Growth hacking from a cultural evolutionary point of view.

1. Growth Hacking
Your Meme
Presentation by
Balazs Laszlo Karafiath
Cultural Alchemist
Culture2 Inc. San Francisco, CA

2. WHAT IS GROWTH HACKING?
FINDING YOUR
TEMPORARY EVOLUTIONARY NICHE.

3. A growth hacker finds the best
temporary evolutionary niche for your
meme. And the next one. And the next.
GH is taking advantage - or creating…
- a temporary opportunity that serves
as base of growth for your meme that
could be used to propel your meme
forward NOW.
WHAT IS GROWTH HACKING?

4. YES.
And I you don’t define and nurture your
meme than other will do that for you.
Not good.
AM I A MEME NOW??

5. • Your company?
“I am
important/connected.”
• Facebook
“I am not lost.”
(found?)
• UBER
“I am at home”• AirBnB
SO WHAT IS THE MEME OF…

6. SO WHAT IS A MEME?
Ideas
Thoughts
Gossips
Theories
Opinions
Beliefs
Views
Behaviors Technologies
Clues
MEMES ARE PARTICLES OF CONSCIOUSNESS
THEY GENERATE THE FLOW OF THOUGHTS & IDEAS.

7. memesare thoughts and ideas in your
mind, heart and soul.
 memes are also the conditioning that your mother
and father told you
 memes are concepts, beliefs
 a worldview created by the genes of
thought
 you make sense of the world through memes
 memes also constrain your thinking
 and memes make you suffer, because
they will clash with how the world really is
 your ego is meme-network, a narrative that
you are telling to yourself

8. WHAT DO MEMES DO?
splash
surf
shape
MEMES CREATE CULTURAL WAVES

9. We are spreading memes.
We are cultural designers.
We all are.
One billion of us.
We create our world through
thoughts.
We can change what is
possible.
It’s not about ‘going viral’.
It’s about changing the
collective mind.
Meme change is individual.
Behavior change is social.

10. 10
„Freedom
torches”
“The
Business
of Doubt”

13. MAKE
AMERICA
GREAT AGAIN

14. • Using a new product is
a new habit
• A new culture.
• The challenge:
to bridge
the cultural divide

15. HOW TO GROW YOUR COMPANY
• Find your niche
• Find your meme & archetype:
your cultural resonance
+ Create a growth culture inside the startup!
• Grow your niche

16. SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST IDEA
• The fitness of memes are determined by
– endogenous and
– exogenous factors
1) Memetic fitness: your meme has to be potent
2) Contextual consistency: have to be well
suited to the culture of the niche
• All strategies, offerings and communication
must be based on these memetic dynamics

17. • Versatility :: How well does the meme
spread from one social context to another?
• Fidelity :: Does it get lost in translation or is
it easy to copy correctly?
• Centrality :: Is the meme central to a
social group’s core identity or is it more
peripheral?
• Connectivity :: Does the meme connect
with lots of other memes or does it stand
alone?
Stickiness :: Is the meme easy to
understand and hard to forget?
MEASURING MEME STRENGTH

18. LOOK FOR THE DIFFERENCE
• A good meme is the one that spreads
• A good meme is always about CHANGE
• Change wants attention. That was then
and this is now.
• A good story is always about change

19. Culture is Science
We are looking for tipping
points in culture
At these resonance point
culture can change
We can use these leverage
points to create multiplier
effects

20. 1. Cultural Evolution. There is an interconnectedness
that creates a media-meme-mind space that you can
regard as a biological system, an eco-system.
2. Marketing as Gardening & Epidemiology. The key is
to indentify the „cultural genes” of your message, and
then start the evolutionary development: design,
spread, refine.
3. Find your niche and grow it. Learn your memetic
makup and control your meme. Otherwise others will.
4. Memes spread in networks, humans live and think in
social networks. There are hubs and treshold effects.
We all do social grooming in villages of 150 people.
5. Archetypes rule memes. Human biases rule. The
hero’s journey and a little cognitive dissonance
reduction is what we all seek.
RULES FOR CULTURE DESIGNERS

21. 6. We are tribal. We think in in-groups and out-groups.
People will connect with the memes of the product and
will stay for the community. They will join your tribe – or
won’t.
7. We are equipped with the Big Brain, full of mirror
neurons, humans think about other humans! And 90+%
of consumer behavior is imitation, what spreads with
imitation can be called a meme.
8. Ego is a memetic construct, it is a narrative
9. Emergence. That is the holy grail. Our consciousness
explained. New stories grow. The ant and the anthill.
Swarming. Success.
RULES FOR CULTURE DESIGNERS

22. • Hotmail – Ps: I love you. Get your free email at
Hotmail.
• Started with 3000 new users per day
• Reached 1 million within 6 months
• Reached 2 million 5 weeks later
• Sold to Microsoft 18 months after launch they had
12 million users - out of 70 million internet users…
• QUORA – if you want to see a reply to an interesting
question you have to create an account
• Once you created the account you get two digests a
week with interesting questions that people voted up
GROWTH HACKING EXAMPLES

23. • Airbnb hacked Craigslist to auto-post new listings
• They also used Craigslist to find listings, then
soliciting the people who posted the Craigslist ads
and asking them to place their ads on Airbnb.
• LinkedIn using Google search grew from 2 million to
200 million users by allowing users to create public
profiles to show up organically in search results.
• YouTube – using one-click Embedding. They made
it seamlessly easy for users to upload their YouTube
videos and running it like a video player on their own
website.
EXAMPLES

24. • OK Cupid uses a nice lady for onboarding. She is a
tour guide to help you in your signup journey.
• OK Cupids OKTrends created viral stories
• DropBox sends you a sad email if you signed up but
did not download the software
• Eventbrite sends an email if you have been passive
for too long
• PayPal rides the Ebay platform to get users
• Reddit creates fake users to simulate traffic
MORE EXAMPLES

25. • Build your culture, not your startup
• The desire to belong is there
• You have to build up a culture they
can believe in
• Something worth belonging to:
• Your Tribe!
• Your tribal culture will act like a
magnet – both ways!
BUILD YOUR TRIBE

26. • This is how we started
• This is who we are, why we are
here, how we are different
• This is how we identify ourselves
and each other
• Here is how we do things, this is
how we celebrate
• This is how we describe ourselves
and what we do
• This is what we are not and never
want to become
• This is our leader
BE ONE OF US NOT ONE OF THEM

27. ARCHETYPES: FOUNDATIONS OF MEMES
archetypes
memes
quotes
thoughts

28. BUILD YOUR ARCHETYPE

29. • Archetypal
connection test
– Strength of
connection to
the archetype
– Strength of
archetype in
your niche and
in social trends
SPEAK THROUGH THESE CHARACTERS

30. 1. ONCE UPON A TIME
2. EVERY DAY, EVERY DAY...
3. AND THEN ONE DAY...
4. BECAUSE OF THAT…
AND BECAUSE OF THAT...
5. AND EVER SINCE THEN...
BUILD YOUR STORY

31. USE THESE MEMETIC HOOKS

32. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION
Balazs Laszlo Karafiath, PhD
DrKarafiath@gmail.com

33. • Build your tribe
• Build your meme & archetype
• Build your story
THREE EXERCISES

34. • Your Creation story
• Your Creed
• Your Icons
• Your Rituals
• The Pagans
• Your Sacred words
• Your Leader
BUILD YOUR TRIBE

35. BUILD YOUR MEME & ARCHETYPE
• Archetypal
connection test
– Strength of
connection to
the archetype
– Strength of
archetype in
your niche and
in social trends

36. 1. ONCE UPON A TIME
2. EVERY DAY, EVERY DAY…
3. AND THEN ONE DAY…
4. BECAUSE OF THAT, AND BECAUSE OF THAT…
5. AND EVER SINCE THEN...
BUILD YOUR STORY