agak tercekat sehabis tarawih melihat betapa manusia kedua negara kembali saling adu sumpah serapah, di bulan ramadhan. padahal keduanya mengaku negara beragama.
saya dapet notifikasi di Fb untuk bergabung dengan group Malingsia, dari namanya jelaslah group tersebut adalah wadah penampung murka. ignore ajah ah..
tiit– “lu klik malingsia.com deh, parah abis!!!”
penasaran (?), saya ikuti anjuran tersebut. dan hasilnya adalah web sumpah serapah yang mengatasnamakan nasionalisme. pemberitaan jelas memihak Indonesia, namun ada juga orang Malaysia iseng yang nanggepin. peranglah sudah!
lebih parahnya lagi ada link ke dontvisitindon2008.blogspot.com serangan balik (yang lebih ga jelas) bagi Indonesia. sebentar lagi saya pikir bakal hadir, Indonsial.com
fiuh! saya lahir di tanah Indonesia, tapi tak tertarik untuk turut teriak mengganyang malaysia lewat kata-kata kotor. jangan remehkan nasionalisme saya, tapi bukankah perdamaian dunia pun diamanatkan ibu pertiwi? apalagi tetangga sendiri. reaktif, ya. tapi saya ko ga suka orang yang berteriak-teriak bilang orang lain bodoh, tolol, bego, sial. akhirnya seperti menelanjangi diri sendiri.
In Labuan Bajo, West Flores. In town for a few days of training client’s staff on interpersonal communications and crisi communications so no time to go running about, except to catch the spectacular sunrise and sunsets at my note, Bay View which is perched on top of a hill above the fishermen’s village in labuan Bajo.
Plan to go diving on the weekend, where Unspun‘s been told there are Giant Mantas a plenty. Can’t wait. In the meantime, here a sunrise and a sunset photo. Woohoo!
Interesting remarks on APCO’s appointment in Malaysia to make Najib and pals look good by Ben Bland in the Hartal MSM blog. Hartal says Bland is a freelance journalist based in Singapore, reporting for publications such as The Daily Telegraph, The Economist, the FT weekend magazine, Monocle, Asia Sentinel and the British Medical Journal. He was a stock market reporter at The Daily Telegraph and Dow Jones Newswires in London, before leaving the City to Southeast Asia.)
You have to wonder what sort of internal debate went on in APCO before they decided to take on the job. Here’s Unspun‘s totally fictitious and facetious account of what might have been:
APCO Dove: I don’t think we should take the job as there’s nothing we can do to change them, and if we can’t change them then there’s no way to make them look good.
APCO Hawk: Of course we should take it. The money is good and it will give a big boost to our reputation in that part of the world where we haven’t been able to make as much headway as in the US.It may even make people forget that we’re closing down…I mean scaling down…in Indonesia.
Dove: Yes, but what sort of a reputation will we have if we take this job? Najib and his goons are just in plain denial. No amount of spin we put into this will be effective unless we convince them to change their ways.
Hawk: It doesn’t matter. Think of the money we’ll get. And the opportunities it will create for us. We’ll be plugged in to all the important people in Malaysia from No.1 down. And by the time they realize that the PR is ineffective, we’ll have made our money anyway.
Dove: I’m still uneasy about all this. I’m worried our own reputation would suffer if we take them on….
Hawk: Dove, Dove have courage son. We’re like lawyers who take the view that even the worst criminal deserves a good defense. We’re here merely to tell their story in a good light.
Dove: But there is nothing to tell. There are not good stories to tell because Najib and his boys are morally and intellectually bankrupt…
Hawk: You are too pessimistic. At the end of the day the fees will go toward our bonuses and nobody will remember our sins. Look at Burson Marsteller for instance, until that bitch Rachel Maddow tagged them with the “When Evil needs public relations, Evil has Burson-Marsteller on speed-dial” soundbite everyone had already forgotten all the hopeless causes they championed…and got away with. people never learn from history. That’s our saving grace.
The Malaysian government has appointed APCO, a global PR firm, to advise it on how to engage with the public and the media.
When I covered the stock market in London, the appointment of a new PR firm by a troubled company was usually the equivalent of the band on the Titanic striking up a new cheerful tune: they may be hoping to lighten the mood but ultimately the ship’s still going down.
Amusingly, the men and women in suits who are being shipped out to Kuala Lumpur reckon they can help strengthen “the government’s online and other strategic communication capabilities” by deploying “seasoned professionals…who are on the cutting edge of new media”.
Do these spin doctors know anything about Malaysian politics? The government and the ruling party have been completely outflanked by the rise of the internet in Malaysia, as shown by this week’s humiliating climbdown over the planned new firewall.
Update: Now it turns out that the controversial snippet wasn’t a television ad after all, but a promotional clip from Discovery Channel used in the promotion of the series Enigmatic Malaysia. In saying this the Jakarta Globe contradicts the Antara article it carried earlier (bottom of this posting):
Indonesia Internet Furor Fizzles as Discovery Channel Admits Pendet Mistake
A firestorm of Internet outrage over the alleged Malaysian theft of a Balinese dance turned out to be mostly smoke on Monday, after the Discovery Channel admitted responsibility for the TV ad featuring the dance.
“Discovery Networks Asia-Pacific regrets that the image of a Balinese dancer, sourced from an independent third party, was used in the promotion of the series Enigmatic Malaysia,” the network said in a statement. “The promotional clip has been removed from all feeds.”
News stories had reported that the image of a traditional Balinese pendet dancer was used in an official Malaysia tourism ad. The stories revived longstanding antagonism between the two countries over the heritage of traditional songs and dances, and provoked a furor on Twitter and Facebook.
“The Balinese dancer was not featured in any way in the programme,” the statement continues. “Discovery has the deepest respect for the traditions, cultures, and practices of all races and nations, and it is not our intention to cause any misunderstanding or distress to any party.” (more).
Unspun’s curious how these series work. Does the Malaysian Touism Ministry pay them to do these series, a bit like the indirectly pid for supplements you see in the newspapers? Or does Discovery do this on their own steam? If it is the former, does someone at the Ministry need to sign off on it? If the latter what does this say of Discovery, that’s supposed to be an expert on things cultural all over?
The post earlier:
“How in the world,” asked a colleague of Unspun over lunch, “can the Malaysians be so ignorant or brazen as to pass off the Balinese pendet dance as something Malaysian?”
She was referring to the latest broughaha surrounding Malaysia’s appropriation of things traditionally and culturally Indonesian to be its own. And advertisement shot for the “Visit Malaysia Year” advertisement which not only contained a shot of the pendet dance but also two well known Indonesian artistes dancing it.
“I can understand if they take something Sumatran or Javanese and pass them off as Malaysian. Culturally, at least they are closer. But the pendet dance from a Hindu culture? How can that happen?” she asked.
Unspun, who’s chronicled Malaysia’s used of Rasa Sayang and Reog Pornorogo could only explain that Malaysians have a very warped world of what’s Malay and what’s not. Unlike in Indonesia where ethnic groups are taken for what they are and people are educated about the differences, Malaysians have been brainwashed into thinking that they have three main cultures: Chinese, Indian and, if you’re not one of them and is not an aboriginal, Malay. Their world view is so warped that until this day most Malaysians think that most Indonesians, apart from the minority Chinese, are Malays.
This is, of course, ridiculous to the extreme to Indonesians but there you have it. It’s a Matrix like reality, or unreality in Malaysia. How ridiculous is this notion? Perhaps a video of the Pendet Dance, posted by Niddu will make it clear:
Denpasar. Dozens of Balinese artists staged a demonstration on Saturday to protest against a Malaysian tourism advertisement suggesting the Balinese pendet dance was part of indigenous Malaysian culture.
The artists gathered in front of Denpasar’s Cultural Park, with Wayan Dibia of the Indonesian Institute of Arts leading the rally.
During the demonstration, he presented a written statement expressing the artists’ frustrations to Ida Ayu Agung Mas, a member of the Regional Representatives Council (DPD).
The dance is part of a welcome ritual performed by women in Balinese traditional costumes, but appeared in a “Visit Malaysia Year” advertisement. Dibia said the dance was a part of the cultural heritage of the Balinese.
“Based upon our observations, the dancers shown in the Malaysian ad were in fact two graduates from the Indonesian Institute of Arts in Denpasar, named Lusia and Wiwik. The footage was taken two or three years ago,” he said.
Dibia called on the government to make an inventory of artistic products and patent them so that they would not be easily claimed by other countries.
“The pendet dance is part of our cultural heritage that shows artistic values and cultural symbols exclusively part of Hindu-Bali cultural traditions,” he said.
Ida Ayu Agung Mas, meanwhile, expressed deep concern over the Malaysian advertisement. “As a people’s representative I support the protest and will immediately notify the Malaysian government about the case,” he said.
It is amazing how naive and ingenuous people get when it comes to publishing their opinions, either in newspapers or in blogs and other electronic media.
Even usually intelligent people succumb to the notion that they can express their opinions and it would be taken as their personal opinion and have no bearing on the companies or organizations they lead. This happens all the time, especially in Indonesia.
The article below in Social Media Today should serve as a reminder to highly placed executives not to be so stoopid:
Granted, you would have thought Mackey learned a lesson about the potential hazards of using social media after he was sued for comments he posted under an alias that the FTC later decided added up to anti-trust violations. Some thought he’d lose his job then but he didn’t. What about now, though, when his op-ed has led tens of thousands to join a Boycott Whole Foods group on Facebook?
Here’s the thing: in this era of the “personal brand” it is impossible for a CEO to write an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about such an emotionally-charged issue and claim, as he does on his blog, that it’s his personal opinion and not his company’s. Mackey allegedly meant the headline to read, simply, “Health Care Reform.” He says an editor at the WSJ rewrote the headline to read “Whole Foods Alternative to Obamacare.” His brand, whether he likes it or not, is CEO of Whole Foods, not just “an occasional blogger,” as he describes himself in the “about” section of his blog.
Then again, if you want to go with the “any press is good press” angle of this whole thing then maybe Whole Foods is secretly psyched at the controversy; after all, if one of the purposes of having a blog is to attract traffic to your website, getting almost 2,000 comments on a blog post can’t be all bad–especially given that most of his other blog posts have comments only in the single or double-digit range.
Maybe Whole Foods will fire him as CEO but keep him on as Chief Blogger?
The pPosting below at Maverick Network is about Anthony Bianco, one of the foreign bloggers invited to Pesta Blogger 2008, being interviewed by Quantas’ inflight programming about his travels in Indonesia and about Pesta Blogger. It is good timing for Pesta Blogger 2009 on October 24 that Anthony hopes to attend.
Anthony, who’s based in Australia, runs a travel blog called The Travel Tart and has a Twitter account @TheTravelTart that has 5,000 followers. He enjoyed his experience visiting Bali, Jogja and Jakarta last year so much that he’s planning to come to Indonesia and willing to spend a month traveling this country to end up in Jakarta for Pesta Blogger on 24 October.
You can’t help thinking what a tourism asset Tony is for Indonesia. Except that the Ministry of Tourism is too engrossed in their own engrossments to take advantage of Anthony blogging and twittering Indonesia. That leaves the way open for a public spirited Australian company operating in Indonesia to sponsor Tony. Just think of the goodwill the company could reap from bloggers and the government from such an initiative, not to mention getting publicity for their places where they may have their plants.
So any enterprising corporate communications types out there care to bring this opportunity up to the bosses?
Pesta Blogger di Qantas Inflight bersama Anthony Bianco
Meskipun Bali adalah tujuan wisata yang sangat populer bagi kebanyakan orang Australia, wawancara Qantas dengan Anthony justru berfokus pada daerah tujuan wisata lain di Indonesia. Di sini Anthony menceritakan pengalamannya selama blogging trip tahun lalu di Jogja dan Jakarta, misalnya mengunjungi Candi Prambanan dan Borobudur, juga berkisah soal pemandangan kota di Jakarta. Selain itu, Anthony juga bercerita tentang semakin populernya aktivitas nge-blog di Indonesia, juga tentang banyaknya komunitas blogger yang sering melakukan kopdar. Tak lupa, Anthony juga bertutur soal keramahan masyarakat Indonesi
a.
Wawancara ini akan tayang di segmen ‘Up and Away’ bersama Julie McCrossin mulai tanggal 1-31 Oktober 2009 mendatang.
“The interview is about 10 minutes long and will be available for people to listen to on all Qantas planes; domestic and international, including those going to Indonesia throughout the entire month of October. The Qantas group flies to Bali and Jakarta. Approximately 2 to 3 million people fly Qantas per month,” kata Anthony.
Travel blog Anthony berjudul The Travel Tart – Offbeat Tales From A Travel Addict dan ia bisa diikuti di Twitter dengan username @TheTravelTart. Saat ini ia punya sekitar 5 ribu followers di Twitter, dan blog-nya mencatat 250,000 hits di bulan Juli, dengan sekitar 7 ribu unique visitors.
Anthony ternyata begitu terkesan dengan Indonesia, dan berencana untuk “berkelana” di Aceh, Pekanbaru, Palembang, Bogor, Bandung, Semarang, dan Surabaya selama bulan September – Oktober, untuk kemudian kembali bergabung di Pesta Blogger 2009. Semoga rencananya ini terlaksana, ya!
Unspun’s vote for the worst spammer, defined as some business that sends out spam mail, constantly and regardless of demographic, consumer preference or any inkling of the market – and do not even give you an option to unsubscribe – is PLaza Indonesia @ Entertainment X’nter.
This mofo sends you just about one HTML spam mail a day, sometimes more and they are irrelevant to me. They do not make me want to purchase the products advertised or entice me to go to Plaza Indonesia. In fact, they have the opposite. I now hate Plaza Indonesia and the clients who allow them to spam me. I hate them so much that I haven’t set foot in Plaza Indonesia for at least the past three months.
Next in line would be Telkomsel that spams you endlessly with SMS. It is inane and I can’t get them to stop it. It gos against the very grain of Web 2.0 marketing, which is about giving the customer control and making your products/services so attractive or useful that people would want to know more about you.
If anyone has the personal e-mail addresses of the Marketing Managers and the CEOs of these two organizations, please post them in the comments section. Unspun would encourage everyone to spam them to give them a taste of their own medicine.
Anyone else with candidates for the Worst Spammers in Indonesia award?
Interesting news about APCO winning the PA/PR contract with the Malaysian Government (see extract below).
The question, raised here between Unspun and Kay Peng (who still hasn’t released my comment in his blog), is whether anything can be done to improve the image of Najib and the Malaysian government, regardless of how good, experienced or high powered the consultants are.
President Jimmy Carter’s spokesperson Jodie Foster once remarked that “sometimes you have a PR problem, other times you just have a problem.” Observers of the Malaysian political scene would no doubt argue that Najib and Co have a problem (of political, personal credibility, living in denial and calibre of people dimensions) that in turn triggers as PR problem.
Reading the article below, one of APCO’s main tasks will be to neutralize Najib’s critics in the blogs. They would not be so stupid as to try to silence the bloggers, or to push pabulum and good news to an angry and skeptical audience so Unspun’s guess is that they will go on the assault by engaging the bloggers. It will probably be an aggressive engagement as they deploy bloggers sympathetic to Najib and the government to out argue the critics. Will sock puppets be used? Will there be astroturfing? Who knows, but the Malaysian interactive space is worth watching over the next few months.
Can APCO help guide Najib and Co to solve their problem so that they can solve their image problem? It remains to be seen but Unspun wouldn’t hold his breath. This is no reflection on APCO (except perhaps their choice to take the business if they are not convinced they can make a real difference) but more on Najib et al. Malaysians might want to press their government to let them know what the deliverables and KPIs are for APCO if their tax money is being spent.
APCO secures key Malaysian contract
Global PA operator APCO is to expand its business in Malaysia after securing a key contract from the country’s government.
The move comes as APCO restructures its South East Asia operation – with London PA expert Paul Stadlen heading to Malaysia to become managing director of the new office amid changes to its operations in the region.
The firm is to broaden its activities in Malaysia with the creation of an office in Kuala Lumpur – which will service the government of Malaysia and prime minister Najib Razak.
Larry Snoddon, APCO’s Asia CEO, said winning a major piece of government work underlined the changing dynamic in the public affairs arena.
“Governments today are facing similar challenges to global business that require dealing simultaneously with public policy, public opinion and finance,” he told PublicAffairsAsia.
“This environment requires diversified skills and a deep knowledge of world affairs. This has been the historic basis for APCO’s creation and its mission.”
The contract was awarded after what industry insiders say was quick fire pitch - with APCO beating off competitors including Burson-Marsteller to secure the PR and comms role with the Malaysian government.
Stadlen said Malaysia was now poised to become a global leader in key economic areas.
“This is a time of opportunities for Malaysia,” said Stadlen. “APCO is delighted to share media expertise and strategic communication services with the Malaysian government and other clients in Malaysia. We are excited about Malaysia’s future and our ability to participate in it.”
What happens at Twitter parties, let along Indonesia’s “first” Twitter party? The rumbustious New Media Division of Maverick went there to find out and this is their report:
Aug 13, 2009 – This post is filed under Indonesian, Social Media, Trends
Oleh: Nena Brodjonegoro
Sekitar 3 hari yang lalu tweeps di Jakarta sempat ramai karena adanya undangan untuk hadir di acara TwitterParty yang diadakan oleh Hard Rock FM. TwitterParty ini adalah “the first in town”, dan merupakan salah satu bentuk dukungan terhadap gerakan #indonesiaunite. Selain itu, TwitterParty juga menjanjikan bintang tamu antara lain Desy Anwar, Dian Sastro, Melaney Ricardo, serta Endah n Rhesa. Jam 4-8 acara TwitterParty sudah mulai “pemanasan” dengan adanya live broadcast di program Drive and Jive Hard Rock FM. Jam 8, ketika live broadcast sudah berakhir, the party finally started!
TwitterParty dibuka oleh Iwet Ramadhan, yang menjadi MC pada malam hari itu. Iwet juga tampil bersama Pandji Pragiwaksono, yang dikenal sebagai pelopor gerakan #indonesiaunite dan penyanyi lagu “Kami Tidak Takut” – yang juga adalah salah satu bentuk gerakan #indonesiaunite.
Unspun‘s heard of Kenny Sia before as Malaysia’s top blogger, but for some reason — probably because Unspun was focused on the more political blogs of Malaysia – never visited his site.
Last Saturday, during the ASEAN Day celebrations, Unspun got to meet Kenny and found him engaging (see how, in this photo ripped from Kenny’s blog, he charms those stewardesses to take photos with him?), intelligent and generally a great fellow to be with.
The Sabahan.com, in its survey of Malaysian blogs ranks Kenny’s blog as most influential with 4,828 links from 2,406 blogs. That’s a lot of links and a lot of influence.
Yet in our conversation, Kenny said he felt that his readership was somewhat limited in growth as it was mainly confined to Malaysia and Singapore. Partly because of language and culture, Malaysians and Singaporeans tend to read each others blogs but outside these two countries there are few readers.
We talked about exchanging links as he’d love to see more Indonesians visiting his blog. Unspun invited him and other Malaysian bloggers to Pesta Blogger and he said that he has another engagement but he could rustle his fellow social bloggers from Malaysia to come over. That would be great and the Pesta Blogger Committee is now trying to work out a deal with a regional airline to try to get them to fly bloggers from neighboring countries in for Pesta Blogger on October 24.
If you do have time do visit Kenny’s blog. It’s very humorous in Kenny’s own style, usually interspersed with photos and has a quirky perspective on things. Though Kenny claims to be a social blogger, he sometimes can’t help himself from venturing into political commentary such as this comparison between Thailand’s handsome and young Prime Minister and Malaysia’s well, not so handsome and young counterpart:
1. Abhisit sounds like Absinthe. Najib sounds like Nazi. 2. Abhisit has no gray hair. Najib has totally no hair. 3. Abhisit led angry people to protest and overthrow his previous government. Najib overthrew Perak and made people so angry they protested.
It is for this and other reasons that Kenny’s blog is probably the most popular in Malaysia. Aspiring bloggers may want to go to his site to pick up tips on how to pick up links.
Here’s Kenny’s take on a facet of life in Jakarta that most of us take for granted:
Question: What is one thing Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok and Jakarta have in common?
Answer: They are all big, noisy, smoky and the traffic is a real bitch.
However, I did notice one thing special about Jakarta that other places don’t. It is perhaps the only place I know of in this part of the world, where people take advantage of the ridiculous traffic jams on the road, and turn it into a profit-making opportunity.
