Elon Musk is the absolute king of Memes. He even has his own “meme dealer.”

What Elon Musk has done is create a promotional powerhouse made up of memes. He doesn’t seem to need to spend a dollar on advertising, because his memes (the ones he does and the ones his fans do) become viral and sell Teslas and the brand of Elon Musk. Some have called him a “meme-sharing eccentric.” Yet to marketers, he is a meme-sharing genius.

What is a meme? Webster actually has a definition if you were wondering, “meme \MEEM\ noun. 1 : an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture. 2 : an amusing or interesting item (such as a captioned picture or video) or genre of items that is spread widely online especially through social media.”

I’m not going to get into the etymology, but its first use was as mineme in 1976 (What!? It’s not really a new word?) and it was then shortened to meme.

The most difficult part of memes is that they need to be funny, disrespectful and a little weird. Plus, you have no control over what others will do with memes they make about you. But that is viral, kid.

What do all of these memes mean? Money. Mr. Musk just points to his sales and stock price when people ask about his meme marketing. It’s a new age. I wonder how he will be marketing his Mars mission with memes.