'MTV' amplifies promotion in Indonesia

'MTV' amplifies promotion in Indonesia

By C. Stevens

JAKARTA (JP): Throughout the past five years there has been a
dangerous beast hunting the cultural souls of Indonesia's youth,
corrupting the young and impressionable with hours of frivolous
pop.

The animal can be summoned with a twitch of the index finger
and is on call 24 hours a day, providing you have access to
satellite television. And now it has a new master, a man of
experience who plans to lead it into the most fortified of
Indonesian living rooms.

According to a pan-Asian cross media survey conducted by the
market research group Asia Market Intelligence (AMI), MTV
Southeast Asia, since its establishment in 1995, has become the
most watched satellite channel in the region.

According to ongoing viewership studies, MTV Southeast Asia is
seen in over six million Indonesian homes via DTH and up to six
hours a day on terrestrial broadcaster ANteve, through which MTV
reaches over 50 percent of Indonesians aged 15 to 35.

Together with MTV Mandarin and MTV India, it has a combined
distribution of more than 100 million homes. With a viewership of
this magnitude, the brand is certainly one of the defining
features of global culture.

MTV Southeast Asia's new managing director, Peter Bullard,
said, "To consolidate on this success we are going to focus on
stronger distribution and continued aggressive promotion of the
brand and shows.

"We have a fantastic strategic advantage over anyone else in
terms of music distribution and we have a lot of unique assets.
Central to our strategy is the leverage and exploitation of these
assets."

Having worked in cable and satellite television for the past
15 years, Peter is bringing a wealth of experience to his
position. He began his career in music television in 1985 in
Europe with a 24-hour music channel called Music Box. In 1993, he
ran the sales team for NBC in Europe, where he remained for two
years. He then launched CNBC which was a European business news
and information service, and took the role of general manager.

"The daily priorities of running a business channel are not
dissimilar to running a music channel," said Bullard.

"You still have to act creatively and you have the same issues
of specialized forms of distribution and cultural diversity to
deal with. So the leap to MTV was not so high."

As we all know, the last two years in Southeast Asia have been
characterized by an economic crisis, and the hardest area hit was
Indonesia. So while MTV was introduced to this country five years
ago, access to satellite TV, advertising revenue, and
preoccupation with the politics of the day has meant that it has
not reached the same capacity as its counterparts in other parts
of the world. For Bullard, this was a great opportunity to test
his skills.

"I saw MTV Southeast Asia as an enormous opportunity. I have
spent most of my professional life developing brands from scratch
and I'd never had experience developing a mature brand. While MTV
is established as a brand it is not necessarily completely
established in the market here. And this is a fascinating place
to do business when half the population is under 35."

Indeed, with such a vast youth market, living in a time when
social freedom is at an all-time high, who can blame the new
managing director of the world's number one youth brand for being
excited. An Indonesian youth survey conducted by AMI, determined
that the three top 10 "coolest" brands amongst Indonesians aged
13 to 23, were MTV at number one, Coca-cola at number two and
Levis at number three.

At this point, some readers may cringe at the apparent
Americanization these statistics suggest. There is the perception
that many of the world's cultures are being flattened into a
western monoculture.

With the emergence of transnational markets and distribution
systems, made possible by developing communication technologies
such as the Internet, cable and satellite, some -- including the
government of China and Malaysia's Dr. Mahathir Mohammad -- have
warned of the dangers inherent in "western popular culture". And
there is little doubt that the spread and popularity of global
brands has profound cultural consequences.

But it is also doubtful that national culture is as passive
and weak as this. This kind of perception fails to take into
consideration other more specific sources of cultural identity
such as locality, religion, generation, ethnicity, politics and
so on. It is doubtful that drinking Coca-cola or watching MTV
makes Indonesians or Malaysians think like Americans any more
than eating nasi goreng or listening to dangdut makes Americans
think like Indonesians.

In addition to this, a strategy that has worked well for MTV
all around the world is balancing local content with
international content, so that the brand serves as a way to
simultaneously break borders and encourage national pride.

"We combine the best of local music, fashion and lifestyle
with the slightly alien world of international music," said
Bullard.

Frank Brown, President of MTV Networks Asia, said the music
channel has a unique connection with Indonesia's youth. "They see
their own culture reflected in the playlist that is 60 percent
Bahasa. There are seven programs produced for Indonesia and six
Indonesian VJs," he said.

Associate director of MTV Southeast Asia's marketing and
communications department, Daniel Tumiwa, backs this up: "The
youth in Indonesia is very nationalistic and they like to see
their own products on TV. It gives them a sense of pride."

In any case, it looks like MTV is here to stay and with plans
to expand into the radio and tabloid markets it will soon become
a major feature of Indonesia's popular culture.

"With markets like the European or American markets, it's not
hard to put a limit on growth. But in Asia, I can't even see the
ceiling. Indonesia is the fourth most populous market in the
world. Put that in the context of Southeast Asia, and then in the
context of the entire region, and it makes my head spin," said
Bullard.