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Over the past decade, video has emerged as the Internet's dominant medium as social networks and publishers prioritize mass reach and viewership. 93% of marketers now incorporate video into their content strategy. Peak Video has transformed advertising. It has also reoriented our web experience to a world of passive consumption, where we just watch.
Video is a deep and powerful medium for storytelling. There's no denying that film and visual content will continue to play an important role in reaching and engaging digital audiences. But increasingly, participatory media forms are gaining mindshare in social spaces. The proliferation of meme coins has revealed a new code for digital content creation, which will have a major impact on traditional marketers.
Over the past year, meme coins have exploded in popularity. Unlike traditional digital currencies, meme coins tend to function primarily as social experiments and have limited uses. They are based on internet culture. They unite people around a common idea (no matter how stupid, niche, or ridiculous). And its continued niche traction provides new insights for marketers.
Recently, Variant Fund co-founder Li Jing said, explained The explosion of meme coins as an example of the resurgence of ruthless media. Success requires the community to actively interpret and create content, and they're doing it in droves. dogecoin X alone has nearly 4 million followers. Sounds like a joke. However, memecoin projects like Dogecoin use decentralized marketing infrastructure to drive virality and mass engagement, giving fans the power to build brands, build community economies, and share user-generated content through tokens and airdrops. Give them an active role in encouragement. Learn how meme coins are transforming digital marketing.
Organic marketing is a powerful tool for reach and conversion. According to a report from eMarketer (formerly Insider Intelligence), 79% of consumers say user-generated content has a significant impact on their purchasing decisions. But while billions of people use social media every month, fewer and fewer people actually post. Creating virality for your brand may require more than just engaging content. Memecoin uses tokens to incentivize community posts.
Projects like Tip Coin allow users to earn points by posting on X. Replying, quoting, or tweeting mentioning $TIP or #TIP will earn you points based on your token allocation percentage. In effect, fans are paid to organize and advocate for their communities. This approach allows projects to quickly trend on the platform as individuals spread the word about new products. Organic content creation plays an invaluable role in increasing awareness and trust. The points and token incentive system provides marketers with new avenues for user-generated content and community engagement.
Memecoin is a participatory media format. When users co-create lore, they also create influence. A project's social media mentions are more than just a proxy for awareness. They become predictors of value. As a result, fans will be motivated to play a role in shaping Meme Coin's brand and marketing strategy.
In 2019, Dogwifhat memes became popular among esports personalities on Twitter (X). In 2023, this meme gave rise to a new token, $WIF, which is “literally a dog in a hat.” $WIF's community of holders directs the project through real-time content creation. They also promote the project. In recent weeks, the community has raised more than $690,000 to brand Las Vegas Her Sphere with meme coins. This was a media buy and also started its own news cycle.
Today, many brands have centralized content and media strategies. Marketers can realize new efficiencies by empowering fans to drive these decisions. Real-time community content creation enables rapid messaging iteration and insight generation. Community-run media buys help ensure the effectiveness of reaching your audience in the places that matter to them.
The rise of gaming has changed our norms regarding content consumption. Gen Z now spends more time playing video games than watching TV, so viewers expect a different experience from digital storytelling. The game's story world unfolds in real time across multimedia. They are outside the scope of simple scripts and finite frames.
Memecoin functions as an open story world that changes through user participation. Its value and meaning can change dramatically over time. Memecoin leverages the game's visual cues to give the community the opportunity to shape the success of a project across a long-term roadmap and real-time marketplace. This project has no deadline and is constantly updated, so you have a reason to come back to it. For marketers, this type of game-driven story design helps retain audiences by treating them as players rather than just passive viewers.
Meme coins are exploding in popularity, but their appeal is niche and silly. It's tempting to dismiss them as products of this silly, particular moment in internet culture. But their emergence requires us to think differently about digital experiences, to imagine storytelling as an inherently participatory medium. Beyond traditional media, increasingly important formats for marketers and fans are those that encode and incentivize interactions.
