202306011240 Status: #the-standards #lam-zett #🖤 Tags: #process #products # Brands are Memes > What's your Big Idea, and why would someone Hear, Care or Share? Brands are Memes. Yep, like the images on Reddit. Sounds stupid, but it’s not, promise. In fact, it’s built on science: namely, Evolution by Natural Selection. To understand what brands are, and how brands work, we need to understand how ideas spread from person to person. Iterations of this fast-paced, gif-riddled talk has been given around the world, from Config in San Fran to BNCF in Chicago, from Melbourne to Oslo. ### Explanation Like all theories, BaM needs to seek to explain something: what actually *is* a "Brand"? We all know why we want them (or like, close enough anyway), but who can tell you what you're actually buying when you pay tattooed, edge-lord agency-types like us to come in and do the jazz hands and all the rest? Without being too inductivist here, let's start with an observation: that in a competitive market (that is any market where a consumer has choice between similar products) consumers buy brands, not products. That is to say that all else being held equal-ish (ie. price, functionality, access, etc.) a consumer is lead to one decision over another by the a brand: this is the core differentiator. So, why does this happen? Because an idea has gotten into a consumer's head. Within reason (and sometimes well beyond it) almost any purchase gives a given consumer the opportunity to express something about themselves to others. The brand is what helps them determine that narrative. 3. A modern brand lives (or dies) on the internet. Because so does your audience. Because so does everyone.   So what’s a meme? It’s not a just a funny picture on the internet. Think about it: those gifs you see on the internet aren’t just funny pictures, they’re images that describe deeper human truths than the image alone suggests. The underlying idea is able to be applied to a whole host of different situations. This variation on a theme doesn’t make the joke less funny, it somehow makes it more funny, more true, more powerful. A meme can be thought of as a cultural gene. Just as genes replicate and grow and do their utmost to survive in an unforgiving environment, so do memes. Darwin's Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection breaks down into three core components, and the theory of memetics works in the same way. - Selection (or Caring): In a competitive environment, some ideas capture our attention, some don’t - Variation (or Hearing): Everybody interprets ideas in their own, varied way. With the exact same data, one can arrive at different conclusions based on one's own perspectives, biases and lived experiences. - Transmission (or Sharing): People pass on ideas to others, because as humans, we care deeply about starting dialogues.