Abstract:

The importance of social marketing approach, aimed at creating a change in attitude and behavior in the target audience in solving social problems such as health, environment, human rights, is increasing today. The purpose of providing a benefit to the society is to promote social marketing activities, the important component of promoting their spread in the society; social advertising is faced with us. In the Covid-19 epidemic process, social distances and social ads that facilitate the desired attitude/behavior change, such as stay at home, use different attractions, creative strategies and tactics. In addition, profit-driven have been forced to publish multiple ads that both provide social messages and promote products and services during the epidemic process. In this context, the main objective of this study is to determine which creative strategies and attractions are used in the advertisements they share on their official YouTube accounts between 11 March and 11 April 2020 by three GSM operators operating in Turkey during the Covid-19 epidemic. The study of this method also analyzed the characteristics of ads that brands in the marketing communication activities in the Covid-19 process indirectly or directly communicate about behavior changes in the community for the purpose of combating the epidemic. The research model is based on Laskey, Day and Crask (1989)’s creative advertising strategies; Baldwin (1982) and Karpat Aktuğlu (2013)’s creative tactics classifications and Pollay (1983)’s advertising attraction typology based on the value and cultural relationship. Within this model, the YouTube ads of GSM operators have been solved by the quality content analysis method. The research has found that the GSM brand, which publishes quantitatively too much social advertising on direct and indirectly fighting the epidemic, is Turkcell, the creative strategies and tactics vary according to the brand; but health, safety/security, community variants are commonly used attractions in connection with the epidemic process.

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