Secure your place at the Digiday Publishing Summit in Vail, March 23-25
If you haven’t heard, Grumpy Cat isn’t letting itself fade into Internet culture obscurity. The cat meme has morphed into beverage line: Grumpaccino.
Memes, while they become wildly popular and unanimously recognizable for a moment, are fads. They are fleeting. Brands, on the other hand, are built for the long haul. Grumpy Cat hopes to cheat its fate as a short-lived phenom, and Digiday is fully behind this sad cat’s heroic efforts.
In that spirit, we came up with a few more meme products that could help some Web culture phenomena extend their recognition for long-term brand success.
Check out these four meme products that should have been.
Y U NO Try Greek Yogurt
The Greek yogurt craze has reached fever pitch, with every “Big Yogurt” brand trying to get a piece of the action. This would be the perfect opportunity for Y U NO guy to win the Greek yogurt wars with Y U NO Try Greek Yogurt? The tagline is built right into the product. Perfect. While most Greek yogurt brands target women, Y U NO Try Greek Yogurt appeals to a new male target audience who wouldn’t normally know about Greek yogurt — the kind of dudes who trawl around Reddit and weird corners of Tumblr.
Chocolate Rain Sexy Sauce
Surely you remember Tay Zonday, aka “Chocolate Rain” guy? Zonday needs to keep that chocolate rain train going and capitalize on his sexy image with his own Chocolate Rain Sexy Sauce — you know, for your ice cream sundae or the bedroom. Just put on some Tay Zonday originals in the background, and before you know it, your date will be ready for the sexy sauce.
Scumbag Steve Life Insurance
Digiday interviewed Blake Boston, aka Scumbag Steve this past March, and it turns out he’s a pretty nice guy and business-minded too — he told Digiday he has his own entertainment company. But why stop there? Scumbag Steve Life Insurance is a new kind of life insurance plan. You pay what you can each month, and God forbid something happens to you, your best bro will maybe get some of that money?
Success Kid Spin
Move over SoulCycle, there’s a new spin class in town: Success Kid Spin Class. Tries spinning for first time, does it at full resistance. 
More in Marketing
In graphic detail: How Anthropic’s Pentagon refusal is paying off in downloads, brand trust and enterprise deals
OpenAI’s Pentagon deal seemed to spark uproar among its users, many of whom were against it. Anthropic’s refusal to agree to the terms was seen by users as the more trustworthy alternative.
How AI could disrupt retail media’s $38 billion search ad market
ChatGPT and other AI chatbots could divert shoppers from retailer sites, putting the $38B retail search market at risk.
‘Brand safety is moving from fear to curiosity’: Zefr’s Raddon on content-level accreditation – and what it exposes about the industry
The threat is no longer a discrete piece of bad content that a keyword list or a domain block can catch. Its volume.