How we learned to love the meme 

Behind the scenes on a new social media strategy at NTI

Nuclear and biological threats imperiling humanity might not seem like a natural fit for social media culture. Generally, fast-paced sharing and online discourse is driven by platforms that reward hyperbole, bombast, and conflict. A recent high-profile beef between two rappers dominating social feeds is a reflection of social media users’ (and their recommendation algorithms’) strong bias for such content.

But here at NTI, we’re trying to protect future generations from world-ending threats. We’ve got beefs, but they are with concepts like the overreliance on nuclear deterrence and unchecked dual-use technology. If an exchange of social media-bombs on those grounds sounds lame to you—you’re not alone.

There are other challenges. We pride ourselves on being a trusted, accurate source of innovative leadership on existential threats. We embrace nuanced perspectives that consider equities across the globe. The content we highlight is often technical. Any message we embrace must be deeply rooted in our thoughtful research and the consensus of expertise across our teams. I could go on, but the outcome here is that chasing an online fad for clout, or otherwise finding ways to farm engagement doesn’t make sense for us. It’s not who we are.

Given those parameters, posts that recite policy recommendations from a lengthy report could get lost in the intense competition for attention on social media. It’s hard to blame discerning users who are logging on for infotainment for scrolling past serious people talking about the threats that constantly lurk in the background (especially when they’re using an unintelligible suite of acronyms). Like the person at a party who always turns the music down, it doesn’t make you very popular.

But unilateral disarmament on social media isn’t an option. If we want our voices heard and our issues understood, we’ve got to meet our audiences where they are—even if going there means getting out of our comfort zone. So how do we do it? How do we slide into the discourse without looking like Steve Buschemi holding a skateboard? Luckily for us, the perfect opportunity arrived last summer.

While nuclear weapons are a mainstay of Hollywood and broader culture, their relevance reached its apex in July 2023. Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan’s celebrated blockbuster about the beginning of the atomic age, dazzled critics and audiences. While the acclaimed film would be enough for a cultural moment on its own, the release of Barbie on the same day created a true cultural frenzy. The juxtaposition of such divergent films being released at once led to the now famous portmanteau, “Barbenheimer”.

Those countless Barbenheimer riffs and memes opened an opportunity for NTI to lend its serious voice to a trivial debate: which movie should people watch first?

Anyone participating in “Barbenheimer” should see #Oppenheimer first. Trust us on this one.

Read our full statement ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/DKghTNKXGR

— NTI (@NTI_WMD) June 29, 2023

Our cheeky statement received a strong, positive response from people inside and outside of the international security community. This led, in part, to an Oppenheimer content bonanza that lasted through the Oscars in March.

The success around Oppenheimer was the foothold we needed to continue experimenting. Since, we’ve formalized our creative process, engaged experts from across NTI, and planned for the future. We’ve gained traction in several other areas of culture, including Taylor Swift, holiday movie discourse, celebrity activism, the afore mentioned Kendrick-Drake beef and, of course, random memes that live rent-free in our heads.

It’s difficult to overstate the amount of fun we’ve had connecting our work to culture, but there are more important benefits to this work. Principally, it is helping us achieve our goal to engage broader audiences. We know this because of the analytics data from the social platforms (our views in 2023 were up 60% compared to 2022), and from the strong support we receive from those who see our posts but aren’t active on social media. Social media is built for widening the aperture and we’re leveraging this new content to do so. It has allowed us to connect with hundreds of thousands of more people.

Like nuclear and biological threats, the media landscape will keep shifting and evolving—and our social media strategy will evolve to meet the moment. We will continue to aggressively participate in more traditional communications channels with meme-less messages—an approach that will always be a core tenet of the NTI communications strategy—but bold engagement on social media is and will remain crucial to our ultimate goal of bringing awareness and energy to an issue-set that often fades into the background. We’re determined to not let that happen—no matter how many memes it takes.