TYPES, TIPS, AND TACTICS OF VISUAL MARKETING 29 Richard gives witty, sarcastic, and snobbish commentary on his human family’s DIY adventures. Users can create their own Richard memes, with the chance to win $200 worth of Home Depot vouchers. Home Depot CMO Trish Mueller credits the origin of the feline meme to an internal meeting last year where she proposed the idea. “Everyone has elves, reindeer, Santa, but one of the biggest things followed in the social space is cats,” said Mueller in an interview with Ad Age. “When 6 I shared this with our leadership team, our CEO got it immediately.” The focus of the Richard campaign is customer engagement by using the meme movement to tell the brand story in a simple and humorous way. With a popular Tumblr blog and a solid Twitter following, Richard is cer- tainly achieving results for the brand. Cartoons The artistic, engaging, and humorous nature of cartoons makes this medium a powerful visual storytelling tool. Think back for a moment about your personal experience with cartoons. Many of us grew up with cartoons, from collecting comic books or flipping through the newspaper to uncover the “funnies” section. Cartoons are known for being funny, and viewers delight in uncovering the story and messages through their visual sequence. With so much brand recognition and nostalgia around cartoons, they’re inherently eye-catching. Great messages and ideas for cartoons can come from anywhere, from common customer questions to key products or promotions, pop culture, memes, fun facts, and behind-the-scenes scoops about your company. Kellogg’s Pop-Tarts frequently uses cartoons as part of its visual con- tent mix to tell a fun and irreverent story around people’s cravings for Pop-Tarts. Often, the cartoons feature people using sneaky and creative ways to coax their Pop-Tart into a toaster. One such example occurred over the July Fourth holiday, where a cartoon depicted a person luring a Pop-Tart into a toaster made to look like a parade float. While inside the toaster, the Pop-Tart inquires about when to pop out, and the hungry per- son declares, “Yep, just one more minute . . .”