Advertising Slogans As Strong Memes

Memetics is a new theory for interpreting cultural evolution. A meme, invented to suggest a strong analogy with genes, is a unit of cultural imitation, a self-propagating idea much like a biological or computer virus. The contagious nature of memes has such a natural affinity with advertising that it drives many marketers to conduct their advertising research from the perspective of memes. Following them, the present research explores how to turn an ad slogan into a strong meme, in view of the increasing importance of ad slogans in the over-communicated society and the insufficient study about them. Strong memes in this thesis refer to: 1. Conventions, traditions, value orientations, ideas, legends, idioms and sayings, etc., which are handed down from ancient time until today; 2.Fashions, skills, ideas, catchwords, slogans, etc., which were very popular at one time, but die out now; 3. Ideas, popular songs, exciting news, net language etc., which are spreading now among people and may have a tendency to keep up.Based on the adaptation theory proposed by Verschueren (2000), and enlightened by the theory of memes, this thesis attempts to construct a conceptual framework for the analysis of strong meme creation. The general argument is that successful adslogans can be regarded as meme products and the meme products are the outcome of sloganeers' adaptive behavior.Vast and various memes compete for survival in their living environment, and only those which have higher value in fidelity, fecundity and longevity have the chance to win out. Thus, in order to make an ad slogan emerge from its competitors as a strong meme, sloganeers must make negotiable choices to make it adapted well to its surroundings. In this thesis, we sort the primary contextual correlates of adaptability for strong memes into three categories: cognition, emotion and culture. During the whole process of adaptation, an important strategy that accompanies the sloganeer is attaching a new or weak meme to a strong meme, either "a strong meme of content" or "a strong meme of form", to enhance its strength.The research results show that the likelihood for an ad slogan to be a strong memecan be greatly enhanced by sloganeers' deliberate choice making. We hope that our research can draw due attention of some marketers and help them improve the effectiveness of their ad slogans.