Up In the Air: What AirPod Memes Tell Us About the Future of Marketing

If you were on social media at all earlier this year, you probably noticed one particular meme format that took the world by storm. It wasn’t based on a funny video, a cartoon frog, or even a celebrity headline. No, this meme was about earbuds. Specifically, the AirPods, Apple’s wireless earbud that recently leapt into new levels of popularity.

A good example of a “relatable” Twitter meme whose maker clearly hopes that their followers also view themselves as poor

How do you make an object like AirPods funny, you ask? Personally, I’m not sure, since to me none of the memes are funny at all. But somebody somewhere in the social media landscape decided to joke that AirPods are for the rich. The luxury of listening to music wire-free is clearly so cutting-edge that you must be broke if you don’t own a pair.

An old meme template featuring rapper Earl Sweatshirt gets the AirPod treatment

This was confusing to me. To be fair, things got pretty interesting as the memes spun off into self-aware versions that made the first wave of AirPod lovers look goofy. But over time, as savvier Twitter users moved on and their memes were recycled on Instagram and Facebook, the joke was played straight again. AirPods, the memes loudly yelled, were for the rich. Even the ironic variations on the original meme became so widespread that their message was pretty much reverted back to the financial flex of wireless earbuds.

A great example of a so-called “ironic” meme, acknowledging the original joke is stale but still attempting to make fun of it to appear ahead of the curve

My question: how did this happen? As a social media native, I see this kind of thing often. A meaningless picture or video clip can get vaulted into a cultural touchstone overnight, and it’s almost always up to chance. But those memes aren’t usually based on something as inherently boring as AirPods, and (your mileage may vary on this one) they’re usually funny, at least at first.

You could argue that this meme’s success was caused by its relatability. Everyone heard about AirPods. Everyone saw rich people wearing them. And everyone loves to take a crack at the rich and famous. It’s not that farfetched to say that that’s all this meme was, an attempt to make fun of those who think they could instantly become members of high society by buying Apple headphones.

But that explanation wasn’t completely satisfactory to me. Maybe my sense of humor is off, but I didn’t buy that these memes were so good, they’d naturally become viral. They felt too commercial, too brand-centric. The majority of the time, young social media users ignore or make fun of corporations that post memes from their official corporate accounts. In some cases, such as that of Wendy’s, it can increase a brand’s goodwill. But most of the time, it rings hollow with a generation obsessed with image and authenticity.

This picture of Steve Buscemi from one of his cameos in 30 Rock can often be found in the replies of corporations trying to be “hip.”

What’s the solution? Native advertising. This is one of the most potent tools in a company’s arsenal, since it allows the brand to interface with its customers more casually. Rather than create an ad that will be immediately recognized as an ad, why not make a whole article? Why not partner with a platform to give a brand or product a human face, a human soul? This technique has been used in the meme era, with one great example being this article in Venture Beat, which attempted to settle the viral “Laurel Vs. Yanny” question using an AI created by Nuance Communications.

This is a great win-win for both parties involved. The company is able to get its message out there by latching on to a trending topic and a media platform. The platform is (possibly) paid for the exposure, and the timely headline drives traffic. This is an extremely common occurrence in marketing, and with how much time people spend reading articles or browsing social media these days, it’s not going anywhere.

With all that being said, is it possible that Apple did the same thing? It’s important to note that before these AirPod memes took over social media, the product was not popular. People had a couple of gripes with it. Firstly, they thought the AirPods would be easy to lose. Secondly, they were mad that Apple was selling wire-like extensions to connect the wireless AirPods to their phones. This wasn’t a popular product. In fact, it was a punchline almost immediately as social media users rebelled against Apple’s shiny new toy.

Now, Apple isn’t exactly strapped for cash. It’s possible that they sought to change the narrative around AirPods, to rehabilitate the public image of a product that could be sold for $159 USD. So why not approach a handful of popular Twitter users who are engaged with young followers and create this image overnight? It probably wouldn’t cost much, and the results could be game-changing for Apple.

We’ve seen other new forms of native advertising take shape in the form of influencer marketing, where companies filter their products through social media users with followers that trust their taste. This is a little different, in part because Apple is so big, but also because the campaign (if it was one) aggressively changed the conversation around AirPods.

The results are pretty clear; earlier this year, AirPods became the second best-selling Apple product ever in terms of sales 2 years after launch. This was in part fueled by the original memes, but also by a pretty suspicious “AirPods for Christmas” spinoff meme that gained a lot of traction late in 2018.

Paid marketing or real consumer desire? We may never know.

So maybe this is just me wearing my tinfoil hat on a little too tight. After all, it is Apple. People do love their products. But at the same time, I can’t abandon the idea that this represents a new guerrilla marketing tactic that big corporations could use to drive up interest for products among young social media users with disposable income. In a time when the most popular memes usually become news elsewhere just for trending, the overall footprint of such campaigns could be huge. If I’m right, Apple was able to use this method to turn a joke of a product (released all the way back in 2016) into one of their most successful yet.

The real test for this theory will be when Apple releases the next generation of AirPods. So far, they’ve put out limited updates to the product, mostly to improve sound quality and processing. But there are rumblings that something bigger is on the way. When the next generation of AirPods comes out, watch the social media traffic around them. Will the memes be a continuation of the original wave? Will social media users come up with a new way to make AirPods funny? Or will the new AirPods be panned out of the gate, only to be brought back by clever marketing? Either way, look out for the hype surrounding this and other major new products going forward, as it’s shockingly easy for corporate money to hijack the conversation.