Idea Archeology

zoom in on the syrup pic.twitter.com/omRBupjrXq

— Denny's (@DennysDiner) March 1, 2017

One of the Genius Steals creativity exercises is demystifying ideas as combinations by exploring the inspiration elements that informed an idea. We call it idea archeology.

This is harder the further the idea takes the inspiration and easier the less far it has gone, but no idea comes from nowhere. “It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take them to." - Jean-Luc Godard.

Good ideas are, to steal from Aristotle, "lucid, pleasing and strange", because the achieve clarity and satisfy the mind through the combination of non-obvious things. 

Remember, "A good poet [or idea] will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest.” 

A few days ago I tweeted this: 

👌 here is a new meme format to steal 🤣 https://t.co/xZST6iYvXj

— Faris (@faris) February 26, 2017

Since the embed doesn't resolve, it was quote Tweeting this 

zoom into the dog nose pic.twitter.com/DjHG0QhGw9

— snck ★彡 (@SNCKPCK) February 25, 2017

This was the first time I had seen the zoom meme - and the amount of coverage it has received since suggest I'm not alone. Buzzfeed called it a new meme. USA Today covered it a week later, which often happens with online to offline. 

A few days before this zoom meme tweet, a parody account called Nihilist Arby's tweeted this: 

Hey gang! This Presidents' Day remember: regardless of your political affiliation, you're closer to death than you've ever been
Eat arbys.

— Nihilist Arby's (@nihilist_arbys) February 20, 2017

Arby's is a competitor of Denny's, so the social media team would be doing competitive monitoring of the brand and the brand term, which would include parody accounts.

Add the zoom meme to the Arby's tweet and voila - you have one of the most shared brand posts ever. The CMO even got this article in Adweek to explain the strategy behind the tweet:

“While we’re thrilled about the response we’ve received to our take on the ‘zoom’ meme, for us it’s just another great example of our social media team knowing our brand—and its audience—and using that connection to tap into timely topics that are trending online.”