chennai on march 31 wittyfeed a content website posted a meme on what would happen when reliance jio stops service using a scene from a bollywood movie within 24 hours the post gathered over 2 million views this is the power the next generation online marketing driven by memes when richard dawkins coined the word meme in his 1976 bestseller the selfish gene little did he know that his coinage would become an internet rage from pierce brosnan and his infamous pan bahar ad to india todays cover photo with baba ramdev its not just humour or trolling that memes convey these quick and witty messages are being used by big brands including panasonic reliance jio cavins milk air asia and tata motors to garner the internet audiences attentionmemes can be an image or video seemingly light hearted loaded with a message in the age of social media digital marketers are hiring professionals to create these memes all one needs is basic software like paint and movie knowledge they need to be able to identify what clicks with youngsters we even announced recruitment of meme engineers through a meme said lokesh jey ceo the sight mediathe success of a meme lies in how succint it is if a meme cant be consumed in less than a minute the chances that it will be viewed and shared will be less said shashank vaishnav cofounder wittyfeed with memes finding traction on facebook brands tap facebook pages with a good following to fetch the reach required at a price ranging from rs 500 per meme while facebook pages charge on a permeme basis digital marketers charge as part of the marketing initiative jey for instance owns 130 pages on facebook which command a viewership of almost 12 million memes are created on a range of topics from current affairs to politics and cinema santhosh palavesh a digital marketer saysfor movies close to 75 memes are posted per film and atleast 100 memes per day must be posted for politics also for films number of memes must increase closer to the release date it takes a few minutes to make a meme but it is quite a task to package everything within a picture and be differentdigital marketers say brands are conscioulsy allocating budgets for meme marketing after witnessing its power jey of sight media says while videos have a conversion rate of 1 memes are garnering a whopping 10 put chutney a chennaibased channel of culture machine posted a meme for world idli day which got 8000 likes while the video had close to 1000 last year we decided to design an entire plane with kabali poster which was recieved well the sight media suggested creating memes with the photos which were picked up by rajnikanth fans this oncept delivered a huge reachfor airasias promotions said the air asia spokespersonthe challenge for marketers is to keep their facebook pages alive by posting memes on a regular basis whether it is a paid project