Abstract
This document seeks to explore the marketing possibilities of bringing a presumed product (a yet incomplete, let alone translated textbook) into an other country, Indonesia. A cursory analysis of the marketing industry as it exists on the ground will be taken up; and two agencies will be chosen (and further, consider their merits).
Essentially a strategy document, having established something of a baseline there will then be a consideration formed seeking to maximize what there is to work with.
Welcome to Paradise
Wherefore Indonesian Marketing
This author has written elsewhere that Indonesia is not exactly an icon of business efficiency in the Western sense of things. The first item confronted was that there was no ready reference for the marketing industry in that country in English. The PPPI (or Indonesian Advertising Agency Association) website does not readily yield the needed information (PPPI (the Indonesian Advertising Agency Assoc.), n.d.).
Therefore, the first order of business was to create from scratch a database of potential organizations with which to work. Unfortunately, this took an inordinate amount of time. As it stands, after three days effort, it is only about one third complete. Nonetheless, this gives us something with which to work, predicating this paper is on just those 50.
The database yields an explosion of patterns worthy of acknowledgment. Among the first that draws our attention is that an unusual number of ad agencies base in Surabaya. There is no ready explanation; Surabaya is the second largest city in the country, representing a counterweight on Java Island on the easternmost to Jakarta (the largest city and the capital) on the western end. The next pattern we find is the severe disparity between the extremely few elite agencies (the bulk of which have been inserted from the US) and the majority of the domestically grown variety, the vast majority of which do not even have a web presence of their own. This latter acknowledgment is disappointing to say the least, for it carries with it implications that the country has a severely underdeveloped domestic expression.
Chosen/Not Chosen
Not to overdo, and the reader is reminded one more time that this is an exercise based on fact. BBDO Indonesia and Leo Burnett Kreasindo get tossed out immediately as overkill (Ogilvy and other Madison Avenue icons are also present in Indonesia). These two institutions represent two considerations: the first is that you get what you pay for and these people are the best. The other consideration is that they are not wholly indigenous; their core DNA is with the US.
All this finds us with approximately a half a dozen choices left. There really is that small an amount of web presence. Removing the websites that either do not work or are under construction, or about building websites alone, we are left with three: Cody Enterprises (http://www.codyenterprises.com/; which is too obtuse to embrace), Bensatra Advertising (http://www.bensatra.com/ads.php; which seems wholly outdoor advertising) and Blue Circle Advertising (http://www.bluecircle-adv.com/). Blue Circle, by the way, seems every bit as impressive as BBDO and Leo Burnett and it is indigenous (it is nice to know the possible has precedent, however small).
If it were left up to this deductive reasoning, we have already whittled past the two mark to one. While it is an easy enough supposition to back up and embrace Bensatra, let us pause a moment.
The Strategy
One recalls that the author already has created a database of art schools (to which our presumed textbook gets marketed directly). This approach has local marketing built into it, replete with distribution channel and direct marketing.
One begins to wonder why we would bother with any ad agencies at all. As part of the larger marketing exercise, this author is grateful for the opportunity to effort in that direction. However, the fact remains that there is very little that needs completion by the power and wisdom of big dollars (the best artist’s money can rent) and decades of trial and error based intuition.
A simple RFP may be offered to all the art schools (that have advertising related applied arts within their offerings) to create a small suite of printed material. This would likely include a poster (for use in a bookstore, school cafeteria, etc.), bookmarks and postcards.
Conclusion
When the textbook finds its finished publication, and that it may ever see translation into Indonesian, the just aforementioned strategy approach certainly seems ample. There is no need for a massive ad campaign, television, radio, billboards, etc.
Nonetheless, the effort to develop a database of ad agencies in Indonesia has already revealed enormous opportunities for said applied artists. The shortcomings discovered will have to be included in the book itself, and certainly adds to the essential marketing knowledge base of this author.
Unable to fold the database in question into an appendix here, the kind reader is invited to look for it as a separate attachment.
References
Haymarket Media Limited. (2010). VenueDirectory [search engine, country specific]. : http://www.venue-directory.asia/.
Infomedia Nusantara a member of TELKOM Group. (2010). Yellow Pages Indonesia [search engine, country specific]. : http://www.yellowpages.co.id/en.
Netcode, Inc. . (2010). ZipLeaf [search engine, country specific]. : http://id.zipleaf.com/.
PPPI (the Indonesian Advertising Agency Assoc.). (n.d.). (home page). Retrieved November 17, 2010, from http://www.pppi.or.id/
Urbanesia.com. (2010). urbanesia [search engine, country specific]. : http://www.urbanesia.com/.
bensatra advertising. (n.d.). (home page). Retrieved November 17, 2010, from http://www.bensatra.com/ads.php
bluecircle advertising. (n.d.). (home page). Retrieved November 17, 2010, from http://www.bluecircle-adv.com/
indobizdb. (2010). indobizdb [search engine, country specific]. : http://indobizdb.com/.
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