Objective:

Tuna the chiweenie is a Instagram famous dog who is basically notorious for being ugly cute. His owner created an Instagram, where 1.9 million followers rejoice in their love for tuna. Tuna has actually been the face of memes in the past, (we’ll get to that later), but it’s been a while.

So I wanted to recreate this tuna meme culture in 2017. What I’ve always loved about the seven year-old tuna, is how relatable his faces are. That was essentially the source of my inspiration for this viral challenge. I wanted to create a meme that reflected what it’s like to really go through #thestruggle.

I also wanted to create content that was relevant to Tuna’s follower base: millennials in college. My goal was to use Tuna’s facial expressions in a way that was relatable to college students and twenty-somethings…so much that they’d want to engage with the meme.

Imgur meme: This is the final meme that was used for this challenge! Ta-da tuna!

Twitter Webcard Tweet: This Twitter webcard went out on Friday November 6th. The Twitter Ads Engagement below shows that this one tweet received 1,679 impressions, with a cost of $2.98 per 1K impressions.

Bringing the #meme days back with my fave, @Tuna_the_dog bc this week is somethin' else. #mood #collegelife #NHsmc https://t.co/00iQszS1dH

— Kennedy Patlan (@kennedypatlan) November 6, 2017

Twitter Ads Engagement and Spend (Screenshot):

Campaign Analysis: With tuna, it was incredibly interesting- because I received about 600 views within the first three hours of my post. The first day I launched my tuna meme ended up being the most successful day in terms of Imgur views. I had already surpassed the class expectation of 500 by then. I think my hashtags, #doge, #BS, and #thestruggleisreal probably felt relevant to my viewers, because I had kept them in mind when I was curating the caption.

I’m not quite sure what the push was in terms of its virality– was it the fact that it was a dog post? Tuna himself as Tuna/Pheteven fans rejoiced? I don’t think the metrics can tell me, which is where qualitative data comes in handy these days. I had three comments on imgur, two of which referenced old tuna memes, (#TB to his Pheteven days). I’m assuming that tuna’s fans also enjoyed this simply because, it’s tuna!

After some revisions and editing- I felt that Twitter was the most appropriate platform to focus my attention, rather than my personal Instagram or Facebook. Metrics are crucial in these campaigns and I felt like Twitter’s ability to retweet, favorite, and interact with the media gave me a better measurement than a personal, private Instagram account. Tone and content are also important considerations. I thought about the fact that my tuna meme didn’t necessarily reflect my usual content on my Instagram and Facebook channels. This ended up being another reason why I stuck to Twitter and Imgur, especially since those platforms had proven to be successful.

Unfortunately, I did not receive any reposts or likes from tuna’s accounts or any other doggie influencers. I think with some more pushes and a better profile presence for that sort of stuff would be an asset if I ever gave this another go around!

Final Engagement Numbers: Overall, it was successful for a week of smaller-scale media distribution. Check out the final numbers below:

• Twitter Impressions: 1,679
• Imgur Views: 845
• Total Engagement: 2,524