Memes in Marketing: Impact on Advertising Literacy and Emotional Experience Among Adolescents

Abstract

Declining digital marketing metrics often point to a trend of lower interest in advertising and sponsored content. Therefore, creators are finding other ways to spread the advertising message, particularly through native advertising, one option being the use of memes. Memes are an effective and very popular tool for reaching adolescents, but their use requires caution and an understanding of their dynamic and often unpredictable nature. The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of memes on social networking sites that have advertising content on adolescents' levels of advertising literacy. The study was conducted through a qualitative neuromarketing study and follow-up personal interviews with a sample of 24 respondents. The results indicate lower levels of advertising literacy among adolescents who, while recognizing the sales intent of the meme image, were unable to identify the sponsor. The results also confirmed that memes can evoke different emotions in adolescents, such as joy, but also anger and frustration. The research findings raise the concern that adolescents are not sufficiently able to navigate safely in the online environment, which is exploited by many companies in their sales techniques. Such adolescents can easily be deceived, misled. This has triggered the need for more intensive media literacy education on the one hand, and the introduction of consistent ethical principles on the other, i.e. on the advertisers' side. Received: 11 March 2024 / Accepted: 20 October 2024 / Published: 05 November 2024