Brand meme templates that still look like your brand

The best brand meme templates are formats you design yourself: text-led layouts in your own colours and type that make a joke about your audience's everyday life. A POV card, an expectation versus reality split or a starter pack can be as funny as any viral image, and because you made it, you own it, it looks like you, and it still says your name when it is screenshotted and shared somewhere else. Memes work for brands when the joke is about the customer's world. They fail when they are an advert wearing a costume.

When brand memes work, and when they don't

A meme lands when someone reads it and thinks "that's me", then sends it to a friend who is in the same situation. That only happens if the joke is specific. A plant shop joking about overwatering will be shared by plant people. The same shop joking about Mondays will be scrolled past, because every account on earth has made that joke.

Six brand meme templates you can make your own

These formats are built from words and layout, not borrowed pictures, so you can design them once in your own look and reuse them for months. Each one is shown with an example for a different kind of business.

How to keep memes on brand

Memes are designed to be screenshotted, cropped and reposted. Once a post leaves your profile, your handle often goes with it, or doesn't. The only thing guaranteed to travel is what is inside the image. That makes your look more important on a meme than on almost any other post.

1. 1

   Use your own background every time

   The same gradient or texture on every meme makes them recognisable as a series, even when cropped. Brand consistency explains why repetition builds recognition.

2. 2

   Keep your typeface, not a meme font

   White Impact with a black outline signals "generic meme". Your own heading font says it is yours. Text layout for social media posts helps with sizes.

3. 3

   Put a small name inside the frame

   Your handle or wordmark, small, in a corner that won't be cropped. Not a large logo: that turns the joke into an ad.

4. 4

   Build each format once as a template

   Lay out the POV card, the split and the list once, then only change the words. You can make a new meme in minutes when the moment is right.

5. 5

   Write in your normal voice

   Your brand voice applies here too. If you never swear anywhere else, don't start here. The joke should sound like the person who answers your messages.

Timing and judgement

Trending formats move fast, and a brand arriving three weeks late looks out of touch. If you can't post within a day or two of a format appearing, stick to your own evergreen templates instead. They are never late, because they were never borrowed.

• Pause scheduled memes when there is bad news in your community or the wider world.
• Never joke about a customer, even anonymously.
• Ask a colleague who isn't online all day whether they get it. If they don't, most followers won't either.
• Keep memes to a small share of your posts. Content pillars helps you balance them with useful content.
• If a joke misfires, delete it, say so briefly and move on.

Memes sit naturally beside other engagement formats such as polls and this or that posts. For a signature look that makes even a quick joke unmistakably yours, Gradiently Marks are living gradient backgrounds that only their owner can export with, and the Mark keeps a calm area behind your words so the punchline always reads.