The increasingly globalized situation seems to give people demands to use international languages, namely English, actively. Even in the world of business and marketing, English is one of the best weapons in copywriting. Here, Indonesian is being left behind in marketing brands and products. However, is it true that Indonesian is not selling well compared to English?
So on the 22nd Episodes, SBM ITB Talks invited two speakers: Akbar Selamat (Alumni of SBM ITB) and Tjia Alphani (Students of SBM ITB 2022). They are West Java Language Ambassador 2020 as representatives of young people to declare Bahasa Indonesia is the language that is saleable for our business.
Want to make Indonesian more marketable? Here’s how
Bahasa Indonesia is special and unique
Tjia Alphani – Duta Bahasa Jawa Barat 2020, said, “Bahasa Indonesia is our mother tongue as the people of Indonesia. Bahasa, Indonesia has a lot of history that makes it special and unique. With knowing Bahasa Indonesia, we also know about the struggle of our patriots during the colonial era. The conclusion is Bahasa Indonesia is the result of Indonesia’s history”.
Change our perspective that Bahasa Indonesia is Out of Date
On the previous point, we know that Bahasa Indonesia is unique, but many younger people that said Bahasa Indonesia is out of date or English are fancier than Bahasa. Tjia Alphani also added her thoughts, “We have to change this perspective because our language is the best language ever in the world. There are a lot of words that couldn’t translate into other languages, such as Bahasa Gaul. It makes our language more difficult to learn rather than other languages. It proves that many people need a long time to be truly capable of using Bahasa Indonesia.
Increasing our Bahasa Indonesia’s knowledge by reading
“Learning Bahasa Indonesia is easy. First, we must have a willingness to learn. The willingness is the key for us to do the next action that we want to do. Then, to know Bahasa Indonesia more deeply, we should read Indonesian books such as history books, novels, study books, etc. By reading, we could find new words or sentences and enrich our Indonesian vocabulary.” said Akbar Selamat.
Understand your business value first
Many business people value that Bahasa Indonesia is not a saleable language, especially for the marketing aspect. Akbar Selamat shared his thoughts, “If we realize, Bahasa Indonesia is a saleable language. We could look at the business that existed in Bandung. There are cafes or FNB businesses that have already used Bahasa Indonesia as their icon or promotion language. That business has grown well and has a lot of customers. The business is not about the language that we used but is about how we could communicate our business value to customers until they became aware and attracted to our product. After we understood our value, we could use Bahasa Indonesia to describe our value.
Understanding the true meaning of Bahasa Indonesia and Love it!
“Bahasa, Indonesia is our pride as Indonesian people. To know it more deeply, we must love our language first by defining the history of the Bahasa, how our patriots could create Bahasa Indonesia, and so on. If we have already loved our language, we could get more used to it in our daily life, we will find new words that we didn’t know before and could influence other people to do the same with us.” said Tjia Alphani in the last statement.
As business students, we have a similar purpose: to maximize profit and give the best experience for our customers. First of all, we must understand our business value. Then, we could communicate it well to customers, and our product could more attract our customers. Feel free to use any language to communicate our value to customers. If we talk about language, as Indonesia people that always use Bahasa Indonesia in daily life, we must feel proud of our language because our language is special and unique. There is a lot of vocabulary that could be used to promote our product/business. According to the Indonesia proverb, “Tak kenal maka tak sayang.”, by starting with knowing our language, loving it, and learning about it. We will realize that Bahasa Indonesia is saleable for our business.
