Memes In Public Service Messaging

Memes For Public Service Messaging

Using memes as a social media strategy has become more acceptable – even for public service messages. We spotlight one agency riding the waves of this trend for public education.

How the MSE is reaching out to various audiences via memes and pop culture.

Memes have existed as early as the 1920s. These memes are often easily replicable images or videos that humorously portray an idea. Over the past decade, memes such as Doge have become an internet cultural phenomenon. This success has led many brands and organisations to adopt meme marketing, but what about Singapore’s Public Service?

To get their public education messages across in fun ways, the social media team at the Ministry of Sustainability and the Environment (MSE) use familiar memes with tweaks. Sometimes, it’s a mosquito character on a dating app looking for someone to spend time with. Other times, it’s a dinosaur teaching us how to recycle right.

Mr Lai Han-Wei, Senior Assistant Director in MSE’s Digital and Visual Communications team, said: “The team members here are all digital natives and so we're very comfortable with Internet culture. Memes have always been about communicating ideas quickly and easily, so using them came naturally in our own communications efforts.

“With the Internet and social media, audiences have never been as diverse, and there’s a lot out there in cyberspace competing for attention. Using memes is an effective way for our messaging to reach audiences, particularly the younger crowd.”

And this has worked. These entertaining memes have been shared widely, helping to spread awareness of the key messages embedded within. Let’s take a look at some of MSE’s most striking posts on social media.

WhatsApp Greetings

Good morning messages often include emojis and inspirational phrases in mismatched fonts, set against vibrant, scenic backdrops.

Do these pictures ring a bell? You might have seen them in your family group chats. In 2021, MSE posted a series of similar greetings on their social media pages. These posts parody the greeting images that some older Singaporeans (or “boomers”) circulate in WhatsApp groups.

Good Morning greetings typically contain wholesome behavioural reminders as well as well-wishes, says Han-Wei. MSE’s versions had a creative twist: sustainability messages such as “Remember to turn off your tap”, “Say yes to waste less” and “Support local produce”.

This idea was sparked by a team member with “an unusual habit” of collecting greetings from her family’s WhatsApp groups. The team saw potential in using them to appeal to Singaporeans across demographics.

Han-Wei said: “By incorporating climate action tips while maintaining their distinctive style, we hoped to appeal both to the older folks, as well as to younger people who see them as simultaneously odd, fascinating and heart-warming.”

These hilarious posts received nearly 4,600 likes on Instagram, and 1,500 shares on Facebook. “I think the sheer novelty of a government agency posting such eccentric pictures took people by surprise, and showed that public officers could be in on the joke too.”

Memes and Copyright

Generally, a person who creates original content owns the copyright to their material. They have the right to prevent others from reproducing, publishing, performing, adapting their work, or distributing it to the public.

Memes sometimes borrow from original content such as television shows and music. Do these rules then still apply?

Under the Singapore Copyright Act, copying the whole or a part of a copyrighted work is permissible as long as it is considered “fair use”. Fair use for criticism or review, research and study, and reporting of news would not constitute copyright infringement. In certain situations, there is no requirement to identify the original creator when it is not known or able to be found with reasonable effort.

Spot the Difference

Why buy a chicken to freeze when you can buy chicken that’s already flash-frozen?

In a post featuring Pam from TV comedy The Office, photos of two identical chickens drive home the point that there is little difference between the two options. Published at a time of fear over Singapore’s chicken supply, the MSE Facebook post goes on to explain that buying frozen chicken may in fact be the better choice for optimum freshness and nutrition.

This format is known as an exploitable, or a meme template others can use by replacing the words or photos in the image. MSE’s social media team has used templates such as the Drake “Hotline Bling” meme and Spider-Man pointing meme to encourage viewers to save time and money, and reduce waste.

Heroes and Villains

Mosquito Girl is a 22-year-old character whose targets are humans who skip showers, have blood type “O”, and wear certain types of clothing.

Why do some people get bitten by mosquitoes more often than others? Some answers might be found in a post where the MSE imagines Mosquito Girl, a character from the Japanese anime One Punch Man, to be a dating app user looking for love.

In the post’s witty caption, the MSE suggests how to be less attractive to such predators as well as how to prevent mosquito breeding.

As a sign of viewers’ interest in pop culture and anime (and preventing mosquito bites), the post received 473 likes, 48 comments and 515 shares on Facebook, and 372 likes on Instagram.

Han-Wei adds: “Memes are a great way to show audiences that just because we work in the public sector, it doesn't mean we don't have a sense of humour too!”

Related Stories: