Unspun

There will always fools rushing in where angels fear to tread.

The Malaysian Tourism Board’s advertisement in the Jakarta Post looking for professional PR help, which was coincidentally placed after Malaysian Tourism Minister Tengku Adnan made his boo boo statement over bloggers and women, is arousing some amusing reactions among the industry players in Jakarta.

One large international PR firm, regarded as a has-been by most people in the industry, is obviously very eager to go for the business, not realizing that the MTB has a cultural rather than a PR problem. The firm, which belongs to one of the world’s largest marketing communications groups, is busy sending out qustionnaires to their friends and journalists for a perception audit, the usual stuff that PR firms do to try to convince the client that they know what people think about the client. Last heard they were not polling bloggers.

Another international PR firm, which has but a small presence in Jakarta, was also interested but they decided against the pitch becuse they did not have the manpower resources.

One freelance consultant for a local established PR firm was also interested in the business and had a novel approach. He phoned Unspun to ask if moi was pitching for the business. When Unspun replied that, contrary to conventional wisdom, Unspun was still in possession of his cognitive faculties, he asked Unspun for advice instead on how much to quote the MTB. “From what they describd in the briefing document,” he said, “it looks like they are asking for US$10,000 to US$15,000 of worth of acivities in fees alone.”

Unspun laughed: “You’ll be extremely lucky if you get US$5,000 per month is my guess.”

“What!? But they want to conduct a national campaign in Indonesia with lots of activities…” he sounded perplexed.

Unspun said it as up to him but from what Unspun knows about Malaysian bureaucrats, they do not understand PR, how much it is worth and how much it can do. Their comprehension of PR does not distinguish between PR consultants and Events Organizers and besides, we all know what the problems are in Malaysia that prevent more Indonesians from going there. It has to do with obtuse politicians and bureaucrats more interested in jilat pantat and flexing their little muscles than really attracting tourists to Malaysia. Solve that and doing PR for Malaysia will be a breeze.