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‘Ayo! Indonesia Bisa’ campaign seeks to boost millennials’ motivation, true calling
Between the years 2020 and 2030, Indonesia will enjoy a demographic bonus, when productive age individuals will constitute the biggest chunk of the country’s population.
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Keepers of Indonesian youngsters’ flame: Singer Agnez Mo (second from left) poses for a photograph with (from left) Clear brand manager Essy Prita Cinta, PT Unilever Indonesia hair care marketing head Asima Haq, actor and TV personality Hamish Daud and race car driver and drifter Alinka Hardianti on the sidelines of a concert concluding the Ayo! Indonesia Bisa (Yes! Indonesia Can) campaign. The campaign was organized by hair care brand Clear, manufactured by Unilever Indonesia. The concert, held on May 13 in Tennis Indoor Senayan, concluded the four-month campaign seeking to ignite the spirit of Indonesian millennials to be the best that they can be in pursuing their careers. (JP/Arief Suhardiman)
Sebastian Partogi
The Jakarta Post/Jakarta
Between the years 2020 and 2030, Indonesia will enjoy a demographic bonus, when productive age individuals will constitute the biggest chunk of the country’s population. The majority of the demographic bonus will comprise the millennial generation or, more specifically, Generation Z, the members of which were born around the mid-1990s to mid-2000s.
Despite the potential that Generation Z millennials have to contribute to society through their seamless access to resources through the help of technology, most of them do not have clear professional aspirations, while spending too much time being galau (anxious) and could easily be swayed by other people’s opinions and judgments.
Because of this, many millennials do not have a clue as to what type of vocation they want to pursue after they graduate from college. Around 83 percent of them said they had an ambition to become entrepreneurs, yet most of them were still in the dark about what kind of entrepreneurship did they wanted to pursue and the concrete steps to realize their goals.
Concerned about this issue, hair care brand Clear – manufactured by PT Unilever Indonesia – launched a nationwide campaign called Ayo! Indonesia Bisa (Yes! Indonesia Can).
Indonesian singer Agnez Mo, the stage name of Agnes Monica, who has been an ambassador for Clear since 2011, admitted that she felt more than a little concerned about how a lot of Indonesian millennials seemed to lack the kind of resilience that she had toward criticism and negative comments.
“Millennials live in an age where they can have everything instantly [through the help of the internet and technology], eroding their sense of dedication and commitment toward [their vocations],” said the singer, whose tenacious determination to go global has earned her an international career.
Through the campaign, the brand seeks to create a better future for Indonesia by motivating the country’s youth to find their true passions in life and gather the strategies to pursue the careers they are passionate about.
The brand itself started conducting the campaign in 2011. Since then, until 2015, the campaign focused on supporting Indonesian youngsters active in the field of sports, especially soccer, by helping the national team shine on international stages such as the Asian Cup and Southeast Asian Games. In 2015, the brand also sent young Indonesian soccer players to be trained by Manchester United at Old Trafford Stadium, the United Kingdom.
According to PT Unilever Indonesia hair care marketing head Asima Haq, however, since 2016 the brand had expanded its activation campaign among youngsters, from covering only sports to other fields, such as the arts.
The 2018 campaign, which kicked off in January 2018 and concluded in mid-May 2018, comprised road shows across Indonesia’s five big cities: Jakarta, Bandung in West Java, Surabaya in East Java, Makassar in South Sulawesi, as well as Denpasar in Bali. Its activities covered street arts, visual arts as well as discussions and sharing sessions involving successful personalities to motivate Indonesian youngsters to work hard and contribute to society.
The campaign also designated five celebrities as its “agents of change”. They were program ambassadors who would motivate the youngsters through the success they had achieved in their own respective fields. The ambassadors were: female race car driver and drifter Alinka Hardianti, actor and television personality Hamish Daud, actress Kimberly Ryder, chef Dhea Annisa, entrepreneur and comedian Chandra Liow, vlogger Agung Hapsah as well as medical doctor and environmentalist Gamal Albinsaid.
According to Haq, the brand had chosen the above mentioned personalities as its campaign ambassadors because they were people who had become successful in their fields by sticking to their guns despite other people’s negative comments and doubts about whether they could actually reach their dreams.
“Millennials who are digital natives face too much pressure to cultivate an image on social media, where people can say really mean things. Therefore, we would like to encourage them to identify their true calling without being swayed by doubts due to other netizens’ opinions,” Haq told The Jakarta Post on the sidelines of a concert to mark the conclusion of the campaign.
“You can’t be successful if you only imitate other people; you have to pursue your own true calling,” she added.
The concert itself was held on May 13 in Tennis Indoor Senayan, South Jakarta.
The concert also featured other high-profile Indonesian acts like the band Sheila On 7, singers Vidi Aldiano and Gita Gutawa as well as DJ Diskopantera. The concert was attended by around 500 individuals.
The concertgoers were shocked by a report on the bombing attack that had taken place in three churches in Surabaya, East Java in the morning prior to the start of the concert. Therefore, they prayed for the attack’s victims at the beginning of the event to express their grief for the bombing attack.
The concert’s highlight was Agnez’s performance. The organizers had aptly featured her in the event as an epitome of the gift of perseverance in pursuing one’s dreams despite facing an onslaught of other people’s discouraging, sometimes downright mean, opinions of you.
Agnez’s experience in working hard to pursue her goals against all odds, in particular, has turned her into an ideal role model for Indonesian youngsters. Having a big dream of pursuing an international career as a singer, Agnez has frequently been mocked and ridiculed by the public – especially in social media – due to her dream’s enormity.
Agnez’s hard work has come into fruition: she has been working with international acts such as American producer Timbaland while singing with yet another American singer Michael Bolton on the special Asian edition of his 2011 duets album titled Gems. In 2017, she released her first international album titled X, distributed via international record label Amada Records.
No stranger to hateful messages directed at her on social media for having allegedly too big a dream, Agnez encouraged Indonesian youngsters to use their haters’ spiteful comments as a fuel to motivate them to pursue their dreams.
“If I said that I wanted to have an international career and everybody supported me, I might not have a strong enough drive to get what I wanted,” Agnez said during a press conference prior to the concert.
She used marathon runners as a metaphor to convince Indonesian youngsters to stick to their guns despite being mocked at by other people.
“When someone runs a marathon, there are always spectators at the tribune, either cheering or jeering her. Yet, have you seen a marathon runner who stops in the middle of her course to wave and smile at those who cheer at her or, (mimicking an angry gaze while saying) ‘hey, you! Picking a fight with me?’ to those who boo her? No! They carry on running, straight ahead,” she illustrated.
