It’s just a meme bro! : How memes in marketing communication affects brand personality

Internet memes have in recent years become a prevalent phenomenon which brands have now started to use in their marketing communication efforts. Previous brand personality research suggested that communication style can change a brand’s perceived personality from a consumer’s perspective. The purpose of the thesis was to investigate if there is a difference in how brands are perceived depending on whether memes or more traditional images are used in marketing communication. The theoretical framework for this thesis was Geuens et al. (2009) A New Measure of Brand Personality. An experimental design was applied by having a total of 98 respondents answer one of two surveys. The respondents were exposed to a meme or a more traditional advert from the dating app, Tinder, and then asked to answerer questions regarding the brand’s personality. Hypothesis testing was conducted to see if any significant differences between the groups could be found. Results showed that respondent did perceive the brand differently on two dimensions of brand personality depending on what image they saw. However, lack of internal reliability in multiple dimensions in A New Measure of Brand Personality, questioned the scales applicability. The thesis contributes to a better understanding of how memes can be used in marketing communication