Hendra Lesmono: Postcard from Jakarta

In our latest “postcard from…” series, Hendra Lesmono, creative chairman at Bates CHI & Partners Jakarta, (pictured) discusses Jakarta’s traffic jams and how to be entertained.

Coping with the chaos of Jakarta is never easy. In fact, it can require almost superhuman patience to cope with the city’s notorious traffic jams.

This ability was even more important during Ramadan. A time of year which essentially means one thing: the biggest temptation that we need to fight during this holy season is to restrain the devil within us …. from swearing.

Forget about the fact that we can’t drink or eat for 10 hours or so. Jakarta’s traffic jams will unleash an almost demonic force to test us. To put things in perspective: the average Jakartan spends 3-4 hours on the road commuting every day.

This is probably why the nation is so addicted to their smartphones. The fact that Indonesians are so social media savvy might not be due to a fondness for chat, sharing pictures of food or good old-fashioned gossip, but rather because we desperately need something to occupy us during jams.

This may not be the case for the rest of the country, but Jakartans are already huge fans of so called “digital content” and their fondness is growing. It’s borne out by the explosive growth in mobile video, driven by both YouTube and Facebook. Which means both media are becoming increasingly effective channels for brands to reach their audience. Moreover, they give us the freedom to create longer content compared to TV.

Obviously, for our work to be enthusiastically shared it needs to be a lot more entertaining and less hard-sell. Jakartans willingly share this kind of advertising, because we tend to pass on anything that could help each other get through the madness of our city .. and the more hilarious or touching the better.

I’ll share some examples that I feel meet the criteria mentioned above. The first example – from local agency Bujukrayu – is timely, being created for Ramadan.

This short film represents what the nation is all about. We have the largest Muslim population country in the world but we are not a Muslim country. People often forget about this and instead focus on religion becoming such a sensitive issue. So we wanted to gently remind them just  how well Indonesians get along with each other, even when we don’t share same faith. It’s so refreshing to see this kind work getting positive feedback, not to mention huge numbers of views.

Next up, I unashamedly submit some of my own work, because I think it  illustrates my previous points nicely. Although using humor to create shareable content is nothing new,  it’s still highly effective for the obvious reason that people love to be entertained. Hence our use of comedy in this next example.

We used an old Indonesian tradition of “welcoming our friend’s new shoes” by stepping on them. This might not happen other countries but for some reason Indonesians love this quirky tradition. We used this to help launch our clients new product: protective rubber boots. This particular client has been with us for years and truly champions brave marketing. A rare breed nowadays.

Significantly, although it launched on TV, the work gained more popularity via Facebook and YouTube. People shared it on their different social media platforms and it continues to entertain.  This is strongly borne out by analytics, which show viewers are enjoying the spot from start to finish: the average % completion rate is 93%.

So next time you visit Jakarta, try not to get too frustrated with the traffic. Instead, fire up YouTube or Facebook, make yourself comfortable and let Indonesia’s best ads entertain you.