Brand on the Run

Posted by John

California is not known for its fried chicken. The world has heard of Napa Valley wine and Orange County citrus, but the Golden State's poultry has a decidedly lower international profile. My family has lived in Sacramento for more than 25 years, but it wasn’t until I traveled to Indonesia that I encountered the “California Fried Chicken” franchise.

It was in Bogor that I spotted a sign showing a chuck wagon driving across the California plain (the San Joaquin Valley?). I saw it again in Jakarta—the red “CFC” logo above the wagon bearing an eerie resemblance to California Fried Chicken’s better-known Kentucky cousin, KFC.

Colonel Sanders still reigns supreme among fast-food customers here in chicken-loving Indonesia, but CFC purveyors count on most Indonesians not knowing the difference between Lexington and Los Angeles. Apparently, the KFC multinational conglomerate does well enough here that it can look benignly on its lesser-known (and more geographically dubious) “American” rival. Or maybe litigation is still pending.

Indonesian copyright law seems premised on the notion that everything, including brands from major international companies, is in the public domain. Frito Lay must cringe when it sees Happytos, an obvious attempt to trade on the success of the Doritos brand—right down to the orange-and-yellow accent colors on the label (see left). My Web searches have failed to turn up any relationship between Happytos and Frito Lay, so perhaps Happytos makers will continue marketing their product to Dortitos-deprived Indonesians until they’re hauled before the World Trade Organization.

Kentucky Fried Chicken and Frito Lay are not the only companies subject to this sincerest form of flattery. The in-house counsel at Starbucks would frown on the many unauthorized freelance versions of the company’s green, white and black logo that appear on t-shirts in the country’s markets. I imagined it would be difficult to draw the distinctive-looking, flowing-haired girl in the Starbucks sign. But judging by the various knock-off forms of merchandise available for a song in the city of Yogyakarta, such mimicry is not that complicated.

On the other side of the commercial spectrum from imitated international brands like KFC and Starbucks, forgotten products from Darwinistic struggles for American market share have found a second life here in Indonesia. Many Americans stopped brushing their teeth with Pepsodent (above) when Crest and Colgate first started offering fluoride in the 1950s, but you’ll find Pepsodent on the shelves of every Indonesian Circle K. Yes, that Circle K, the West Coast second-fiddle to 7-Eleven in the United States, which also seems to have had a renaissance in Indonesia. Pepsodent has since jumped on the fluoridation bandwagon, which is probably for the best since Indonesians can still indulge their sweet tooth with a swig of Fanta or A&W, elixirs from an earlier American era.

Americans discarded their Lifebuoy Soap in favor of Dial and Dove many decades ago. In fact, I would never have heard of Lifebuoy without a baseball history book that referenced the Baker Bowl, home to many dreadful Philadelphia Phillies teams in the 1920s and 30s. “The Phillies use Lifebuoy,” a Baker Bowl outfield advertisement proudly read. A long-suffering Philadelphia fan couldn’t resist adding a graffiti tagline, “...But they still stink.” If Lifebuoy’s inability to remove the stink from Philadelphia’s home team doomed the soap forever in the City of Brotherly Love, Surabayans don’t have the same negative associations.

With so many brands resurrecting themselves in Indonesia, maybe there’s hope for General Motors after all. There’s no domestic automobile manufacturer in Indonesia, as most people can only afford motorcycles when they can afford anything at all. There’s a few modest, Korean-made Diahatsu sedans puttering around the streets in Surabaya, so there’s a pretty low bar for entering the market. Tim Geithner, if you’re reading this, I can get you President Yudhoyono’s number.