Observations: Creating 'Memes' While Creating Advertising
Betsy D. Gelb professor of marketing and entrepreneurship, University of Houston
Can ads be designed to make more likely the replication of the message they convey - to enable their message to 'live on' elsewhere after the advertising no longer is broadcast, published, or mailed? Yes, they can, according to theory that postulates the existence of 'memes': self-replicating ideas that move through time and space without further effort from the source.
Therefore, any communication that produces its own repetition, possibly in a new form, is by definition a 'meme' (pronounced 'meem'). A...