How To Make Serious Business Out Of Funny Memes

Jeffro (00:02.302)
Welcome back to Digital Dominance. Charlie Chaplin once said, a day without laughter is a day wasted. Most people intuitively agree with this as evidenced by how much time we spend scrolling our newsfeed, chasing the next chuckle. Yet for some reason, when it comes time to create our own content, we get really boring. We think that all humor is unprofessional, maybe. It goes against the image we want to create. But think about how you experience promotions and advertisements. If it’s funny, you’ll watch it and you’re more likely to remember it too. The Super Bowl is a great example. 364 days out of the year, we’re like, ah, I hate commercials, they’re so annoying. Then on Super Bowl Sunday, we’re like, hey, quiet down, there’s a commercial on. So clearly there’s something going on here that we can tap into. My guest today is Aidan Branigan, and we are going to unpack why humor works so well in marketing. Aidan is the head of social over at the Marketing Millennials, and he creates content that is viewed 240 million times per year, driving seven figures in revenue, yet somehow his parents still think he’s unemployed.

Don’t know why, but welcome to the show, Aiden.

Aidan Brannigan (01:03.702)
Thank you so much for having me. That was a great intro.

Jeffro (01:07.086)
Well, it’s true, right? And I’m excited for this topic because it is something that we come up against over and over. You know, for me, when I see that Ryan Reynolds has posted a new video on his YouTube account, I watch it immediately, because I know it’s going to be funny. I also know it’s going to be an ad, but I don’t care. I think Ryan is a great example of the power of humor in marketing.

Aidan Brannigan (01:18.871)
Oh yeah.

Yeah.

Aidan Brannigan (01:27.726)
I wholeheartedly agree. I think he’s one of the best guerrilla marketers, but to your point, everything he posts on his YouTube is an ad, but every single one, I want to watch. It’s hilarious.

Jeffro (01:38.854)
Exactly. Yeah, well, I mean, most of us aren’t Ryan Reynolds, though. So how do we reliably infuse humor into our social media content? You know, and how does it work if we’re a business account rather than an individual?

Aidan Brannigan (01:51.154)
Yeah, definitely. That’s a really good question. So a lot of times like people are like, I don’t want to, I don’t want to use humor because I don’t want to become a joke. Right. Like there’s a difference between being witty and funny and becoming a joke. You want to avoid becoming a joke like the plague. Like that’s how you ruin your brand image. And that’s what I’m not a fan of, of humor. Like Radio Shack did this a couple of years ago when they did a crazy takeover of their Twitter and they basically just had like a, a guy who was making edgy memes posting on their brand account.

further tanked the company that was already tanking. Poor move. Duolingo though, fantastic example of witty, funny, relevant to their audience. But really like if you’re talking from a brand lens, like there’s so many different ways to be funny. You just have to find the one that seems most authentic to yourself. Like the biggest barrier, like nothing will be funny if it seems forced. So you have to get over that. It has to be naturally flowing with your…

Jeffro (02:47.19)
Mm-hmm.

Aidan Brannigan (02:50.358)
brand that exists already on the internet and how consumers view that brand. From a personal sense, at least the way I ride with it is whatever I think is funny, that’s what I try and emulate my humor around. Ryan Reynolds is one of my biggest motivations and he is somebody I study and just his marketing tactics and how he is able to… His punch lines are so effective.

I know it’s this long answer, but like it has to be authentic to the brand that exists already. And that’s for both personal and actual brands and companies.

Jeffro (03:28.038)
Right. Well, and I like that you said, you know, what’s authentic to you, but I’m sure there might also be a line there, like, cause if you’re a crude person and you like, you know, crude humor, does it fit the brand of your business? Right. And so you have to make sure you kind of separate that out and decide. Maybe in some cases it might, if you’re a plumbing company and you’re always cleaning out toilets, maybe you can work in some potty humor, but that’s really up to you to kind of feel that out. So, cause for everything else it’s.

Aidan Brannigan (03:48.757)
Hehehehe

Jeffro (03:54.49)
Is it risky to use humor in that content? That’s the question, right? So how do you know if a joke’s gonna land? How do I know if it’s just not gonna be received well?

Aidan Brannigan (04:04.338)
Yeah, definitely. You never want to punch down. And if you’re even hesitant and like, ah, this might be punching down, then it’s definitely punching down. Like Daniel, who I work with, like anytime I send him a text, I’m like, is this too far? He’s like, I know if you’re sending me this text asking me, it definitely is too far. He’s like, if you know it’s good, you would just ship it. So that’s just like the gut feeling, the intuition. That’s key too and can be overlooked.

Jeffro (04:24.651)
Yeah.

Jeffro (04:34.718)
Right, well, and learning to listen to that warning that your brain is giving you, right? Don’t override it because otherwise you’re gonna regret it later.

Aidan Brannigan (04:39.656)
Yes.

Jeffro (04:45.194)
So what about what types of humor work in static posts? I know Ryan Reynolds has a lot of video stuff, but what do I need to think about in order to be funny on Instagram versus being funny on TikTok?

Aidan Brannigan (04:54.73)
Yeah, memes, I’m such a fan of memes. And like, the way I look at memes is like kind of a blanket statement of anything that’s like witty, funny, and conveys more than just the words and just the image on the post, right? Like a picture’s worth a thousand words, but like I think a meme’s worth 10,000 words, right? You get the combo of the words and the image. So like that can be a funny tweet that you screenshot and like it can be completely planned.

Jeffro (05:09.451)
Mm-hmm.

Aidan Brannigan (05:23.818)
Like we do this and there’s a lot of big brands like the most viral tweets you see sometimes that are reshared on other brand Accounts are often just scheduled Planned like funny content that’s just screen shotted and posted on socials We do this like we do that like I have a burner account. I’ll tweet something funny related to marketing I’ll screenshot it put it on Canva get a template so it fits the framing on Instagram and post it but yeah memes also like in a sense of like

Jeffro (05:48.479)
Mm-hmm.

Aidan Brannigan (05:53.346)
the traditional meme with a photo and text, they absolutely crush because you can tell a story with a photo alone and then with the added context of the words, you can drive that story along so much more effective. I mean, we can get into it of like where I find all the templates and like what sources I use to put together this funny content, but memes absolutely crush.

Jeffro (06:20.594)
Yeah, well, and I think people get caught up on the templates too, right? And they think that if I pick the right one, it’ll somehow land better. But obviously you want it to match your brand feel, the vibe you’re going for. And it’s more about the content itself and how it’s being presented. I was going to ask too, is it better to make up your own memes or reuse existing ones?

Aidan Brannigan (06:43.986)
Yeah, so that’s your last point there is a really good point. And then I’ll answer your question. So if I’m a brand like targeting 65 year old men, I’m not going to want to use like a Barbie meme template, even though the Barbie movie is trending and everyone’s seemingly using the Barbie meme templates because your audience, like the impact is not going to be there because they’re not watching the Barbie movie unless they’re going with like their grandchildren. You’d want to use something like

Jeffro (06:50.321)
Oh, sure.

Aidan Brannigan (07:12.53)
a Hulk Hogan meme or something, where it’s like a figure that they recognize, they know, and it’s like boom. And the same goes for like if you’re targeting millennial women, like use Mean Girls templates, like use the Barbie templates and avoid like using LeBron James, right? Like these are just like simple subtleties in memes that can be overlooked. And what was your next question was like how to make sure it’s on?

Jeffro (07:31.723)
Mm-hmm.

Jeffro (07:39.046)
The next question is like, you know, should I make up my own meme or just kind of reuse a trending one?

Aidan Brannigan (07:42.226)
Yeah. So I’m a fan of doing like 70 30 70% of the time, make up my own meme, 30% of the time, trying to capitalize on a trending meme template. Like this week, there’s no real trending meme templates maybe other than memes around like Taylor Swift and Kim K like with the album release for Taylor Swift last night. But like occasionally, like maybe once a month, there’s a meme template that goes crazy viral.

And it’s stupid not to jump on it and try and use it and try and find a way to use it. But if you really feel like it’s being forced, that you’re using this template to try and force it into a square when it’s a circle, like don’t use it. Um, like if your brand, it’s a SaaS product and like the Kevin James meme is going viral and you can’t find a way to make it relevant to your audience. Just suck it up. Use the next one. Yeah. Don’t force it.

Jeffro (08:33.586)
Yeah, don’t force it. Okay. Are there times when you should avoid using memes altogether as a business?

Aidan Brannigan (08:41.81)
So this pertains to me and my like Personal values Yeah, any like political memes or like hot topic memes or any like using a template of someone who’s like Whether it’s Trump Obama Biden like I always avoid that there’s nothing good that’s ever gonna come from that Like there’s nothing really ever gonna Positive gonna come out of that. You’re gonna hurt somebody’s feelings. You’re gonna start you’ll get great engagement bad look for the brand though

Jeffro (09:00.783)
is polarizing.

Aidan Brannigan (09:11.89)
Um, obviously if you’re a political brand, like sure, that’s just a no-brainer to use stuff like that. But I never use memes that could be like, someone might take it one way. Like it’s sexist or racist or like anything politically related. So that’s, I just always avoid that. There’s no sense in there’s so many options. So just avoid it.

Jeffro (09:11.931)
Yeah.

Jeffro (09:31.73)
Yeah, that makes sense. One other thing I wanted to mention, you talked about how when you’re kind of crafting your memes and stuff, you’ve got your burner account and then you screenshot it or whatever. And I was thinking, what that’s actually doing is you’re creating situational comedy, right? Because in person, that happens, right? In the workplace or at a store or whatever. On Twitter or Instagram, it’s all just like straightforward, here’s a joke, there’s a joke. But when you’re screenshotting it, okay, you’re bringing in extra context, and now it’s funny.

Aidan Brannigan (09:46.558)
Yes. Oh yeah.

Jeffro (10:00.842)
because someone else is posting it or retweeting it or whatever. So that’s interesting.

Aidan Brannigan (10:04.964)
Yes, yeah that is exactly what it is.

Jeffro (10:08.47)
So how can we, I mean, we talked about how to do this, but from a strategy perspective, you know, if we want to take humor and make it part of our social media strategy to help us grow or scale, how do we decide that? You know, you mentioned a 70, 30 mix of memes, but how do you, where do you start with that?

Aidan Brannigan (10:26.378)
Yeah, I mean, there’s like a bunch of data on like brand recall that Oracle did, just that humor has an amazing impact on brand retention, brand recall. And that’s why on the biggest marketing event, biggest marketing stage every year, which is the Super Bowl, every brand goes the humor route. Like, it’s not a coincidence. But I would say if you’re trying to figure out like how to use humor, like…

Aidan Brannigan (10:52.67)
I’m sorry, I blanked on the point of the whole first question.

Jeffro (10:57.506)
Well, it is kind of how do you create that strategy for social media where you’re incorporating humor.

Aidan Brannigan (10:59.522)
Yeah.

Yeah. So I mean, you like enter it slowly, like just don’t become a meme page. But like there’s definitely ways you can add wit that aligns with your brand. One of the ways we do that is just like, just ask a bunch of questions. Like who’s your audience? What are their struggles? Right. Like you can laugh at the struggles, but it all comes back to this leading with entertainment. And like.

Jeffro (11:16.639)
Mm-hmm.

Aidan Brannigan (11:30.054)
like Ryan Reynolds does, the reason we watch his ads, even though they’re ads, is because he leads with entertainment. Entertainment first, then the actual ads second. And that’s what humor and memes and content like that specifically enables you to do. You can go front-facing to the consumer and be like, hey, we’re not trying to sell you anything. We’re trying to make you laugh. And then at the end, you can hit them when they’re vulnerable in a good way to receive a message and be like, here’s what we’re selling.

Jeffro (11:37.89)
Mm-hmm.

Jeffro (11:55.834)
Mm-hmm. So should every post be funny then?

Aidan Brannigan (12:00.942)
No. I think you’re seeing this a lot in like the insurance industry, like Geico, Progressive, Allstate. When everyone does it, then it’s like, it’s almost better and more impactful. I believe differentiation is huge. And that’s why I think humor works in most industries, because it’s a differentiator, not everyone does it. But in this insurance industry, like everyone seemingly does it because it’s a boring topic, boring service. I almost think a cut and dry, super simple

ad would work better than using humor in these instances because everyone does it. Um, so yeah, definitely don’t do everything humor based. Otherwise people are just going to think one, you’re a media company that’s just trying to get eyeballs. Um, or two, like. Like you need like a one, two punch. I love using a lot of humor. Like if you’re posting 10 times, I’m fine with doing six funny posts for informative posts, but it can’t be 10.

Jeffro (12:44.807)
Mm-hmm.

Jeffro (13:00.094)
Right. Okay. So then, I mean, you mentioned briefly about how you, when you lead with entertainment, it kind of opens up the viewer, the listener, the reader to seeing the offer, the pitch, whatever it is. So how do you make that feel natural so it’s not forced? Because even if you have something funny and then jump to a pitch, there can be an awkward jump there. So how do you bridge that?

Aidan Brannigan (13:22.81)
One way I’ve been doing it is making fun of myself and be like, oh, I’m about to sell you something, like ha ha, and then sell them. So it’s like kind of that bridge before it’s like, I let them know I might be about to sell them something, but I’m still being funny, I’m making fun of myself because, hey, I’m about to sell you something, whether that’s in written copy or in video. I do that all the time, like, hey, we have this event, or like, lead with the entertainment, and then be like,

Oh, I’m not going to use FOMO to get you to register, but so I won’t tell you how many other people registered and then just be like, JK, actually 1200 people registered already, you’re going to miss out. So like that’s just making fun of myself in the process of going from entertainment to the ad is like a good intermediary.

Jeffro (14:14.294)
So you’re just maintaining the tone rather than shifting into business mode now, right? It’s just, you know, still being fun and light with it.

Aidan Brannigan (14:21.609)
Oh yeah, yeah.

Jeffro (14:23.75)
Okay, that makes sense. Can you share any case studies where you’ve worked with a brand or a company where you’ve used humor to kind of improve or grow their account?

Aidan Brannigan (14:34.566)
Yeah, so with the marketing millennials, when I started, we had 20,000 email subscribers, 250,000 to 300,000 LinkedIn followers, like 10 or 15,000 Instagram followers. So our community was like still pretty big. But now we’re at 100,000 email subscribers, almost a million followers on LinkedIn and 125,000 followers on Instagram.

I would say more than a lot of other brands, we are humor-led. I would say 60% of our content is humor-led, 65%. But really we use the humor as top of funnel awareness. So we’re reaching about like 12 million people organically every month through memes, witty content, like the tweets I was saying. And what we’re really trying to do and like where I am right now, I’m in our podcast studio and we’re really trying to up our.

Jeffro (15:10.5)
Mm-hmm.

Aidan Brannigan (15:32.886)
video content because that’s one thing for sure that like AI is going to have a little harder time trying to mimic perfectly. It’s getting really good, which is scary, but we see it as a point to really differentiate. Like we have high quality video content paired with our like witty memes. But yeah, that’s been posting three to five times a day every single day growing our newsletter.

Jeffro (15:43.111)
Yeah.

Aidan Brannigan (16:01.49)
5x, but that’s like the best case study for it. And I’m sure maybe a couple of people listening have either attended an event. We hosted a virtual event yesterday, 300 people showed up. We had an in-person event in ACL Live, downtown Austin. We had 350 people there. So the humor’s really transcended into like a community with intention where they’re…

Jeffro (16:25.462)
Mm-hmm.

Aidan Brannigan (16:28.29)
They want to engage with the brand. They want to learn from us. So it’s really awesome.

Jeffro (16:33.698)
Okay, I mean that is awesome. Thank you for that example. I heard something that you said that I think a lot of business owners listening might be like, whoa, hold up there. As you’re like, oh, I’m posting three to five times a day. Obviously you’re doing this full time for the marketing millennials. What about a small business owner who’s mainly running the business? You know, that’s a lot of time to come up with that many posts to make sure they’re good. What level of content should they be posting? You know, once a day, twice a week? You know, what’s…

How do you put that together and figure out what’s going to move the needle for a small business?

Aidan Brannigan (17:09.098)
Yeah, that’s a tough question because in the small business world, the owner might be so focused on the next day and how do we make more money tomorrow and then the next day and not necessarily the long term, like two, three, four, five years down the line because they don’t have the bandwidth to think out that far. They’re just trying to make it through the week. And that’s when I would say…

maybe put social media on the back burner, unless it’s the only way you can get new clients, then definitely lean into it. But like, if you’re trying to figure out payroll and like just you’re able to find clients without social media and you’re really worried on just like getting through the month, social media is more of a long-term play and building a community is a long-term play. So I would put that on the back burner, just full honesty, if you don’t have the resources immediately. Because…

Jeffro (17:37.899)
Mm-hmm.

Aidan Brannigan (18:02.51)
It is a bad look to post on social media like maybe once every other year and it’s just a low quality graphic. That is just wasted time because nobody’s really going to see that. It’s not going to impact your business bottom line. So to answer that succinctly, if you’re really worried about your business’s bottom line for the next month, two months, even year, put social media on the back burner. But if you’re in a good spot, I would hire somebody immediately and just scale your distribution.

Jeffro (18:27.578)
Right. Yeah, because you can’t, you know, if you’re running the business, you can’t do it full time. You need someone else to help you. And like you said, it’s a long-term play. It’s going to take a while to build up, kind of figure out your brand voice and kind of the types of posts you’re going to do. So it’s not just a quick silver bullet where you’re like, okay, now I’m posting on social media. Here come the flood of clients. Like you got to kind of work at it for a while. So that’s good advice. And I guess kind of related to that though.

Aidan Brannigan (18:48.875)
Oh yeah.

Jeffro (18:53.95)
What about lo-fi content, right? If the business owner every day is going to a job, makes a quick video, tries to be witty. I mean, I can see places where that could work. I’d also see other types of businesses where maybe that wouldn’t work so well. So it’s always gonna depend on the person and how much time you’ve got to put in and what you’re trying to do with it. So.

Aidan Brannigan (19:16.338)
Yeah, I would say if it’s content that you like creating and know you can create it consistently for a year or two, sure, try it out. But if it’s like a pain in the butt to create and it takes so much time and energy away from other things, when the other things really need the attention, I’d avoid it.

Jeffro (19:34.818)
All right, what’s your most important piece of advice then for a small business owner who is looking to make their social media posts more entertaining?

Aidan Brannigan (19:43.79)
That’s a really good question. It all starts with knowing who you’re targeting so, so well. The best reaction you can get out of someone on the timeline, like if you’re creating entertaining content, like especially memes, is like you want the reaction of them to see that meme and be like, do they have a camera in my room? How do they know I experienced that? That is hilarious. I’m going to send it to all my other, if it’s marketers, all my other marketing friends because they all experience that. That’s like the best reaction you can get.

And you can only get that by spending hours on end, in the communities where your target audience hangs out, seeing what they’re struggling through. So before even, the posting is here. You need to do all the digging before to even create entertaining content. Because entertaining content is just content that pulls on things that people are experiencing, feeling, and want to see.

Jeffro (20:37.214)
Yeah, I think that’s a great answer. And we’ve talked about that a lot on this podcast, knowing your audience, who is that person? What do they care about? And it’s so important for everything, the messaging on your website, obviously the content you’re posting on social media. So guys, if you’re listening and you haven’t figured that out yet, do that before you do anything else. Yeah, I mean, are there any other common mistakes that business owners make when it comes to social media content, especially when they’re trying to be entertaining?

Aidan Brannigan (20:54.974)
Yeah, step one.

Aidan Brannigan (21:07.058)
Yes, it is like the classic example is like a brand. Let’s say it’s a third party logistics company, like just a random company. And they decide we’re gonna hop on every single TikTok trend because that’s what everyone does on TikTok, right? And they just do these dumb dances that have no relevance to their brand at all. And they’re paying someone to do it. It’s like, at that point, I would just say.

don’t even have anyone running your socials, if all you’re gonna do is hop on trends. Like, if you want to build an audience in a community, you have to have your own evergreen content and there has to be a specific reason someone follows you over someone else. And if you’re just doing trends that everyone else is doing, there’s no reason to follow you over the next guy. But another mistake I see often is companies thinking that as soon as they start posting on social media, they’ll go viral and it’s gonna…

impact their business, there’s going to be this funnel of clients. Like whatever your time horizon is for when you expect to see a positive impact on your business from social media, 10 X the timeline. Like it’s not, it’s not going to be 10 days. It’s going to be 150 days. It’s going to be five months, um, six months a year.

Jeffro (22:23.646)
Right. And it’s important to have that expectation, because otherwise you’ll just be frustrated and conclude that this stuff doesn’t work. You know, so that’s important. Well, Aiden, thank you for coming on the show today. I’d love it if more business content was entertaining. So hopefully people take this to heart and, you know, can find that humor. Feel free to share it. Let them be a little more authentic. For those of you guys that are listening, go connect with Aiden on LinkedIn. He also hosts a podcast called The Marketing Millennials, which you can check out.

Aidan Brannigan (22:31.945)
Yes.

Aidan Brannigan (22:41.777)
Hehehe

Jeffro (22:52.07)
Aiden, do you have any last thoughts for our listeners today?

Aidan Brannigan (22:56.498)
I would just say, just maybe take a risk or two with your personal brand and post content that’s super authentic to yourself. But if we’re talking about your brand, take a risk and push the boundaries a little bit of what your company has traditionally been posting online. And pitch a bold idea, because those are the ideas that are remembered, the bold ones.

Jeffro (23:19.826)
Right. Well, thanks again for being here, Aidan. Thanks to all you guys for listening. Don’t be stiff. Let us see that personality. And I’ll see you back here soon for the next episode of Digital Dominance. Have a good one.

Aidan Brannigan (23:30.958)
Have a good one.