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Meme’s the word: How Lipton, Hotels.com, Heineken and their ad agencies spawned a clutch of memes

What were the creators of these ads thinking of when they came up with these meme-inspiring ads?

Three years ago, when hotels.com introduced the character “Captain Obvious”, there were many who questioned if the one-joke approach was enough to carry the campaign across TV, print, online and radio. Captain Obvious goes around mouthing self-evident stuff like All you can Eat is a hotel policy that allows you to eat all that you can.

However, Crispin Porter + Bogusky (CP+B) went ahead and the campaign, according to the agency, “exceeded the expectations of the client and the agency”. CP+B has attempted to leverage its success by providing audiences with subtly branded content to generate memes with the character.

During the 2016 US presidential elections, the agency provided a plethora of green-screen footage for people to use, and within a month, there were around 150 million views of the GIF content, according to the agency. Captain Obvious also got involved with live memes during presidential debates.

The year 2014 was a year of meme-inspiring ads. adam&eveDDB’s “Be More Tea” spot for Lipton featured The Muppets. At one point, Kermit sips from his tea casually while the animals go crazy outside.

Later, someone seized on the moment and added the caption, “But that’s none of my business” to an image of Kermit sipping a cup of Lipton, and a versatile meme was born.

The Most Interesting Man ad for Heineken’s Dos Equis beer is probably the most famous ad of them all. The ad itself was launched in 2006 but the memes took off in 2009 and are going strong even today. It led to an unending stream of memes.

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