A meme is a concept or behavior that spreads via learning or imitation. That idea isn't rigid, but instead changes and is adapted to the new context in which it is being used.  A meme can be as diverse as a bit of technology or a piece of advice; it's essentially anything that can be adopted by other people. The easier it is to adapt, the sooner the meme becomes part of the cultural zeitgeist.

With the rapid spread of ideas on the Internet, memes have exploded online. An Internet meme starts with a song or catchphrase, for example, that is spread virally. Bloggers often add their own spin or humor to the original idea and that sparks even more discussion. One of the most popular Internet memes is LOLCats, where cat photos are paired with grammatically incorrect captions. If you want to track Internet memes, you can use a service like GoogleTrends to look at a concept's popularity through search engine results.

Marketers have tried to take advantage of memes, which are essentially viral campaigns. The challenge is to discover what makes one meme successful, while another languishes.

Origin
Researcher Richard Dawkins coined the term "meme" in his 1976 work, The Selfish Gene, as a "unit of cultural transmission." He used it to describe how evolution could account for the proliferation of religious ideas or building techniques.

A mashup is the melding of two sources of material or data that when combined create a new utility or something completely different.

The concept of a mashup dovetails with the rise of social networking as websites like Digg or Reddit, acting as aggregators, pull together news or feeds from multiple sources. That platform is then often designed to be interactive, allowing users to share opinions, reviews, or update information in a fashion similar to Wikipedia.

The idea of creating web-based applications is also a popular choice for mashups as developers have used mapping software, such as Google Maps, to create everything from restaurant guides to real estate comparison sites. Mashups have also been popular in music as artists sample parts of another song to remix an entirely new song.

The mashup is indicative of the way we now consume media as traditional sources are intermingled with online campaigns in an attempt to discover what appeals to consumers.

Origin:

Mashups are considered a part of Web 2.0. The term was first used to describe a web application that pulls together content from a variety of sources to perform a specific function, whether it is comparing airfare rates or finding new restaurants.

A fansumer is a consumer online, who is a promoting a brand through word-of-mouth marketing. It is a direct reference to Facebook's "fan" designation, wherein a user can be a fan of a given product or celebrity and establish a connection on the social network. A fansumer identifies with a brand's values and promotes it as a trusted voice to those within his or her online community.

Accordingly, the ways in which products are being marketed have shifted online. As brands accumulate information about consumers' preferences, they can place advertisements in front of customers who are more likely to champion their message. Companies are now becoming personalities on Facebook, with brands like Seventeen encouraging people to become fans online and promising insider access.

Corporations seek out fansumers to act as brand loyalists, translating the virtues of a product or service online into the new world of social media.

Origin:

Forrester Research introduced the concept of the fansumer in order to describe the evolution of the consumer online as they interact with targeted advertising on social networking sites.

The uncanny valley is a theory that suggests there is a tipping point where people will reject digital or technological representations that appear too similar to human beings. By making artificial movement or speech appear too natural, a robotics or model designer will inadvertently trigger feelings of revulsion. The concept of the uncanny valley initially only referred to robotics, but as computer graphics have evolved, the same phenomenon has been observed in the world of film and video animation.

The movie "Polar Express" was panned, with critics contending that the motion capture process created animated characters that were more disturbing than cuddly. And video gamers have remarked in recent years that digital characters are becoming unsettling.

The idea of the uncanny valley has even been extended to photo retouching, as consumers have difficulty reconciling digitally altered photos with their expectations of a subject's appearance. A recent advancement in photorealistic characters from design firm Image Metrics may have provided an answer by analyzing specific movements and timing gestures.

Origin:

Japanese robotics inventor Masahiro Mori defined the concept in 1970. He was looking to explain why people suddenly rejected his creations as they became more evolved. Mori based his theories on the philosophies of Ernst Jentsch and Sigmund Freud, in which both men expounded on the idea that something can be familiar and unknown at the same time.

Correction: One of our eagle-eyed readers noted that the connection between Mori's theory and the work of Freud and Jentsch was made after his postulate was released. Mori's work was not based on their philosophies, it is just a correlation that has been drawn by subsequent researchers.

The 2008 Summer Olympics was one of the most marketing and branding-dense spectacles the world has ever seen. Not only did brands from all over the world and from many different segments strut their stuff in Beijing, but the world also witnessed a large scale branding effort on the part of an entire country - China.

So now that the torch has been passed onto London for 2012, and we've had a few weeks to digest our victories (go USA!), we can really look back and see which brands struck gold and, well, those that did not.

Contextual marketing is online advertising placed and appearing according to how relevant it is to the content the consumer is viewing in response to a search. It is targeted advertising that looks to align with the interests of a web surfer.

Google AdSense is the most popular form of contextual marketing. A search engine bot, known as Mediabot, indexes the material on a website and determines which advertisements submitted to Google are a match. Search engines, including Yahoo! and Microsoft, display advertisements on search results pages. Those advertisements are selected based on the key words that a person enters into the search engine.

The idea of contextual marketing has been controversial because critics claim it represents an invasion of privacy. In 1999, when the search marketing company DoubleClick (now owned by Google) attempted to use the information it had collected online about consumers to create targeted promotions offline, the corporation was taken to court over its privacy policies. Public reaction led online marketers to focus on delivering marketing messages that drive responses without being intrusive.

Origin

Contextual marketing is based on the idea of personal profiling, where information about web surfers is collected via cookies. In 1995, permanent cookie technology was invented, which allowed servers to send packets of information to web browsers, and vice versa, in order to track the websites visited by the person at the computer.

Participatory advertising is the idea of co-creation, where a marketer introduces a concept to the public and then asks consumers to use their creativity to expand upon that idea.

Corporations reach out to brand evangelists to ask them to create commercials or new brand messages for products they love. The user-generated content is then uploaded to brand-specific websites or video-sharing sites like YouTube. By yielding brand control, companies like MasterCard and Converse have managed to engage customers in promotion across social networks.

Participatory advertising also involves the changing manner in which people consume marketing. Instead, customers are now interacting with brand campaigns, as the Internet has moved marketers away from traditional, static methods of advertising. Under this methodology, consumers are no longer willing to passively digest product information, but instead want to form a connection with a brand. In a recent successful example, Dove leveraged this approach with the Campaign for Real Beauty, which asks consumers to help change stereotypical ideals of beauty. 

Origin:

The first examples of participatory advertising were seen in the early 1990's as Nike parlayed a series of advertisements with Michael Jordan and Bugs Bunny into the creation of a feature-length cartoon, "Space Jam." Advertising evolved into a participatory model with the introduction of the Internet and a corresponding change in consumer culture.  

Murketing is a combination of the terms murky and marketing. It is a deliberate choice by a corporation to create a brand image that is mysterious or not well-defined in order to inspire curiosity in the consumer. With technology changes and new approaches to viral and word-of-mouth advertising, it isn't immediately clear that a brand is behind a new video or message -- be it mobile phones that pop popcorn or a giant LEGO boulder chasing Indiana Jones.

A successful murketing campaign is intriguing enough that potential customers will seek to discover exactly what is being sold or who is the one selling to them. The consumer then ascribes values to the brand and is the one to proactively establish a relationship. Critics are split on whether the murketing of viral videos, like BMW's "Rampenfest" ads, will ultimately damage or save brand reputations.

Origin: New York Times columnist Rob Walker coined the term "murketing" in an article for Outside magazine when he was seeking to describe the deliberately obsequious marketing of Red Bull. He regularly explores the relationship between consumers and marketers on his blog, Murketing.com and in his new book, "Buying In."

Piggybacking is where smaller brands use well-known brand names, trademarked terms, or slogans in their online search advertisements to draw traffic to their websites. It is a growing issue for search engine marketers and Fortune 500 companies as advertising dollars shift online where brand abuse is rampant. Google's trademark policy is hands-off and encourages advertisers to resolve trademark disputes directly with a company that they believe is violating their trademark rights.

Marriott International and American Airlines contend that this practice is potentially driving up costs and confusing potential customers. American Airlines filed suit against Google last year, arguing that unchecked piggybacking was a case of trademark infringement.

Origin
Piggybacking was initially a business term that referred to reducing costs by adding a new project to an existing one. It was extended to the online arena with wireless networks to refer to computer users hopping on an unprotected wireless connection.

A digital immigrant is a generational term, used to refer to people who were born before a given piece of digital technology was invented. It is a generation of baby boomers and consumers of a certain age (even Rupert Murdoch), who are approaching technology as if it were a foreign language.

As such, digital immigrants experience the same difficulties when they come into contact with digital technology as adults. Their learning curve is steeper and they may be reluctant to adapt to new systems.

The process of assimilation is always easier for those that learned the language of our digital world while growing up. Digital immigrants are often juxtaposed with digital natives, the younger generation that is accustomed to using the wealth of digital technology. The Digital Natives project, a collaboration between Harvard University and the University of St. Gallen, is looking to understand how different generations understand and apply information.  

Origin: The term digital native is attributed to writer and consultant Marc Prensky. He coined the term in a 2005 piece for Educational Leadership, while explaining what teachers have to do to reach students based on how they currently receive and process information.