Genes and Memes
Among things overlooked in traditional brand strategies and tactics is the elemental, almost primordial, nature of the way humans transmit beliefs, customs, principles, and other cultural “codeworks” that betoken identity, relevance, belonging, and social status. Indeed, if you consider yourself a curious seeker of brand wisdom, you should want to explore the cultural mechanisms behind mindshare, market share, and ideological capture.
Brand itself is a composite of many units of cultural information, which means brand awareness, perception, preference, loyalty, and advocacy gain when those units of cultural information are shared and transmitted. The way that happens often involve genetic and memetic mechanisms, which generally fly below the radar in brand strategies and tactics.
In terms of genetic mechanisms, we like to speak about brand DNA, which is an apt metaphor for what we hope pertains to our authentic brand. If you’ve perused any of my observations here you know my belief that the brand’s genes fundamentally consist of unique, exceptional, or high-barrier expertise. The rest of what expresses as “the brand” emerges from the genetic foundation of expertise. Likewise, expertise influences the nature of organizational culture (the province of values) and operating culture (the province of value), and the strategic priorities that harness each toward productive ambitions.
We can debate about what we mean by “brand DNA,” but we should be able to agree that somewhere within the brand exists a formative strain of differentiation that compels us to organize around, cultivate, and promulgate. In other words, we believe something meaningful is at work that’s worth transmitting to fellow communicants and others who we hope to engage. For my money, that “something meaningful” takes the shape of values and value that stem from the genetic code of organizational expertise (which is consistent with brand system theory).
When it comes to memetic mechanisms, most practitioners likely have an intuitive grasp of the culture-shaping power of memes if only because of the proliferation of viral GIFs and videos. But that’s the shallow end of a concept that has great depth the more one cares to fathom.
An excellent source to gain more insight into memes are the writings of Dr. Martin Farncombe and his website Practical Memetics. As the title suggests, Farncombe parses the nature of memes and memeplexes (“a group of memes typically present in the same entity”) and their “influence on our thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors.” In his Introduction to Memetics post, Farncombe captures the profundity of memes in the context of our species’ evolution:
“(T)he whole of human civilisation propagates through meme transmission, and our culture is defined by a set of dominant memes that filter the way we see the world, determine what we believe, and tell us how to act.”
Farncombe’s explorations offer great insight into how memes operate across social structures, organizations, and cultures and how memeplexes permeate and distinguish institutional systems. And while all of the material on the website is worth a look, for organizational and and brand-related topics there’s plenty that classifies as “must read.” (The less patient reader may prefer to skip immediately to Building a Sticking Meme for insights directly relevant to brand building.)
Case in point, Farncombe observes that “a brand is nothing more than a memeplex that carries associations around a product” (or, for that matter, an organization). As a result, brand is the composite of many units of cultural transmission, including such things as trends, jokes, and narratives that brand practitioners can’t always predict or control.
Fundamentally, the more we understand about the concept of memes and how they shape beliefs and actions, the better we can employ them to the benefit of our organizations and brands. Even if there’s a nothingness about many of the viral GIFs and videos we are drawn to, there’s an inherent somethingness about them that a brand practitioner should want to understand and apply.