Effect of COVID-19 pandemic on advertising messages of brands: A semiotic analysis

With the Covid-19 pandemic, changes in daily practices and consumption habits have occurred. This change has brought about the differentiation of economic politics, company strategies and, as an indicator of this, a change in the brands in the product service field. The most important effect of the pandemic process is the provision of needs and meeting the demands remotely and especially virtually. At this point, the purpose of this study, in which the brands in the product service sector is the subject, is to determine the effect of the pandemic on the advertising strategies of the brands in March 11, 2020 as the date when the pandemic was announced by the official authorities in Turkey and within a year in the following period. Within the scope of the study, advertisements published in mass media were not included in the study. Within the dates determined within the scope of the study, advertisements of some brands for campaign purposes were displayed on Youtube, but these advertisements are not used in the study because they do not contain pandemic content. The advertisements that have been published on Youtube, which provides the opportunity to watch and upload working videos, and which have received the number of views are included. In the context of the study, 6 sectors, 18 brands and 21 commercial films were screened by semiotic analysis method, and the messages of the commercials were analyzed by content analysis. If evaluated within the scope of the purpose of the study, the main issue that is emphasized here is to try to understand the advertisements of the brands in the context of the sectors of this research. In the preparation phase of the study, searches were made with keywords such as covid-19, advertisement, brand, and it was determined that the subject was very new and that sufficient studies were not included in the literature. In this context, the study was carried out to reveal the advertising strategies of sectors and brands. With this feature of the study, it is thought that it will contribute to the literature.