engleski

Memetic Branding Among Teens

By placing themselves in certain social groups teens often decide on their likes and dislikes, their values, future occupations and principles. Brands play a special role in the process of differentiation, whereas the products that accompany a certain brand are worn as badges of belonging to a certain social group. Three types of teen-memes have been identified: language (sayings and phrases), fashions and skills (type of clothes worn, hairstyles, make-up etc), and beliefs (attitudes adopted by the members of a certain social group). Teens create their identity by assembling a set of memes, which eventually results in 'memeplexes'. Thus, if there is a significant overlap between their own memeplexes and those of a certain social group (i.e. subculture), they are perceived as members of it. Due to accessibility of mobile technology and internet, the meme reproduction evolves faster than ever. Consequently, they are an important marketing tool, and knowing which memes are a part of the identity of youth marketers' target groups is very important for their business. Dawkins listed the following three characteristics for the successful replication of meme: copying-fidelity, number of copies per time unit and longevity. Heylighen proposes a four-stage model for memetic replication: assimilation of a meme by a host, retention within the host's memory ; expression by the host through behavior, language or some other medium, transmission of the expression to one or more other hosts. At each stage the non-fit memes are discarded and only the toughest survive to pass through all four stages. In this paper we studied the appearance of a certain cultural phenomenon that is currently spreading among teenagers in Croatia, the so called 'turbofolk' music. We have studied two researches conducted in Croatia, one made by the Croatian newspapers Jutarnji list and the Mediana agency, and another conducted among the high-school students in Sisak.

Meme; Memetic Branding Among Teens; Turbofolk as a Memplex

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