Over the past decade, video has become the dominant medium on the internet, with social networks and publishers prioritizing mass reach and viewership. This trend has transformed advertising, changing our web experience to one of passive consumption where we primarily watch and consume content.
While video remains a powerful tool for storytelling, there is a shift towards participatory media formats gaining traction in social spaces. This is evidenced by the rise of memecoins, which represent a new form of digital content creation based on internet culture.
These memecoins unite people and offer new insights for marketers through their sustained niche traction and the active creation of content by communities. Projects like Dogecoin use decentralized marketing infrastructure to drive virality and engagement, giving fans an active role in brand-building and creating community economies through tokens and airdrops.
Memecoins are transforming digital marketing by incentivizing community-driven content creation and engagement. Memecoins use tokens to incentivize communities to post, allowing fans to earn points by organizing and advocating for their community.
This approach enables projects to quickly trend on platforms and drive awareness and trust through organic content creation. In 2023, the meme inspired $WIF token’s community of holders directed real-time content creation and drove advertising, exemplifying the influence of user participation in shaping a memecoin’s success.
Memecoins function as open storyworlds, transforming through user participation and providing an opportunity for the community to shape the project’s success across a long-term roadmap and a real-time market. They challenge the traditional narrative of digital experiences, presenting storytelling as an inherently participatory medium.
The emergence of memecoins prompts us to reconsider digital experiences and imagine interaction-based formats as increasingly important to marketers and fans beyond traditional media.