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.