GUERILLA MARKETING OF COVID-19 HEALTHY MEASURES

Abstract

Guerilla marketing is a shocking, wide-ranging, and low-cost marketing practice. Graffiti and murals can become guerrilla marketing media. This exploratory research aims to understand Covid-19's guerrilla health campaign marketing in the form of graffiti and murals in Indonesia. A total of 69 graffiti photos and murals obtained from secondary data were analyzed to understand the patterns emerged from Covid-19-themed marketing practices. The findings reveal that Covid-19 theme mostly takes form of health advices, while the least form reflects reflect community pessimism. Fisher's exact test analysis on the pair of categories studied shows that the composition of graffiti and mural colors differ significantly based on style (graffiti, idealist, and realist) and on themes (appreciation, criticism, health advice, encouragement, and pessimism). Based on these results, we develop a conceptual framework on guerrilla marketing using graffiti and murals to campaign for Covid-19 prevention to the public. We also reveal that apart from these themes, graffiti and murals also function as a means for the hidden agenda, the identity and cohesion of the maker, and therapy for the makers in dealing with the stress of coping with Covid-19. This research has originality because it shows how public interest campaigns can be run using guerrilla marketing and how they provide benefits not only for the stakeholders but also for the artists themselves.