tune into this series.

Daniel Murray: It's once a week, the bathroom break. We talk about marketing tips that we just spew out, and it could be anything from email subject line to any marketing tips in the world. We'll talk about it. Just give us a, a shout on LinkedIn and tell us what you want to hear. Peace out later.