Marketing Indonesia's cultural richness

Rivandra Royono, Jakarta, The Jakarta Post

Indonesian tourism advertisements have been dismal compared to those of other Asian countries including India, Thailand and Malaysia.

So naturally, I was ecstatic when I saw the Visit Indonesia 2008 advertisement on television.

It was strikingly colorful, perfectly showcased a sample of our rich cultures and -- most importantly -- it beckons people to come.

Indonesia has much more to offer compared to today's top Asian destinations. Nature is obviously on our side: we have some of the best beaches and mountains in the world.

A plethora of diverse, unique cultures are ready to be delivered to the citizens of the world wanting to have a taste of an exotic and adventurous experience.

Having superior goods, however, is never enough in any industry. And while I would not argue against the importance of better infrastructure if we were to boost our tourism industry, it is the marketing strategy that we desperately need to work on.

First, Indonesia needs to come up with a better and catchier slogan. This, of course, has lately become quite a big issue, considering that even The Financial Times published an article on Indonesia's "incomprehensible" 2008 tourism slogan, which is "Celebrating 100 years of the nation's awakening".

As an outsider of the bureaucratic machine, I always find it interesting the country's officials seem to believe a marketing slogan needs to have a "deep meaning". I suppose that was the main reason why the Ministry of Culture and Tourism chose a slogan that alludes to the country's important historical event.

Of course nobody outside Indonesia, the target of the marketing campaign, could even remotely relate to such allusion.

A tourism slogan, like any slogan for a brand, needs to be simple and be something potential customers can easily relate to and remember.

It needs to sound something like Amazing Thailand, Incredible India, or Uniquely Singapore. No deep meaning, no allusion, just a good old simple, catchy slogan.

Aside from the 2008 tourism slogan, Indonesia has been using "Indonesia, the Ultimate in Diversity", which is simply too long although it clearly highlights a major selling point.

The good news is, the English language has an abundance of very nice-sounding adjectives that Indonesia can use for its tourism tag line. Try "Unforgettable Indonesia", "Memorable Indonesia", or "Extraordinary Indonesia". No deep meaning, no allusion, we're just inviting people to come.

Second, in order to effectively convey the message of Indonesia's diversity, compressing 10 different cultural experiences in a 30 or 60-second advertisement slot, or a one-pager in a magazine, will just not cut it. Viewers will only get fractions of superficial information and will miss out on the core message the marketing campaign wishes to convey. Top consumer brands understand this very well.

That is why the marketing campaign of a top brand's four different kinds of soap employs four distinctive kinds of advertisements, with four distinctive yet equally beautiful models, each highlighting the best of one product, instead of listing out all four products in one advertisement.

It would be a good idea for Indonesia to employ a similar strategy. Pick four cultures out of several top tourist destinations as a start, which should not be that hard.

Third, Indonesian tourism needs an informative, interactive, one-stop website. It is very nice to know the government has taken very good steps in this area. Indonesia's official tourism website, www.my-indonesia.info, is one of the best government-run websites I have ever encountered.

Indonesia's official tourism website can surely tap to the power of wikinomics. It can provide online forums for travelers to exchange experience and recommendations, and even some space for visitors to create their own "traveler's blog". This would allow Indonesian tourism to get the help from some of the best marketers it can employ: its own customers.

Online forums and blogs, accessible to today's millions of tech-savvy travelers, may prove to be an even more powerful marketing tool than advertisements on television and magazines.

Of course, we have to make sure that people access the website in the first place. In order to increase that probability, the website address can be made to be as catchy as the tourism slogan. Instead of www.my-indonesia.info, we can use the more memorable www.cometoindonesia.com, for instance.

The Indonesian tourism marketing campaign has never looked better and we have to give credit to Tourism Minister Jero Wacik and his staff for that. But it is imperative for us to keep this momentum and the marketing campaign needs to maintain the creativity and innovation it has shown so far.

The Visit Indonesia 2008 television advertisement has created a lot of buzz among Indonesians. I have no doubt it will have the same effect abroad. But we all need to bear in mind that it does not take very long for a television advertisement to become stale.

The writer is executive director of the Association for Critical Thinking and a graduate student of University of Indonesia's Planning and Public Policy Graduate Program. He can be reached at rivanroyono@yahoo.com.