Jakarta Fear Factor: A new approach for city branding

Marko, Retno Nindya Prastiwi and Tommy Gunawan, BiNus International/Jakarta

Some people think that it is impossible to sell a city, especially one like Jakarta. A city is not the same as soap or coffee; a city is a place where thousands of people live, they say.

However, you can sell a city, even one as jammed and polluted as Jakarta, and hence the marketing term -- city branding.

At the Marketing Innovation Awards 2005 in August, Retno Nindya Prastiwi -- nicknamed Nindya -- who studies at the marketing management school of BiNus International, won second place with her concept about city branding. Her main idea was how to sell Jakarta to tourists. Interestingly, she focused more on the negative parts of Jakarta -- the annoying traffic jams, and the lack of good public transportation.

"Rather than cursing and complaining about the negative stuff in Jakarta, why don't we make it fun and accept it as our part of life and use humor in conveying that message?" she said. Her idea about sarcastic humor regarding public transport can best be summed up in two concepts: "Thriller" and "Fear Factor".

Yes, that's right, Fear Factor.

"We could contact the production house of Fear Factor, ask them to do the grand final of the season here in Jakarta," said. Nindya, "The challenge? Challenge the participant to sit on the roof of Manggarai downtown train for at least 30 minutes. Come on, we Indonesians are brave enough to do that, so how come the participants are afraid?"

While it sounds a little ridiculous -- for a start any U.S. production company if it put its participants in any real danger would be prosecuted severely under American law -- this was the concept that she offered to the jury.

To communicate the message and make people "buy", in this case travel to, the product, the first step is making it attractive. Nindya's campaign was two-pronged, targeted at young thrill- seeking tourists who are interested in the exotic and the unusual, and also at Jakartans, aiming to make people here accept the city's faults but feel proud of the city all the same as one with a definite character.

A rather twisted humor, of course, is central to the strategy, an extremely effective way of conveying a message if it is used properly. While some of the ways Jakarta is described could hardly be called flattering, the idea is through a large amount of cheekiness twist negatives into positives.

Using a range of communication techniques that boils down to a Feel-Think-Do approach, Nindya says she is not trying to put the city down, nor is she trying to excuse substandard transportation or city management. She just wants people to accept the moment.

"I am not trying to manipulate (people) with the message" Nindya said. "Manipulating is not the best way to do things. I only want to honestly communicate the negative parts of Jakarta so people will understand the current condition we are in and accept it, instead of complaining all the time.

"I am talking about the condition of public transportation, and I said that we can get a thrill whenever we ride on it. Sell that thrilling feeling and ambience, and people will take the idea and accept it as humor."

Living in Jakarta was sometimes like living in a Hollywood action movie, she said. Traveling in a public bus was like being on the set of Speed, but here the dangers were for real.

-- The three writers are members of ICM-IUP Creative Media, the journalism club of BiNus International.