When is advertising no longer child's play?

By Bruce Emond

JAKARTA (JP): It could be termed the "Joshua Phenomenon". With his impish grin, trademark Rip Van Winkle cap and high cuteness quotient, Joshua Suherman is the reigning prince charming of the country's entertainment world.

His signal tune Diobok-obok (All stirred up) was adopted as a reform movement metaphor, telling of the "little fish" tossed around in tumultuous seas. The precocious seven-year-old stars in his own TV comedy series, the aptly named Joshua Anak Ajaib (Joshua the Wonder Boy), and is the host of a weekly TV quiz show.

If imitation is really the sincerest form of flattery, then Joshua rules the roost. His winning ways with the public have spawned a legion of pretenders vying for a piece of his kingdom, although few measure up to his command of mimicry and unusually mature comebacks.

Joshua's potential marketability has not been lost on advertisers. He has endorsed a slew of products, from candy to multivitamins, a printer and powdered milk, for a reported asking price of Rp 100 million a pitch.

He has literally set the stage for a host of other child stars and would-be advertising moppets whose grinning faces adorn billboards and TV screens across the land.

But even in an advertising industry desperate to pull itself out of the lingering economic crisis, there are voices of disquiet about the use of children to plug products unrelated to their daily lives.

"The industry has a code of ethics which stipulates that children cannot be used in advertising unrelated products," said Yusca Ismail from Perwanal Darcy advertising.

"That means they can advertise milk or a candy, but it is inappropriate to use them as the main spokesperson for, say, a car or medicine."

Yusca is a member of the Indonesian Advertising Association's Supervisory Board, which meets monthly to discuss complaints regarding advertisements. He said the industry's code of ethics and various regulations pertained to the use of children in advertising, but the Supervisory Board lacked teeth in disciplining errant advertisers.

"It is a case of a lot of rules but very little enforcement. We don't have the power to enforce them -- if our members want to listen, that's good, but they can just as easily ignore our reports."

Yusca said ultimately it came down to the ticklish problem of the bottom line.

"We can urge our members to follow the code of ethics, but if they don't, then it is up to the media to reject those ads which are inappropriate. The problem is that we are talking about a lot of money here, and very few, if any, media companies are in the position to reject ads."

It is up to ad agencies to nudge clients into appropriate territory in using children for advertisements, said MACS909 executive creative director Ariyanto Zainal.

"The client may be pushing for the use of a particular star, like Joshua, even though the agency feels its inappropriate. We're working for them, they're the king, but we're also working for their best interests. So we have to redirect the client, to meet somewhere in the middle. At the end of the day, the client is happy and we are happy."

While Yusca and Ariyanto acknowledged that Joshua was one of a kind for kids in Indonesian advertising, they both expressed concern that he was being overused.

"There comes a time when you reach the saturation point," Yusca said. "My concern is that he often advertises products unrelated to him, and I can't understand that from a marketing point of view."

Ariyanto drew parallels between Joshua's ubiquitous presence and advertisers' recurring use a couple of years ago of Rano Karno because of his popularity as Doel, the protagonist from the TV series Si Doel Anak Sekolahan (Doel the Graduate), and his chipmunk-cheeked doltish sidekick Mandra.

"Doel was just about everywhere," he recalled. "But in terms of marketing it's not beneficial to use the same person over and over again. The public loses the connection to the brand or product -- they remember the commercial because Doel was in it, but forget the product it was advertising."

He said there was an inherent danger in using Joshua "because what is coming through is Joshua's personality, not the identity of the brand".

Another concern is the welfare of the child actors and the danger of exploitation.

The slippery slope of fame is littered with the bruised egos of has-been child stars who lost their appeal once the ravages of puberty set in. Most of the cautionary tales concern child actors from the U.S., but at least one wildly popular teen queen pop singer in Indonesia and a male actor who made his name in the early 1980s died young, their deaths rumored to be related to drug abuse.

Yusca said the ugly spectacle of stage mothers remained rare in Indonesia, with most parents of child actors merely drawn by the novelty of seeing their offspring on TV.

But he said it was up to those around child entertainers to pursue their best interests.

"It is really the responsibility of those who manage the stars, and I'm talking here about both adult and child entertainers, to manage them properly, to select the vehicles which are right for them. They must always remember that there is a saturation point."

Joshua's mother, Lisa, who manages her son's career along with husband Jeddy, answered the concerns in an interview last year.

"Nobody knows my son better than I do. I know when he feels sick, when he's down, I'm always there for him. I know what is best for him."

However, in a comment that some concerned observers of child entertainers might consider disturbing, she added that Joshua was already a pro in determining what was best for his career.

"If he has a sore throat, he knows that he cannot eat krupuk (fried prawn crackers) because it might make it worse. He knows that he wouldn't be able to sing as well on stage."