Why is this work relevant for Direct?

This pandemic forced many people who have lost their job to survive and resulted to the rising of new small businesses in Indonesia. To meet potential customers, they needed to be seen and stood out in the middle of social distancing situation. Meanwhile, the “x” symbols were placed everywhere and being used to mark physical distancing in public area. It’s an instruction to be followed which everyone must pay attention to. Through “x” symbols that we hijacked into promotional medium, we made their small businesses being noticed by more people.

Background

As COVID-19 strikes in, millions lost their job. They had to do so many things to survive and one of them is starting small businesses. Our challenge is to connect those survivors to those who might be the consumer of their business and find the right medium to raise the awareness in the middle of social and physical distancing situation.

Describe the creative idea (30% of vote)

Collaborate with local street artist, UKM Indonesia or small medium enterprises community were hijacking every “x” symbols in public area and turned it into promotional media to help new small businesses get connected with more people out there.

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

Nothing in this world comes free they said. Thus, having an income is really important in order to survive in this world. When COVID-19 strikes, many had to slow down or even close their business, causing them to lay off some of their employee in order to keep up. Hence, many people, be it a corporate employee or self-employed, lost their job and their sources of income. They figured out a way but still struggle to make it. We noticed that their struggle was caused by the lack of exposure towards their business. We also noticed that during the pandemic, there's a sudden appearances of X sign everywhere to symbolise a physical distancing. Thus, we came up with a way to publish their business by hijacking these signs. This enabled us to publish their business in an unorthodox way and attract other people to notice their business.

Describe the execution (20% of vote)

The local artist went around public area and hijacked every “x” symbols there with the faces and messages from people who ran new small businesses. It became series of artwork that attracted others to see what’s on the “x” symbol. Then, they could find more information about what those people sold in our Instagram account @bangkitbareng.

List the results (30% of vote)

From 42 artworks that were created (and still counting), we gathered more than 500,000 impressions organically. The business owners that we collaborated with, also claimed that the inquiries to their products/services increased up to 5x the moment we published the artworks.