Green screen memes: borrow the joke, keep your brand

A green screen meme is a reaction clip cut out and dropped over a picture, with a caption on top. People already know the reaction, so the only new thing they have to read is your caption. That’s why the format travels.

What makes one work

The meme does the feeling. The picture sets the scene. The caption connects the two to something your customer has lived through.

“when a regular says ‘the usual’ and you actually remember” works because every café owner has felt it. The reaction clip only has to look delighted.

Write the caption from the customer’s side

Most brand memes fail by talking about the brand. Write about the moment instead:

• The small win your customer gets (“POV: you finally found a roast that isn’t bitter”)
• The problem right before your product (“me walking into the café four minutes before close”)
• The thing only your customers would get

Keep it under two lines. If it needs a third, the joke isn’t there yet.

The meme keeps its own sound

The original audio is half the joke, so Mani leaves it in. Don’t stack music on top.

Bring your own memes

If your niche has a reaction everyone knows, upload it. Clips can be up to 20 seconds and 50 MB, and Mani writes captions for them in your brand’s voice. Your least-used memes come up first, so the same clip doesn’t keep appearing.

Behind each meme goes a picture from Mani’s library or one of your own photos.

Keep it kind

Laugh with your customers, not at them, and leave competitors out of it. A meme that punches down gets shared for the wrong reasons.

Green screen memes are one of the four Burst Mode formats. See more on the memes page.