Meme Malfunction
There’s always that uncomfortable moment when watching someone do something they are horrible at. They think they’re doing great, but everyone else sees the failure. Its awkwardness with a side of overwhelming pity.
This feeling has become quite common as advertisers and marketing types try to grasp the Internet. While the focus of such campaigns are “heavy” users–an attempt to be part of the crowd–the campaigns come off so clumsy that they are derided by the intended audience.
Add to the list of failures Showtime’s “witty” meme campaign for shows like Homeland and Dexter.
It’s really quite sad. I mean, I get it…likely marketers have heard of these things where you put funny text on a picture. Then they probably found out that characters from Futurama and Game of Thrones are getting free play. And then they heard a Comic Con was coming up. At each of these points they should have stopped, but they apparently marched on, created the memes and then released them.
There are a few points where they are most noticeably screwing up. For starters, launching a meme campaign is just going to confuse the fuck out of a general public that doesn’t know about Bad Luck Brian or Good Guy Greg. It’s also going to rankle people who get memes–even if they like the show. It feels forced.
Also, these just aren’t funny.
A much smarter method would have been to release the images through quickmeme and start a contest. Or, truly, anything else. At least it gives reddit some amusement for the day.
