Maverick Indonesia

A new JAKARTA “AREA” Blog

It’s very nice to find another resource or reference on our beloved city of Jakarta on the blogosphere. It’s also nice to know that this blog is written by professionals (no, not the DKI Jakarta city officials) whose job is to find out everything about this city, with emphasis on lifestyle and entertainment, and also on some current issues like the monorail.

So, we’d like to welcome AREA magazine as they have emerged in the blogosphere, complete with the tagline “I AM JAKARTA”.

AREA Magazine is a free Jakarta community magazine that has actually run for 3 years. In fact, the launch of their blog is also to celebrate this achievement. Why do I call it an achievement? Well, as you already know, after the SIUPP was no longer in effect, the number of publications in Indonesia went really high, much higher than the actual number of readers.

Free magazines are just one of the publications that seemed to have sprung up and filled the racks of coffee shops and restaurants, free for anyone to pick up, take home, and then totally forget about it…. because… well… it’s free.

In its first edition in October 2004, AREA came out with 40 pages of what it called “the obsessive guide to jakarta’s impulsive lifestyle and entertainment”. I guess one of the first tasks of the owners is to prove to the public that setting up this magazine was not just an impulsive thing that they did.

Their move to go into the blogosphere is actually nice. I hope to find some useful information about my city in there. I am sure that soon when I google a topic or a place in Jakarta, that it’s most likely to show up in their page.

However, I’m actually quite bothered by the main page of the blog that looks like it’s one whole magazine crammed into one space. That’s just too much scrolling up and down effort. There’s also a blog entry on recommendation for food joints in Tebet, which is one of the main columns of AREA print magazine, and is a copy of their September issue.

I think they should figure out what they wanna achieve through this blog. We hope they don’t just copy paste everything from the magazine into webspace because that’ll be redundant.

Another question is whether a blog is the right format that they wanna use (in this case, the friendliest for internet users). Do they really want to create conversations or do they just want to have an existence in the cyber world (just because everyone else is blogging)?

The Maverick Blog got people sweating… just a bit

Several weeks ago, a Maverick blogger wrote about how a major media group is planning to buy one of the very few surviving lifestyle & entertainment portal in Indonesia after receiving the information from an insider.

Earlier this week, she received a prank call… (well, she actually got a very polite call from her source, but that’s not too juicy, is it?) asking her to remove the posting from our blog, because it was causing a rather uncomfortable situation for some parties.

The source explained, that the man from the media group (who has the same initial as Steven Spielberg’s film in the early 80s about some alien creature) became uneasy after he was asked by a journalist regarding the takeover plan. When he asked the journalist for the source of the inquiry, then the journalist mentioned (drum roll please…. ) The Maverick Blog.

So, we’ve taken out the posting “temporarily”, as the source said that these days are the crucial days in negotiations, and that the posting would somehow affect it. I assure you that it will back once an announcement is made.

We certainly hope that the move will benefit the portal and revive it to full potential. And to the man from the media group: Relax, mate… it’s just a blog.

Corporate Blog: Is it really a dilematic decision?

In June 2006, SWAonline published an op-ed written by Amalia E. Maulana; a PhD candidate in UNSW School of Marketing, Australia. The title of Amalia’s op-ed is Corporate Blog: Dilematic Decision.

In her op-ed, Amalia stated that there are several reasons why having a corporate blog could become a dilematic decision IF corporate bloggers agreed to adopt the code of ethic in blogosphere.

Those reasons are:

1. The information disclosed in a blog should be honest; then how to control the flow of information of this blog? What if a corporate blog becomes a place where employees could posted their complaints towards the company?
2. Once a company decided to go blogging, they have to commit on their blog. Are they ready for this commitment?
3. Blog should not consists of advertisement. It is a 2-way communication tools that should reflects daily experience of bloggers that will lead into discussions. Then what if your corporate blog can’t lit up an interesting discussion?

She then brought an example about Google corporate blog that receives criticism for not adhering to blogosphere code of ethic.

What puzzles me is her few last statements about corporate blogging. According to Amalia, corporate blog is not a must for companies, considering the dilemma it caused. Furthermore, she said, “Companies that need blogs are market leaders wanting to positioned themselves as an expert in the industry … or those who wants to have a close relationship with their customer.”

My question to Amalia is: why don’t companies want to positioned themselves as an expert in the industry? And why don’t companies want to have a close relationship with their customer?

***

In his blog, Seth Godin, the author of Unleashing The Ideavirus, All Marketers are Liars, and Permission Marketing, published a post called ‘Raveling’.

Seth illustrated a blog built by Emily Martin, a graduate from art school. Emily has a myspace page for her blog Inside A Black Apple; and starts selling her artwork on Etsy.com.

Inside A Black Apple captures Emily’s daily life, her dreams, as well as the history behind her new paintings and other cute artworks. Emily has only a small store in her apartment; but she has hundreds of views in Etsy and has sold more than 20.000 dollars worth of paintings so far. Hmm, does it ring a bell?

***

You can wait forever; but probably you’ll never become a market leader.
Does it mean you’re not going to consider blogging until then?

I think being a blogger is more into becoming an opinion leader. That’s why Mavericks go blogging at the first place, and I think that’s the reason why other bloggers do, too.

Note: Amalia is a member of Virtual Consulting, where his colleague Nukman Luthfie wrote about corporate blog. Amalia’s post in SWAOnline is written before that particular posting appeared in Nukman’s blog.

The Mav’s: Ong is Blogger of the Week

Maverick’s Ong Hock Chuan has been named Blogger Indonesia’s Blogger of the Week by A. Fatih Syuhud, the man behind the Blogger Indonesia blog. Fatih showed Ong the ropes when he just started his adventure in the blogosphere. We’d like to thank Fatih for this because at a point in his early blogging months, Ong accidentally deleted Maverick’s blog!

Joining in on this thank-fest, we’d also like to thank Ong for encouraging the Mavericks to blog more, constantly preaching the gospel of Blog which has shown significant results, breaking us through even more from the clutter.

And this week, Fatih is honoring Ong for his writing and how his postings in unspun have attracted lots of attention:

the Indonesian bloggers will never be no where near a kind of influence the conventional media has, until and unless the person like Ong and others like him are also engaging in blogging activities.

Ong, of course, has blogged his acceptance speech in unspun.

Note:
Earlier in July, A. Fatih Syuhud awarded the Maverick blog as Blogger of the Week

We’re definitely on a roll!

What’s with Corporate Blog?

I just went into Technorati and searched for Maverick’s blog out of curiosity. At the very top of the results is a blog post titled “Apa itu Corporate Blog?” or “What is a Corporate Blog?” written by Nukman Luthfie.

His definition of a Corporate Blog is:

a blog that is written, published, and supported by a corporation or organization to achieve a certain objective. From a marketing-communications standpoint, the corporate blog strengthens the bond with the target market and also the company’s image as an expert in a particular field. This blog falls into this category. A similar breakthrough has been done by a well-known Indonesian PR consultancy firm Maverick with its corporate blog. Others who’ve done so include Virus Communications and Hermawan Kertajaya.

Note:
Virus Communications and Nukman’s Virtual Consulting are both under PT Virtual Media Nusantara. Virtual Consulting runs the “Blog Internet Marketing Indonesia”…. Hmmm… Sounds familiar doesn’t it Mavs?

Thanks to Nukman for the post. Please do check out our blog periodically because this won’t be just another corporate blog, but simply one kick ass blog

Maverick named Blogger Indonesia of the Week

Maverick has been featured as Blogger Indonesia of the Week in Blogger Indonesia. Thanks Fatih.

Here’s what it says:

When I lamented in a bit disappointment about the passive attitude of traditional media towards blogs and bloggers or you can call both as blogosphere, R.M., founder of Blog Indonesia aggregator advised me to be patient because he’s rest assured the time will come when Indonesian mainstream media will look into the blogosphere more seriously as far as the blogs trend and growth in the West keeps up. He actually wanted to remind me of this: our traditional media will follow whatever trend happening outthere sooner or later.

But he also warns Indonesian bloggers to keep quality, beside quantity, intact to attract many others to blog.

I reproduce here his good comment:

I believe it is just a matter of time.
Indonesian blogs still have some growing up to do. Honesty, credibility and consistency are qualities that can only be established over a long period of time.

Blogs with such quality no doubt will shine and it would be foolish for the mainstream media not to pay attention to them.

He further said that, even New York Times learns from bloggers:

…
Today, the New York Times launched its site redesign, announced by a prominent editor’s note on the homepage. There’s a few lessons for bloggers to learn from the redesign, as well as some evidence that the Times itself has been learning from bloggers.

In other words, the more media people (and academia) go blogging, the more it will be followed by others and that’s the time when blogging become inseparable part of tools to communicate thought, news and ideas; beside the already existing tools like print media (newspapers and magazines), books and academic publication which are only accessible to certain circle of people.

It’s in this context that Maverick Indonesia’s presence in Indonesian blogosphere deserve duly attention. Maverick, as mentioned in the blog header, is “A Jakarta-Based PR Consultancy on the media, journalists PR, communications and life in Indonesia.” An institution which is very closely related to the media.

Wonderfully, this blog is a collaborative works, similar to Agoravox or Global Voices Online, although all the 15 contributors seem to be from the same office.

You can read a lot of interesting and quality stuff in the blog that covers various topics, mostly on news, journalism and current-affairs commentaries that you might not read in the print media.

Just to take a few example, see Maverick’s meet-up with Ulin Niam Yusron, a journalist from the weekly publication KONTAN. And see also its critical and unpriveleged-leaning commentary on Jakarta Governor, Sutiyoso’s speech which is one of my favorite piece. Maverick said:

Reading about his speech, I couldn’t help thinking that his “Acting Metropolitan” plea is geared more towards those who are less privileged in the city, while we know that some citizens who drive around in fancy new cars or big chopper bikes are also “kampungan”. Well, those who are less privileged tend to imitate or look up to the behaviors of those who are perceived to be at the higher social strata. So, perhaps in his final year of his second term, Bang Yos should be tougher in enforcing his rules and values to those who are supposed to know the rules already - those who have experienced the “better” cities in the world, and those who know how other citizens work together in making their city a better place to live.

So, as far as Indonesia goes, blog appears to be a converging point of two different world: a chatting and friendster culture on one hand and the journalism, traditional media and academia on the other. A meeting point that needs to be preserved and if it continues will surely create a bigger and unprecedented positive forces in the future.

While the former, with more edges in IT technology related stuff, can give some help to the latter on blog nitty-gritty, the latter can “teach” the former on how to make a good and quality content. I hope the former should learn to communicate with the latter and vice-versa, to make the “converging process” going smoother.

Defense Minister Juwono has started blogging

Corporate communicators, journalists and PR hacks in Indonesia take note: your Defense Minister has just started blogging. What are you going to do about it?

If conversations with professional communicators in Indonesia are anything to go by, the answer is probably nothing. The typical attitude, especially for those over 40, is that blogs are for angst-filled teenagers writing syrupy prose and bad poetry on the Net.

They couldn’t be more wrong. Blogs are very likely to change the way businesses and organizations and businesses communicate, especially when it comes to crisis and issues management. The rise of the blogging phenomenon as a potential force in society is well documented in publications such as Fortune, Tom Freidman’s The World is Flat and Naked Conversations, a book co-authored by Robert Scoble, best known as Microsoft’s appointed blogger, and Shiel Israel.

Defense Minister Juwono Sudarsono has apparently taken all this seriously and has started blogging from April. So far he’s made five postings, the first was personal and on the arrival of his grandson. His other postings were about the US Secretary of Defence, development planning and the debate on Pancasila.

His last posting, however, is particularly interesting from a issues management point of view and can be a precursor of how businesses, organizations and personalities may try to engage their detractors in the future.

Titled Military Businesses and the Reform Process, Juwono rebuts the points raised by a Human Rights Watch report of June 2006 called Too High a Price: The Human Rights Costs of the Indonesian Military’s Economic Activities.

So what does he achieve?

Read more

Do You Believe in Blog?

“I don’t read blogs. People I know don’t read blogs. I don’t think blogs mean that much. Or probably I’m just too old for that.” (President Director of one of the biggest pharmaceutical manufacturer; an informal conversation during networking events)

Mavericks read blogs. Furthermore, we believe in blogs.

That’s the reason why we decided to go blogging at the first place. Though some corporation people are still skeptical about blogs, the trend keeps emerging.

Hermawan Kartajaya, the marketing guru, has his own blog. So does Al Ries and Laura Ries, the author of The Fall of Advertising and The Rise of PR. Even Business Week has published a long article (the article looks like blog postings) explaining why you must start blogging now. Moreover, this reputable business magazine has also launched their own blog called blogspotting.net.

NIKE, a well-known brand in the world, have tried a new medium for their advertising and marketing communications. Yes, a blog! Cooperating with Gawker Media, a small company that operates blogs about culture and politics, Nike-Gawker launched their ad-blog: Art of Speed. Through this blog, Nike showcased the work of 15 talented young filmmakers commissioned to interpret the idea of speed—and The New York Times carry the news.

Of course, not all blog are worth reading. But if you could find blogs written by opinion leaders, who use them to talk directly to your public, you will find it amazingly interesting and beneficial for you. And there’s a plethora of blogs on the blogosphere that are unique and even surprising!

If your company produce syrup spoon or baking pan, you should monitor this blog: Natural Cooking Club. It is a blog for those who loves cooking and shopping for cooking utensils. The blog members have their own ‘baking-pan hunt’ during weekends, and they even went to Japan in search of spatula, kettle, and other kitchenware. In this blog, they discuss enamelware as if they were gossiping about the famous Hope diamond.

PostSecret is a gallery-blog that touches those who read it, creates hysteria, and captures media attention instantly. This blog has been featured in several media all around the world, including Indonesia (Media Indonesia). The blog encourages people to submit a postcard anonymously to a specific PO BOX number, with their deepest secret written on it. Regularly, the moderator scans and publishes several selected postcards—sharing these secrets to the whole world while creating an irresistible buzz.

Hey, what about you? Do you have your own peculiar blog? Or have you heard of some?