During our trip to the of Windusari district, our group was escorted around the area by a group of keen university students from Universitas Muhammadiyah Magelang. Ryan Tanjung is a part of the MTTC (Muhammadiyah Tobacco Control Center) who are actively trying to change cultural habits around tobacco at both a consumer and a grassroots level. I interviewed Ryan in an effort to learn more about the possible farming alternatives to tobacco and how the district could change to a crop or culture that was healthier and more sustainable. Ryan put forward to me that the area was changing and that this process was already in action especially in the agricultural sector. He stated that “We’ve tried to turn the tobacco plantation into coffee and the Honey Potato because in Indonesia it’s not common popular to know about the Honey Potato and in this area they have it.” 

Ryan’s interview helped to spur on our group work and come up with out plan for 2040 revolving around the two local crops with serious potential to boost the local economy. He said that this shift was not only envisioned by NGOs but also on a government scale, stating; “The minister of national planning wants to increase the development of the rural communities .. and create a new business entity for the local village”

So what is the deal with this Honey Sweet potato?

Sweet Cilembu is a local delicacy in the Magelang area, it’s similar to a normal sweet potato but has flavours or rich butter and honey allowing it to be used in both sweet and savory dishes like ice cream. The area around Mount Sumbing has the correct climate for these potatoes and combined with coffee could become a province icon.

This crop is discussed in Susanti Agustina’s paper Marketing of cilembu sweet potato seeds in the cybernetics era through the content of Dongeng Hui Cilembu: a study of ethno storytelling at Cilembu Village, Sumedang, West Java, Indonesia. She explains that when marketing this crop the method used was to entwine the potato in a kind of mythical story and use this story to disguise the marketing. A method that could be translated to our proposed festival?

Ryan’s interview helped me to understand the shift in the district away from tobacco and that there are numerous untamed resources that could be used as an alternative. In 2013 the Government gave 400 coffee seeds to farmers in the area to kickstart a shift in crops but it would be great to see more funding, teaching and infrastructure being used to indirectly help stop the wicked problem of tobacco.

References

A, Susanti. 2016, ‘Marketing of cilembu sweet potato seeds in the cybernetics era through the content of Dongeng Hui Cilembu: a study of ethno storytelling at Cilembu Village, Sumedang, West Java, Indonesia’ International Conference of Integrated Microfinance Management. Issue 10

Crosby, A., 2019. Design Activism in an Indonesian Village. Design Issues, 35 (3), pp.50-63. https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/desi_a_00549?mobileUi=0

Indo Indians 2017, Kampung Warna Warni Jodipan, a Colorful Village in Malang, viewed on 13 December, <https://www.indoindians.com/kampung-warna-warni-jodipan-a-colorful-village-in-malang/>.

Advertising is the key to selling any product and the indonesia tobacco industry is no exception, a range of mediums are used over the archipelago in an effort to coerce consumers into purchasing a product. Kedaulatan Rakyat is a daily newspaper publication based in Yogyakarta with a circulation of 125,000 copies split between print and digital form. Dyna Herlina Suwarto Nurhidayati Kusumaningtyas analysed and conducted research deconstructing the advertising and the messages appearing in the publication.. This research was produced in an effort to aid efforts in counter cigarette advertising. It’s important to note that tobacco companies in Indonesia do not compete in price per unit but rather but rather rely on a bombardment of emotional advertising.

It found that 45% of advertisements depicted models and of these the majority were middle class Javanese males, the main approach used by companies was transformational advertising – consuming the product will result in a positive increase of physiological characteristics (Christopher, 1984). Young people ages 10-19 in Yogyakarta make up a massive 17.6% of the population, many of whom are at risk from these advertisements. But this is not just specific to the region, rather occurs all over the archipelago.

Yayi Suryo Prabandari and Arika Dewi’s cross section in youth cigarette advertising found that “cigarette advertising and promotional messages are targeted at youths”. Leading me to believe that youth advertising is a crucial way to create customers for tobacco. But this is not just in Yogyakarta; “In Jakarta. 99.7 % of teenagers see cigarette ads on television; 86.7% of all teenagers see cigarette advertising in outdoor media space; 76.2 % of all teenagers see cigarette ads in newspapers and magazines and 81% of teenagers have attended events sponsored cigarettes” (Kusumaningtyas, 2015) . 

So the youth are heavily targeted in this advertising, this led me to investigate an example of one of these billboards that are heavily discussed in my research. This Advertisement was seen in Jakarta in 2012 by blogger Luke Regler and depicts a prominent english footballer Rio Ferdinand. Sports team sponsorship is a critical way for companies to engage a young audience.

Sebayang, S., Rosemary, R., Widiatmoko, D., Mohamad, K. and Trisnantoro, L. 2012, Better to die than to leave a friend behind: industry strategy to reach the young, Tobacco Control 2012, pp.370-372, viewed 24 November 2019, <http://ezproxy.lib.uts.edu.au/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.lib.uts.edu.au/docview/1781954926?accountid=17095&gt;.

Rus’an Nasrudin & Ledi Trialdi & Djoni Hartono & Abdillah Ahsan, 2013. “Tobacco Economic of Indonesia: Poor Households’ Spending Pattern, Tax Regressivity and Economic Wide Impact of Cigarette Excise Tax Simplification,” Working Papers in Economics and Business 201302, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Indonesia, revised Mar 2013.

Christopher P. Puto and William D. Wells. 1988,”Informational and Transformational Advertising: the Differential Effects of Time”, in NA – Advances in Consumer Research Volume 11, eds. Thomas C. Kinnear, Provo, UT : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 638-643.

Regler, Luke. 2012. Rio Ferdinand promotes smoking in Indonesia! Personal Blog (WordPress)

http://al-terity.blogspot.com/2012/04/rio-ferdinand-promotes-smoking-in.html

POST B: Everybody Knows (2008)

I vividly remember this campaign when I was in primary school. As an 8 year old seeing grotesque images of diseased feet and infected lungs after the 6 o’clock news if was pretty confronting. I remember the discussions we had in class about the ad and how the effects of nicotine and smoking tar and how this formulated my strong negative opinions about smoking.

Analysing the campaign from a mature perspective I can see the genius in it. The campaign was formulated by the Cancer Institute of NSW and was a montage of previous campaigns – an effective move considering the imagery was already widely known through previous QUIT campaigns. The message was spread over 2 mediums, a 60 second television ad consisting of imagery of smokers who had developed diseases as a result, and a 30 second radio ad. The television ad was aired during the coverage of the Beijing Olympics due to the fact that “TV viewership goes up 40% during the Olympics” said Verity Firth (NSW Assistant Health Minister). 

The ad had one of the highest effectiveness ratings (6.90 out of 10) and had the greatest proportion of smokers saying that the ad made them worry about their smoking (77%) and stop and think (80%).

The influx of Anti Smoking material put out in the late 2000s can be attributed to the returning of funding to the area. In May 2005 when the federal treasurer announced that a campaign to tackle youth smoking would be handsomely funded it laid the foundations for the campaigns we see today. It was found that mass media campaigns worked the best and were the most cost effective of the tested. This increase in funding to the QUITLINE and the Cancer institute assisted in developing campaigns that were harder hitting and more effective. 

Like all campaigns from the Cancer Institute it was followed and evaluated, one of the powerful ideas that came from the campaign was that “The delivery of the information also had the capacity to act like a message that was coming from within rather than being authoritarian”. Throughout the ad the Leonard Cohen song Everybody Knows plays aswell as text flashing on the screen, these read:

• Everybody knows smoking causes all these diseases
• But you still smoke
• Maybe you do need to break your habit

I think that these are very powerful and this strategy has been used in following campaigns such as the “Don’t make mokes your story” (2018).  I think that this use of graphic imagery juxtaposed with a very personal message is highly effective and when introduced at the same time as plain packaging such as in Australia it makes for a hard hitting campaign.

Sources: 

Cotter, T, & Hill, D. (2008). Australian Anti-smoking Campaigns. Of Substance: The National Magazine on Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drugs, 6(1), 26–27.

Fenely, R. 2008, ‘Games Viewers get shocking anti smoking ad’ Sydney Morning Herald, 16 August, Viewed 20th November 2019, <https://www.smh.com.au/national/games-viewers-get-shock-antismoking-ad-20080816-3wi9.html>

Guillaumier, A., Bonevski, B., & Paul, C. (2015). Tobacco health warning messages on plain cigarette packs and in television campaigns: a qualitative study with Australian socioeconomically disadvantaged smokers. Health Education Research, 30(1), 57–66. https://doi.org/10.1093/her/cyu037

Image:

Still from “Everybody Knows” 2008 NSW Cancer Council