Early December 2020, Komik Ga Jelas™ has officially announced a new product “NEON CITY”, in collaboration with Stayhoops, a leading local sports brand specialized in basketball apparel. This collaboration was powered by LabX.co and was officially launched with the main theme of Reversed Futurism.
NEON CITY was successfully marketed during the moments of TOKOPEDIA HYPECLUB that was organized virtually on December 1-2, 2020. Our hero product: the Monochromatia Mask and Yellow Highway Mask were SOLD OUT within two days. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaa! *ahem*
This collaboration is not only marking Komik Ga Jelas adaptation into a fashion brand, but also become a starting journey of our new characters:
Eko, a ride-hailing driver who is very passionate about his work and always carrying out his duties with full dedication.
Alexa, a quite popular and perfectionist photographer who often throws blatantly honest comments and has a super fantastic fashion style.
Another important milestone behind this collaboration is that we officially launched our Umbrella Brand: Ga Jelas ™. In the near future, we will expand the applications of our characters into new and innovative content that we are going to produce. Please, stay tuned!
Alright, as you must be curious about how we develop this new collaboration, we’ll take you traveled back to our creative process~
Research and ideations - Always be the most challenging and yet exciting phase!
Our daily comics strip presents Budi and his friend's stories in a fun, comical, and dynamic way. NEON CITY, with reversed futurism nuance, will require a completely different creative concept. Our creative team did various research and brainstorming in the effort to make those two concepts collide smoothly.
Despite the challenges, we also had a very fun process. We speed up the progress because Jasmine Surkatty, Creator of Komik Ga Jelas has personal interest around the theme. Inspired by cyberpunk and tech-gear design, we use the urban atmosphere as the main concept. This is how we come up with “Neon City” as the title of the project.
As the creative concept has been decided and progressed relatively fast, our next challenge was to find the right bridging to introduce our new concept to our audiences. As we stated earlier, our audiences have familiarized with our dynamic fashions. We should develop a new approach for the audience to get them ease in understanding the new concept.
By having an interactive storytelling, Ga Jelas tried to engage the audiences in the digital promotion series both on Stayhoops and Ga Jelas social media platforms. Alexa and Eko were presented as the main focus in this activity. The results were beyond our expectations. We were surprised to see a lot of positive comments from our audiences and their enthusiasm with the product.
So, having storytelling - with Eko and Alexa on the focus - as our hero marketing strategy, the next question will be on character development. How did we initially come up with the idea of character personalization and design?
One thing we already know, Eko and Alexa must be introduced for a reason - something beyond the product/marketing purpose, something that the audience would find a relationship with.
First, we create a scene where Budi and friends have interactions with Eko and Alexa. This is to familiarize the audience with our new characters. A story involving Budi and Susi's characters was published as “opening”, considering that the audience has already got to know them. Budi and Susi's story in this case play an important role to give the right context for the rest of the story. As the new faces, Eko and Alexa come to the stage as a punchline.
While Alexa is a completely new character, Eko has actually been introduced in Komik Ga Jelas webtoon published by Ciayo Platform on 2018. Eko has not had further development since then though. Meanwhile, inspired by Jasmine’s favorite characters Cara Dune in Star Wars and Sombra, a fictional character in Overwatch, Alexa becomes a symbol of cool and bold girl who has passion in arts.
We choose the occupation background of the characters based on the profession that has strong connections to our audiences and close to our theme.
Indonesian, especially people who live in urban areas, rely on ride hailing services for many activities. The story of Abang Ojek Online hit the trend quite often, mainly about how dedicated and inspiring they are in doing the job. Meanwhile, Alexa was presented as an edgy art kid from the graphic design academy that has just started her career in the creative industry. Alexa was inspired by the personal experience of Jasmine Surkatty, Sukajan and the Japanese underground sci-fi/punk movement as the main elements applied in the character design.
"We are trying to develop the new characters as interesting as possible. Still, We find a bit pressure in imagining how the readers would respond to our new concept. We didn’t expect to receive this much kind and positive comments from the audiences. We feel extremely happy especially by the time the characters have been introduced, many people comment to be Eko and Alexa fanbase. " - Jasmine Surkatty
WHAT’S THE NEXT?
Eko and Alexa will continue to fill in Komik Ga Jelas pages. We are preparing a serious plan to explore more potential mediums for the Komik Ga Jelas characters adaptations. There will be new styles and themes as well.
This collaboration gives us a lot more insightful and practical lessons. It was also considered as one of the biggest milestones we achieved in the most tough year. We understand that creative aspects and the right marketing tools are equally important. We are glad to partner with LabX and Stayhoops who not only share the same vision with us, but also provide a new opportunity for us to expand our IP and brand. We are currently starting to develop a new core medium, something we cannot declare yet MEGA SHUSH SHUSH~. We’ll announce it as soon as it is ready! :P
“It was a massive opportunity and we are glad to be able to work together to achieve monumental sales 😊” Jasmine added. - SS
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