Memes are a popular phenomenon in internet culture, despite this fact, meme marketing has not received a lot of attention within the field of marketing research. Therefore, this thesis studies the effect meme marketing has on brand recall and sharing intention using a meme template with an unknown brand. The thesis was a quantitative study, and two questionnaires were conducted. One of the questionnaires was a meme advertisement and the other one was a questionnaire with a “serious” advertisement, the results from the studies were then compared. The thesis relied on previous research and methodology by Yang (2022) who studied meme marketing’s effect on brand recall and sharing intention. The results indicate that meme marketing has a positive effect on sharing intention compared to serious marketing. The results also indicate that meme marketing’s effect on brand recall is positive. However, the effect on brand recall was not statistically significant, but close. This thesis contributes to the understanding of meme marketing’s effect on brand recall and sharing intention compared to serious marketing. / Memes är ett populärt fenomen i internetkulturen, trotts det har inte meme-marknadsföring fått mycket uppmärksamhet inom den akademiska sfären. Denna uppsats studerar därför effekten av meme-marknadsföring och har använts sig av en populär ”meme-mall” för att studera brand recall och sharing intention. Denna uppsats var en kvantitativ studie där två enkäter genomfördes. En av enkäterna behandlade rolig meme-marknadsföring och den andra var en enkät om marknadsföring som inte är avsedd att vara rolig. Resultatet från respektive enkät undersöktes och jämfördes. Studien bygger på forskning och metodik av Yang (2022) där hon studerade meme-marknadsförings effekt på brand recall och sharing intention. Yang (2022) använde sig av två enkäter där en enkät innehåll meme-marknadsföring och en med” seriös” marknadsföring. Meme-marknadsföring tycks ha en positiv effekt på brand recall och sharing intention i jämförelse med ”seriös” marknadsföring. Dock var effekten på brand recall inte statistiskt signifikant. Denna uppsats har bidragit med förståelse och kunskap om meme-marknadsförings effekt på sharing intention och brand recall jämfört med ”seriös” marknadsföring.

Internet memes increase in popularity every year as more people join social media platforms. This has not gone unnoticed by companies that are growing marketing communications in the relatively new field of meme marketing. The purpose of this thesis is to analyze and evaluate company-posted memes with the content, form, and stance framework to identify common elements used by posts that have a high degree of consumer engagement. The method used for this study was netnography, hence the study is a qualitative study used for analyzing data on social media. The data was collected by using established criteria, following this, a qualitative and interpretive analysis was used to identify common elements within the content, form, and stance framework, which the findings are based upon.  The main findings of the empirical research were that Internet memes successfully generate consumer engagement by using varied and unique content that is enjoyable to users. Using video or picture format, along with sounds, captions, and preexisting meme templates. The findings regarding the stance of posts were that Internet memes positively affect consumer engagement by being comedic, relatable, or ironic, utilizing unserious tones and context-based communication. Internet memes that generate high degrees of consumer engagement have connections to the company's product offering, this final element was observed in every Internet meme collected for this study.