Some of you may be tired of superhero movies following the onslaught of Avengers: Infinity War, but nerds like us definitely are not and we’re still damn excited to watch Deadpool 2, the sequel to 2016’s surprise comic book comedy hit, that’s coming to theaters on May 15.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aov5GCcTVE
We’re especially pumped to watch it after seeing the brilliantly hilarious viral marketing campaign for the film in Indonesia, one that was clearly made by folks who not only get Deadpool’s ridiculously meta sense of humor but somehow managed to translate it perfectly into an Indonesian context.
These signboards have been spotted on a few Go-Jek motorcycle taxis around Jakarta recently and have, just as planned, quickly gone viral on social media.
https://twitter.com/amasna/status/991162734749270017
If you only speak English then we can understand if you’re completely confused by these and, even if you speak Bahasa Indonesia, don’t be embarrassed if you don’t get it immediately (because we may have needed somebody to explain it to us too…).
The joke is that both of those signs feature Indonesian sentences roughly transcribed phonetically into English words. If you’re still stumped, here are the solutions:
https://twitter.com/indraa_jk/status/991264473397706753
So the first one, “Demi kamu abang rela narik ojek”, roughly translates into English as “For you I am willing to drive an ojek” (with the connotation that the “you” is his girlfriend).
The second one, “Di jemput ojek mulu kapan di jemput pacar?” means “You keep getting picked up by ojeks, when will you be picked up by your girlfriend/boyfriend (somebody who wants to date you)?”.
The ads are much funnier too if you understand they were inspired by similar messages that are often seen on the back of Indonesian trucks, one of the most famous of which is:
“New fear the me is three” stands for the oh-so-romantic (at least compared to a lot of the naughty stuff seen on the back of other Indonesian trucks) message “Nyupir demi istri” (Driving for my wife).
So yeah we’ve totally been taken in by 20th Century Fox Indonesia’s marketing team to help them promote their movie (and, no, they’re not paying us anything). But funny, inventive and hyper-localized marketing like this deserves some free press. (Psst but hey but if any of you marketing folks see this and want to send us free tickets, we wouldn’t say no…)
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