Jakarta Monorail hands marketing duties to XM JWT

The appointment follows a pitch process last month, which also included Iris and Leo Burnett. The duration of the contract is two years––until the commencement of the Monorail operation in 2015, according to JWT Jakarta chief executive Lulut Asmoro.

"The biggest challenge is to make Jakartans excited and feel ownership of a project that stopped, and restarted now," he told Campaign Asia-Pacific. "The road block is that The Monorail has lost momentum and accrued disbelief in consumers. They will struggle to believe it is finally happening."

The project stalled in 2008, but is now back on track after the consortium was restructured and privatised. Singapore-based investment firm Ortus Holdings now controls 90 per cent of the consortium.

Asmoro said the early phase of the campaign would be to create awareness for the the Jakarta Monorail development, with a series of exhibitions to launch and showcase the project beginning next month. This project calls for a long-term integrated communication campaign from June 2013 until the construction is finished.

Among the marketing initiatives is a crowdsourcing event that allows Indonesians to name the monorail. Jakarta Monorail is expected to carry more than three million passengers per day when the first two lines are completed in 2015.

Chandra Wijaya, chief strategy officer at XM JWT, noted that a big part of the brief was to get the people involved to create a sense of ownership in the project.

He added that the monorail was going to expedite the pace of progress in the capital, and described it as a declaration of progress for the country.

XM JWT was formed last month to exploit the strengths of the two agencies. JWT Jakarta and XM Gravity operate independently even though they are both part of the JWT network, and the monorail project was the first account the new joint-venture agency pitched for.

“Since the XM brand is under the umbrella of JWT, we decided to find a win-win partnership model by building XM Gravity digital capabilities in JWT Jakarta,” Kevin Mintaraga, chief executive of XM Gravity in Indonesia, said.

Asmoro meanwhile noted that the new unit will power the agency’s digital offerings. The new division also recently won work for Gudang Garam, one of the largest tobacco companies in the country. It will continue to provide digital marketing services to existing JWT clients, such as American Standard.