Brand activism on the digital public sphere: campaign content analysis of #BringBackOurBottle on Instagram

Abstract

Brand activism is one of the organizational initiative practices voluntarily conducted to promote social, economic, environmental, and cultural issues which are considered as important matter and have wide impact for society aligned with the company’s vision and mission. Recently, this kind of activity mostly carried on social media as public sphere which becomes media communication, such as campaign to reduce plastic wastes conducted by The Body Shop Indonesia as effort to reduce environmental disaster and climate change impact. In this research, the researcher focused on the #BringBackOurBottle campaign carried by The Body Shop Indonesia by identifying messages through content visualization on Instagram account @thebodyshopindo.impact. Furthermore, the research used qualitative content for both photo and video post with hashtag #BringBackOurBottle. The research finding emphasized on two main messages within the content #BringBackOurBottle; the first, plastic threat for survival and the second is the drive for sustainable living. Besides, this research also showed that brands have power to create the consumer’s behaviour; it can encourage the consumers to participate in taking care of the environment through the program they continue to campaign.