Many may remember images of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo walking out of a children’s goods store at the Tunjungan Plaza mall in Surabaya, East Java, late last year with white paper bags in his hands prominently displaying the store’s logo, Mothercare.

The scene was immortalized on his personal Instagram page not long after the rare shopping time. “These are gifts for [my grandchildren] Jan Ethes and Sedah Mirah that I bought in a mall in Surabaya: children’s clothes, jackets and some baby clothes,” read the caption on the November 2018 photo, which later garnered 427,179 likes on the social media platform.

The post may have benefitted Jokowi—who was then campaigning to run for his second term as president—as it shows a loving grandfather image to the public, but it has also benefitted the Mothercare brand and its company, Kanmo Group.

Founder and managing director Hitesh Bharwani told The Jakarta Post last Friday that the unexpected visit was “the proudest moment” of his and his team’s career, as it had helped increase public awareness of the brand.

He also said that the post increased Mothercare Indonesia’s brand engagement with its customers. This is backed by the number of likes on the two posts on its official Instagram account, each of which garnered more than 5,000 likes, way above the typical number of likes of around 100 to 500 on posts the account received.

Mothercare Indonesia is not the first brand Jokowi and his family “accidentally” catapulted to fame.

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