Rob Walker wrote an article about the brand underground in New York City for the NYT Magazine back in 2006.  It details how brands like aNYthing operating out of NY, which exist for the sole purpose and sake of being a brand, rather than having a branding initiative attached to an existing product, are emerging and how they’ve become viable business models.  As Walker rightly points out, we’re living in an age where emotional connections are being developed towards brands by consumers, in part due to the efforts of agencies and businesses to market their brands within certain social or cultural contexts that elicit those emotional connections.  He uses the example of certain fast food chains or beer bottlers and how they use iconography associated with so-called masculinity to develop emotional connections with their target demographics.  In other words, Joe the Consumer, who likes Miller Beer and Burger King, will associate certain male-centric imagery and messages with those products due to their respective branding, and feel empowered or supported in his personal idea of masculinity by consuming those burgers and beer.  So, in essence, the product existed before the branding and the branding was a means of pushing the product.

In stark contrast to that then we have brands like aNYthing, where the branding exists first and then the tangible goods are added to the mix.  Meaning, instead of Hanes tees, it’s Hanes tees with the aNYthing logo attached (although I don’t know who manufactures the goods in this case; that’s merely an example – and before you say, “hey, wait, brands like Nike push tees with their logo on it”, I will point out that in those cases the tee itself represents a product that existed first and is therefore selling an overall image associated with those pre-existing products, e.g., sports and athletic apparel/equipment).  With an underground movement like aNYthing, you create the brand then find ways to exploit it.  In that, it becomes adaptable to any number of durable goods or services.

So what is the strength of the brand, what makes it sell, and what the heck am I getting at in that headline about memes and egoboo? Well, allow me to answer all of that.  An underground brand like aNYthing, or Alife or SSUR (as mentioned in the Walker article) build their relevance through “scenes”, or associating with the people, culture, and iconography pertinent to certain niche groups or participants.  These groups develop a sense of “cool” or “hip” from having either a so-called counter-cultural (which is a misnomer, meaning they should say counter-pop-cultural) aesthetic, geographic location (typically an urban space), or “expert” presence (as in, the presence of experts on the particular “scene” or subject matter associated with that scene, for example, a group gravitating around the very best skateboarders, rock musicians, athletes, artists, etc).  Therein lay the strength of the brand; it’s cool because it comes from an authentic space that only certain people would associate with and understand.  This, as Walker points out, fits as a perfect model for branding within micro and niche markets, which the Internet and social media have helped to promulgate.  A brand’s customer base can be relatively small but still turn a profit as long as there is consistent loyalty within that small base.  aNYthing uses the imagery, iconography, and aesthetic culture of downtown NY to help its customer base form identity and emotional connection with the city and their environment.  It empowers the customer.  And, most of all, it becomes a label with meaning for other tangible products or services, like tees, hats, sweaters, skateboards, sponsored parties, art work, or other monetizable items.

All of this takes place within Internet memes, except for the monetizing part.  But, that is showing signs of change.

As many of my readers will know, memes are cultural artifacts, usually images or particular websites, that spread rapidly on-line, a phenomenon seen in memetics wherein things spread from one person to another.  Some of the biggest and most popular memes are so viral in nature that often one cannot attribute an exact point of origin.  Nonetheless, the power lay within the meme itself – it may possess iconography, cultural references, or other messages that promote empowerment via association with that meme.  For example, if I create a meme, or, more likely, share a meme passed to me, with my friends, I display a form of identification with that meme – I say, ‘yes, this meme is representative of some idea I either relate to or understand, or says something that promotes a message or conceit I can get behind or support’.  A great example is the widespread use of the FAIL meme.

By sharing a fail pic I am saying that I agree with that message, in that I believe that that imagery represented is a representation of the concept of failure.  Moreover, the posting or sharing of the fail pic might be in response to another situation of failure to which I am responding, such as someone sharing inaccurate information about a subject on a web forum.  Or, I might just share it because it’s funny or cool, which is also important to developing an underground brand.  Fail pics are so widespread they have certainly become a type of “underground brand” due to their widespread use.  Associations that the usage of FAIL statements often develop for users are often very powerful in nature and can develop their own meanings, too (for example, if a fail pic is used with an image of the President of the United States).  FAIL is iconographic, it is often found within certain “scenes” (such as certain weblogs or forums), and FAIL empowers the person who shares it as explained.

Companies like Busted Tees and Cafe Press have found ways to monetize memetic imagery from the web.  They appropriate and repackage some memes and print them on apparel for resale.  Nevertheless, the “if it’s digital it’s free” culture of the web doesn’t typically associate memetic imagery like the Fail meme, or lolcats, or whatever else, with durable goods.  They exist for the sake of it, just like the aNYthing underground brand.  Their niche appeal mirrors those underground brands, too.  The only benefit to be reaped from the creation of a meme is egoboo, or the boost that comes from voluntarily benefiting a community (just google egoboo and check the wikipedia entry, but it also relates to a lot of the writing of Clay Shirky).  In some cases egoboo is turned into profit by donations from fans to a meme creator, or from monetizing in some other medium, and, like the abovementioned Busted Tees, printing the meme on apparel.

Perhaps memes will have to cross from egoboo to seeking real profit through an aggressive push to get outside of the digital space – the Rick Roll (google it!) has succeeded in landing Rick Astley renewed recognition later in his career, long after the song came out.  Yet, for now, many memes like that rely on existing intellectual property and cannot be legally monetized without licensing (theft = authenticity in the web world).  So, the problem goes back to the underground to deal with.  How will the niches and microcrowds that associate with memes, that create memes, turn them into brands without losing their authenticity?  That’s probably as good a million dollar question as their will ever be.  One thing is for certain – these brands which originate via social networking and social media tools will have to propagate in the same manner.

But, like I said, if it’s digital, it’s free.  (Although, there is another article waiting to be written about how attribution of “authorship” in memes plays a factor in egoboo, which is ironic given the prevalence of stolen, re-appropriated IP, but I will save that for another time).

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