(Video courtesy of Felice Lam)

No, it’s not Psy … it’s Ben Huh from Cheezburger! Photo: © karenducey.com

Ben Huh kicked up his black and white leather dress shoes and bounced onstage mimicing the pop singer PSY, whose Gangnam Style” now has more than 600 million views and a record-breaking 4.6 million likes. It was a brilliant intro to his presentation on Internet memes at the Seattle Interactive Conference that — not surprisingly — was about using the power of humor to connect to your audience.

Huh, the founder and CEO of Cheezburger, spent 50 minutes in front of a standing-room only crowd talking about the psychology behind memes and why brands with personality tend to develop better customer engagement.

Huh said that people ask themselves several internal questions before clicking away on the internet like, “Do I trust you?” or, “Do I have the time?”

He added that the unique part of memes, or any online image, is that “they are easy.”

“They require zero commitment,” he said. “The lowly image is still one of the most powerful ways to communicate.”

Huh said memes are a three step process:

  1. Determine your campaign’s meme framework
  2. Develop effortless and fun meme tools
  3. Harness a community and spread the meme.

“You want to give people tools to recreate that,” he added.

Huh has kept busy with the launch of his online journalism startup Circa. Cheezburger’s reality TV show, LOLwork, also debuts next week on Bravo.

Previously on GeekWireJust when you thought it couldn’t get worse: Tech execs dance Gangnam Style

Karen Ducey is a Seattle photojournalist. Check out her work here. GeekWire’s Taylor Soper contributed to this post.

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