Brands say the biggest benefit of memes is that they self-promote due to the high shareability. “Memes are engaging and entertaining. They are the fastest form of dopamine to hit you. The user attracts it,” says Neha Ahuja, director of marketing at Spotify.

It’s not just about brands creating memes. Significant developments often give memes a life of their own and give brands an unexpected boost. For example, when Zomato made a stunning D-Street debut last year, social media was flooded with memes featuring Swiggy. The most popular was: “Main Bahut Peeche Reh Gaya Na?(I got left behind, right?).

Plus, creating memes is easy, so brands can capitalize on events in real-time, says Amritansu Nanda, Zepto’s chief marketing officer. “Not only are memes highly relevant to Zepto’s young ‘digital natives’ audience, they’re also perfect for a mass segment like groceries. On Instagram in particular, we’ve seen solid engagement, capturing topics like business life, Mondays, paydays or trending Bollywood references about everyday essentials,” says Nanda.

OTT company MX Player has also used memes on major social media sites to promote their shows. “One example is the ‘Kaand vs. Kalakaar’ template that was released to promote our show Matsya Kaand,” says Marketing Director Sandeep Das. Because memes are funny, engaging, and relatable, they get more reach than other promotional content, Das says. Neel Gogia, co-founder of IPLIX Media & Layers says memes have higher chances of being shared on social media than regular content, in addition to having higher retention than short videos. “Branded social media pages struggle to get engagement. Because of this, various new-age brands have started incorporating memes into their social media pages,” says Gogia.