In recent time i noticed such thing that in every new project or old project announced meme contest. Where they give such big amount in community for making memes about their project . Now what do you think is this memes really can attract investors?
Any contest that bring about more audiences to a project contribute to it getting advertise to more potential investors so meme contest does play a role. Now it isn't that meme are the major force but the contest backing it is. These contest bring in different talented people who will take advantage of the contest to display their works in aim of winning the prizes.
In simple terms you can just say promotion brings about the industry going viral. The contest can be very beneficial to new project as they'll need something captivating to attract investors from other existing project to theirs.
These promotion bring about fomo and hype that's a key factors to project getting the attention of investors as without the visibility of your project it becomes a failure irrespective of how good it is in regards to the technology or solution it's bring into the industry.