APEC PR Lessons For Indonesian Business

The Jakarta Post

"Thank God for the kids at the embassy." The words of one of the dozens of Western TV correspondents covering APEC last week. It was cynical, but from the perspective of a television reporter who wanted to get on the air, it was also pragmatic.

A U.S. embassy occupation. A minor riot in Dili. For foreign journalists struggling to made something interesting out of a bunch of heads of state sitting around a table talking about economics, it was irresistible.

That’s why it’s called a media event.

Out of proportion? Of course it was. "Timor Events Shake Indonesia As APEC Host" headlined the Asian Wall Street Journal. "Asia Summit Clouded by Tensions on East Timor" announced the International Herald Tribune.

But timing is everything. When you have the president of the United States in town, when you have the world’s media tripping over themselves in search of a story, an embassy sit-in -- no matter how contrived, no matter how minor -- is a sure winner.

Anything to get out of writing another piece on the alphabet soup of GATT, PBF, PBEC, PBN and the like.

As an Asian-based American newspaper reporter sarcastically put it: "Trade barriers being dropped in the year 2020. Wow. Stop the presses."

Twenty-nine kids sitting in a parking lot. They dominated the headlines from the moment they scaled the walls on the eve of Clinton’s arrival. Toss in a small riot in Dili, and the story was a sure hit.

Should anyone be surprised? It was a page torn from the Greenpeace handbook. This is, after all, the Information Age. Play to the cameras. Know when to make noise and where.

There was even the reporter-turned-Timorese activist who witnessed the 1991 incident standing out in front of the embassy pontificating for the cameras. She and the colleague who had been with her back then had conveniently managed to get themselves arrested in Timor and sent back to Jakarta the day before. Now she was appropriately "outraged" in TV-sized soundbites. It was Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame.

Did the government handle the situation well? Yes. The police kept their distance. The Foreign Ministry sent a soft-spoken woman with impeccable English to make soothing comments for the cameras.

Did it matter? Yes and no. It didn’t stop Timor from dominating the APEC coverage, but it did help undercut those who would paint a picture of Indonesia as a police state. Anything less would have turned an unfortunate incident into a full-fledged disaster.

The international press corps is gone now. The media spotlight has moved on. That’s good. But it is also bad.

The opportunity to highlight Indonesia’s economic achievements has, for the moment, passed. What Business Week magazine before the summit predicted would be "a chance to showcase" the archipelago’s "for tourists and investors" has come and gone.

Why did the Timorese manage to capture the media’s imagination? Partly because the alternatives offered to the visiting reporters were so few. There are a thousand stories in Jakarta. Ten thousand in Indonesia. It is up to the Indonesian business sector to find ways to tell them.

How many companies seized this unique opportunity? A survey of the media information counters at the APEC conference told the story. A press visit to Bandung for the rollout of the new plane at IPTN. Two trips to Lippo City. A briefing at JSX.

And that was it. No company fact sheets. No invitations for interviews with President-Directors. No exotic tours.

Meanwhile U.S. companies were aggressively working the press corps. Many flew in public relations experts for the event. U.S. Commerce Secretary Ron Brown’s press secretary went so far as to wake this consultant and others at 3 a.m. one morning because she had a White House reporter a few hours from his deadline who wanted to write about U.S. business deals.

Those efforts benefited the local Indonesian partners of the U.S. firms, but did little for the countless other Indonesian companies with their own stories to tell.

Sure foreign reporters focus on the negatives. Sure they occasionally exaggerate. Sure they are sometimes unfair. But unless they are given something else to write about, what can we expect?

A chance for the Indonesian business sector to build from the APEC experience looms on the horizon. 1995 is the Golden Anniversary of Indonesia’s independence. It is another "media peg," or event, upon which reporters can hang their stories.

Can anything be learned from the APEC? Yes. Communicate. Don't wait for the media to come to you.

Become media savvy. Reach out. Make it as easy as possible for reporters to tell your story. Provide them with the facts. Give them access. Show them what Indonesia is all about.

It is in the interest of Indonesian business to have the real story told. The reporters could care less. At the end of the day, you have to show them that a handful of kids at the U.S. embassy is not the only story in town.

Don’t be misled. An embassy occupation will bump a boring interview with a president-director off the front page any day. And when it comes to TV, it’s not even a contest.

So maybe it’s time the Indonesian business sector comes up with some media events of its own. The time to begin preparing for 1995 is now.