A Multimodal Discourse Analysis of Mememarketing Strategies Used by Pakistani Brands on Instagram

This study attempts to understand meme marketing dynamics in the Pakistani online media landscape. It focuses on how Pakistani brands using memes take advantage of cultural references, wordplay, trendy templates, and music to engage the online user base. This study employs a qualitative design utilizing the multi-modal analysis to examine 87 meme-based posts from the Instagram pages of 5 Pakistani brands across 4 industries: Men's grooming products, fragrances, ride-hailing service, and baking. This study is guided by theoretical frameworks such as narrative transportation theory, Shifman's 3 meme dimensions, and self-congruity theory. The findings revealed that brands used local cultural references, religious motifs, regional music, and wordplay to engage their demographics. Brand logos and products were imbedded in the memes and humor styles such as self-depreciation, absurdism, sarcasm, pop-culture, visual puns, and wordplay were used.