One of the new frontiers of digital advertising is the use of memes to increase a brand’s popularity. The idea is simple: take a piece of media, like a scene from a famous film or a stock photo, and give it a new meaning by superimposing text on it.

But despite their apparently straightforward structure, corporations so far have rarely been able to successfully use memes in their ads. Few campaigns have created brand exposure, while most have resulted in PR disasters. Toppers Pizza’s failed attempt to make a trendy catchphrase into a meme is a fine example of how companies fail to understand the well-defined rules that structure absurdist millennial humor. Toppers tried to play on the assonance between the meme’s catchphrase “Shorty goes low, low, low” and its product’s name, “Buffalo” Chicken Topper pizza. However, the original meme was a reference to a T-Pain song, and the joke relied on creatively reimagining the context in which the catchphrase could be used.

Another striking example of the disconnect between corporate advertisers and the cultural trend they try to employ is the “Such HealthCare.gov” meme campaign, launched by the US Department of Health and Human Services. This utilized another popular meme depicting a Shiba Inu dog (“Doge”) and its internal monologue, filled with incorrect and infantile English expressions. The campaigners failed to understand the ironic nature of the meme and used it to promote Obamacare — to the bemusement of the younger audience it was targeting.