I faked a viral protest in France

Sup memelords,

2 weeks ago, I paid 6 French models to protest against memes in France.

Millions of views. Billionaires walking by. The cops investigating.

Here’s how it went down:

Planning the protest:

First, the obvious question:

“Why did you hire 6 French girls to protest memes in their bikinis???? 

Because it’s illegal for them to be topless.

I know. It’s bullshit!

Trust me, it was my first thought too.

When I hit up my protest guy in April (yes, I have a protest guy, you don’t??), I told him I need 6 topless French girls protesting memes in Cannes.

He informs me it’s actually illegal to protest topless in France.

WHAT!

I gotta be honest with you dear reader at this point I really thought about calling it off.

It’s not that I really wanted to see some tits (i’m married), but it was more commitment to the bit. One could even say my commitment to the bit is greater than commitment to the tit. The whole meme is that French girls protest topless for stupid shit all the time!

I serious thought about calling it off.

I didn’t want people to think I was unauthentic or misrepresenting French culture by having them wear bikinis instead of topless. Was that disrespectful? I was worried it’d be like making Jews wear cowboy hats instead of yamulkes.

But alas, desperate times call for desperate measures.

Fine, I’ll take 6 French models in bikinis.

“Wait, wait, wait why are you planning a protest in France at all???”

Oh right.

My team and I were at Cannes Lions, the biggest marketing festival in the world.

Every big ad agency, marketer, influencer, creator, and marketing-tech company was there. All our big potential customers and billions of dollars getting boozy in France.

It was a week full of parties that could be its own blog post.

But the point here is this was our first year there and I needed to show all the CMOs, billionaire tech CEOs, and ad execs that memes are the future of marketing without breaking the budget. See, I raised $3M for memelord.com which sounds like a lot until you realize Canva is a $42B company and spent at least $1M on their fancy cabana

So instead of breaking the bank on a cabana, I did what I do best and go scrappy.

I drop $20,000 on some French girls. $5,000 on 2 videographers. My protest guy and I decide on what the cardboard signs will say. And then I go back focused running memelord.com as per usual for the next 2 months.

Meanwhile, my protest guy is cooking.

The day of the protest:

Me and my team meet at the spot at 10:30.

The girls start showing up at 10:45.

It’s a little bit awkward honestly. What do you say to people who barely speak English that you are paying to protest memes to? “Uh do ya like memes?”

The rest of the girls and the on-the-ground coordinator show up soon.

Then the videographers.

I tell them the plan: we’re going to walk up and down the prime boulevard where all the marketers are, hold up the signs, and then hit the beach for a photoshoot.

It’s beyond chaotic.

I’m basically directing 6 french girls and 2 videographers and all I know in French is pickup lines and how to ask for a cheese sandwich (sandwich du fromage).

But we start walking and people are immediately staring.

We’re in the middle of a corporate marketing conference in the middle of a French heat wave and there’s French chicks in bikinis chanting about memes.

You have to be insane not to stare (and that was the goal).

We walk all throughout the town.

We hear people asking.

“Are memes fascist??”

“Why are they protesting memes?”

“What is Memelord???”

It’s magnificent. The plan is working. People are snapping photos.

And then the cops come.

For whatever reason, the cops in Cannes carry massive machine guns. We’re freaked out, but keep going. Then they come back and start asking us about our video.

The videographer tells me it’s no big deal ,they just need to make sure they’re not in it, me and my team are freaking. But the video guy was right. It turned out it was no big deal, they just walked out. Hell yeah.

We keep going.

We finish up the photoshoot on the beach.

And by 1 PM we’re overheated and sleepy.

We say our goodbyes and honestly me and my team can’t believe we pulled this shit off.

We’re joking we’re not going to make it out of the country.

While we’re waiting for the official footage, me and my team start leaking the vids with Snapchat-style footage on X and Instagram.

Post-protest video + results + learnings

We pay extra to get the official footage in under 24H while Cannes is still trending.

AND BY GOD THE FRENCH FUCKING COOKED.

The music and cuts are fucking insane.

I drop it on X then hit a bunch of meme pages on IG.

Badaboom.

Mama, we made it (to the fake news).

The result: 10s of millions of views in under 24H.

Cool, we got some views.

But like I said in the beginning, the goal wasn’t large-scale virality.

The real goal is far more important: niche virality.

I don’t give a fuck about views. All I care about is money. All I cared about was the right marketers and potential big customers seeing it. And it worked!

• One of our customers is the CEO of a $1B+ ad-tech company and told me he walked by and was dying laughing.

• The VP of Product at an $80B company wrote a post about me and we have a call booked this week.

• The Head of Socials at a $1B+ social network hit me up and said “You sly dog”

• New customers are saying they found us from the protest and it was the first time they heard about Memelord.com 

All without spending $1M on a fancy beach cabana.

My two cents on viral stunts:

If you want to try viral stunts, start small.

If you’ve been following me for years, you know this ain’t nothing new.

3 years ago, I got 24M views reading a book called “How to Live With a Small Penis” on the subway. Last July 4th, I launched a viral boycott of Celsius to change their name to Fahrenheit.

You think this shit is big? Just wait til next year!!!

I’ve been doing this type of shit since I was a kid selling duct tape wallets and making youtube videos. Every year it just gets bigger because I get more practice deploying capital into my insane ideas. Just a few years ago, I scared spending $100 on a silly video idea. Now we can drop $50k and I know we can make that money back.

That’s the hardest part of this all: deploying capital and taking risks in your insane ideas.

If you’re like me and you have insane ideas, then it’s hard for anyone to take you seriously (even yourself at first). You have to go do it yourself. Don’t fucking ask anyone. Just tell them when it’s done. Fait accompli. Take the risk yourself. At first, it’s very scary. Then it gets easier. Your gut gets stronger. Your intuition for ideas bigger. You don’t sound so insane anymore. Then suddenly you trust yourself.

So start now.

Start yesterday.

While everyone else is going boring, leverage the oldest form of marketing: humor.

1 unhinged meme video can change your life. A kid like me with a meme page can go get millions of views for $20. Brands can make millions of dollars with meme pages. That’s why I love memes so much and why I started a meme marketing software memelord.com. For kids like me who didn’t have million-dollar budgets and needed to go break through the noise and BS.

Memes are proof you don’t need to break the bank, you just need to break the mold.

Embrace your insanity, memelords.

It may just pay off.

Jason “The Memelord” Levin

Founder of Memelord.com