Show of Asia-Pacific advertising wizards

Show of Asia-Pacific advertising wizards

Yusuf Susilo Hartono, Contributor, Jakarta

Before the radio and television era, hawkers selling traditional
herbal medicines (jamu) roamed traditional markets hawking their
wares and performing attractive feats to lure buyers. They
arranged their wares on a plastic sheet spread on the ground. The
audience (prospective buyers) sat or stood in a circle. It was
not infrequent that the audience clicked their tongues in
admiration as the medicine tried on some of the audience proved
immediately effective.

Today, as medicine - traditional and modern - can easily be
advertised on the radio, television or in print, these hawkers
are increasingly rare to find. Advertisements of various kinds of
medicine abound in the print and electronic media, and on the
Internet.

Of all the mass media, TV is ahead in advertising terms,
followed by the radio and print media.

Indonesia's marketing guru, Hemawan Kertajaya of MarkPLus
Professional Service has noted that in the early days of the
television boom in Indonesia in the early 1990s, TV commercials
were highly persuasive. However, when TV viewers got accustomed
to the medium, TV commercials began to be no more than just
humming the jingle.

In fact, the small device called "remote control" is the main
enemy for advertisers introducing their products on TV. With this
device, viewers can easily move from one station to another when
the ads bore them. Conventional mass media like newspapers,
magazines and radio stations, despite their increasing number,
have become less and less effective. That's why other advertising
methods have been resorted to: Street billboards, advertisements
on taxis, on seats at a railway station and in a train carriage.

To spur the creativity of advertising bureaus, the Indonesian
Association of Advertising Companies (P3I) presents awards to
creative advertisements/commercials through the Citra Pariwara
competition.

Unfortunately, the creative people in our advertising sector
are yet to be reckoned with at the Asia-Pacific level. The "1998-
2002 Asia-Pacific Best Advertisement Exhibition" was participated
in by Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, The Philippines, Hong Kong,
Vietnam, Mongolia, Taiwan, China, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh,
Pakistan, India, Oceania and Japan.

Ironically, host Indonesia was not represented. The
exhibition, held at Bentara Budaya Jakarta last week and to
continue at Bentara Budaya Yogyakarta this week, shows 194
printed advertisements and some TV commercials winning prizes
from the Asia Pacific Advertising Festival (AP AdFest). This
festival is considered the standard for advertising creativity in
Asia and the Pacific. Usually, when an advertisement wins a prize
at AP AdFest, it will also be successful at international
festivals, such as the Lyons-Cannes Festival in France or in New
York Festival or even Clio Festival.

If we observe closely AP-AdFest prize-winning advertisements,
they are usually strong in conveying their messages despite their
simplicity in visual terms.

Take, for example, a Rayban glasses advertisement made by
Result Advertising Ltd. Thailand, a winner of the bronze medal in
2001. This advertisement depicts only a human skeleton wearing a
pair of sunglasses. The message may be that these glasses are
durable.

As for the TV commercials, they are generally in the form of
smart and funny stories. Take, for example, a commercial on an
electric bulb. A young man fixes an electric bulb in a room. Then
he sits down and reads a newspaper. A short while later the light
goes out, and a very old man fixes a new bulb. The impression is
that this brand lasts over a long period of time.

Advertising practitioner Enin Supriyanto, a member of the
board of curators of Bentara Budaya Jakarta and the curator for
this exhibition, said that there was a change in paradigm in
contemporary marketing and advertising.

Global industrial and advertising practitioners have reached a
new level of understanding that the "commodities" that must be
created, maintained and transacted are trademarks or brands. A
brand is a means to create and control the perception of
consumers about a product, a service or a corporation. In this
ever-changing world, a trademark is vital, he stressed, adding
that according to Walter Landor, a world-class brand developing
figure, a product was made in a factory, but a brand was built in
the mind.

In the meantime, he went on, Indonesia's advertisements and
commercials were still oriented to product superiority so that
they are filled with too much explanation from the producers
about the advantages of their products.

If only Indonesia's best advertisements/commercials took part
in this exhibition, the community could compare them with the
works of advertising wizards from Asia and the Pacific. It is not
clear why the organizers - Bentara Budaya, Kompas daily,
Indonesian Advertising Committee and TV7 - have excluded
Indonesia's participation from this exhibition.

Regardless of the absence of Indonesia's best
advertisements/commercials in this exhibition,
advertisements/commercials are essentially the same the world
over: Like wizards working with their powerful magic spell, they
exert persuade people to adopt consumerism as their life style.

These advertising wizards, G. Herry Priyono, a graduate of
London School of Economics, England, says, consider consumerism
as an inexhaustible gold mine. However, a women's group
organizing a street rally at the Hotel Indonesia Traffic Circle
on Sat. March 9 strongly opposed consumerism as a life style.

Consumerism will lead to corruption, cronyism and nepotism.
These women made a simple call for all Indonesia: Lead a simple
life!

Second round of the exhibition will be held at Bentara Budaya
Yogyakarta, Jl. Suroto 2, Kota Baru, Yogyakarta from March 20
through to March 27, 2003.