The Effects of Evangelist Marketing Activities on Menantea's Brand Equity (Study on Nihonggo Mantappu Indonesian Community)

The dependence on the internet has encouraged the transformation of e-WoM messages and created a variety of marketing strategy innovations, one of which is evangelism marketing. This study aimed to understand the influence of evangelist marketing activities on Menantea's brand equity from the perspective of the Nihonggo Mantappu Indonesian community as fans of Jerome Polin. Uses and gratification theory, evangelist marketing, and brand equity concepts were used to support the analysis of finding. This research used a quantitative approach through questionnaires distributed to samples with criteria of generation Z with the category B of socioeconomic status, and have purchased the brand at least once. The data processing passed the classical assumption test and simple linear regression analysis. The results showed that there was a positive and significant influence between the variables of evangelist marketing activity and brand equity of 65%, with the other factors contributing to the rest. From the data, it can be concluded that the opinion leadership indicator as the source of the message has the highest influence on Menantea's brand equity. The brand also has actively involved their followers in creating and distributing content through Instagram. Moreover, the effectiveness of user-generated content as well as perceived quality of the brand also contributed to the influence of evangelist marketing on brand equity.