“Kill two birds with one stone.”   

Bakrie’s Investment on Path: Killing Two Birds with One Stone Strategy?

 

The $25 million investment of Bakrie group in Path has led to controversial responses in Indonesia. Being notorious for its history of prolonged unfinished Lapindo case, Bakrie group has made a decision that the public opinion in Indonesia does not seem to favor. Indonesia’s netizens vigorously share their thoughts on the investment with negative comments like “would uninstall Path” (Recode, January 2014) or “they should’ve paid the victims of Lapindo first”. (Solopos, January 2014) In addition to that, the participation of Bakrie Global Group’s front-man, Aburizal Bakrie (ARB) on Indonesia’s 2014 Presidential election, makes the investment vaguely seen as part of a presidential succession campaign strategy rather than as a business strategy.

Ignoring the fact that ARB is running for presidential election, Bakrie group’s decision on the investment is actually appropriate for business expansion. Although Path went through an up and down moment in 2013 due to internal problems, (Technocrunch, 2013) the social media company is looking at expanding their market in Southeast Asia thus searching the strongest partner to fulfill this mission. From the total of 24 million users around the world, Indonesia serves Path 4 million of users and domination on 30% of the social media traffic. (Solopos, January 2014) Just as Twitter remarks that the biggest number of users comes from Indonesia, Path is very keen on experiencing the same accomplishment. The initial number of Path’s users in Indonesia and in addition to other users from different countries in Southeast Asia will contribute huge revenues for Bakrie if the development and management plan goes well.

Now, if we add the political aspect of ARB running for presidential election to the discussion then, the investment can serve as the English idiom “kill two birds with one stone” though at a high risk. The involvement of social media as part of communication campaign is not a new approach in business and is now used widely for political movements to gain supports and favors. (Day, 2000) If, within the investment, Bakrie group would like to extend Path’s function as to gain supports and favors for its front-man in the presidential election, then a risk management plan should come along within the campaign strategy since Bakrie has been harvesting the notorious popularity in Indonesia.

The existing outraged and sentiment towards Bakrie due to Lapindo case could jeopardize the political career of ARB in the next presidential election and also the company’s revenue in the long run if they don’t start to fix their image; and if the company fails to bring innovation to distinguish Path from other social media. Ever since the Lapindo case was brought to public, the company has never been covered with good media exposure because of the company’s failures to meet their responsibility towards the victims. The failure in debts of Bakrie Telecom and the failure to explain financial discrepancies of Bumi Resource Minerals add up the flaws of Bakrie in the eyes of Indonesian public.

Back in 2010, CNN called Indonesia as the “Twitter Nation” for its massive use of social media in exchanging information and making changes. It has this power of gathering supports, favors and resources through movement such as Save Jakarta or A Coin for Prita. If Bakrie intends to get a benefit from this “Twitter Nation”, then it should start settling their long abandoned responsibility in Lapindo very soon to get the social media sympathy of the nation quickly as the presidential election is just around the corner of 2014. This will help to take out the biggest flaw of Bakrie in the eyes of the public in Indonesia thus raising ARB’s popularity and electability in 2014 election.

 A.A.I. Diah Tricesaria Awardee of Bakrie Graduate Fellow at the Master Program of International Relations of Universitas Gadjah Mada   

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