TBI Bekasi doesn’t have a member of staff responsible for marketing. This is because
Binsar will not invest the necessary money. The former marketing officer for EF called me
one day as she knew I was working at TBI. She said that she was no long working at EF
and was looking for another job. She had enquired about TBI Bekasi and was calling to
ask about the school. During the conversation she said that Binsar was only offering Rp1.3
million a month salary for a marketing person. She said this was Rp1 million less than she
was getting at EF. Needlessto say she didn’t take the job and TBI Bekasi has no marketing
staff. Instead Binsar runs the marketing and does an excellent job (that is if you want to
see TBI bankrupt in the next year or so…)

Binsar made a banner to put out in front of the school. He complained to me that it cost
him Rp3 million and was too expensive. So consequently he refuses to invest in any
banners or proper direct marketing. Even though that the crossroads by Mal Metropolitan
has an over-the-road advertising space which would be perfect to advertise on. Instead the
only direct marketing he does is he send the office assistants out with paper fliers to put on
people’s cars, really classy and targeted (not).

The first promotion he ran last year was from March or April I think. He wanted students to
refer a friend so he offered Rp250,000 for each student who referred a friend who signed
up to a course. The result of this excellent promotion was… 1 student (who was the
girlfriend of a current student and only stayed 1 course).

He then went to TBI Bandung for some kind of training/meeting. When he returned we had
a staff meeting where he said he was really impressed with TBI Bandung for offering lots
of children’s classes. So for the Summer he offered a promotion to recruit more youth and
teen students, putting up posters around the school and maybe offering a discount I can’t
remember. But as he scheduled all the childrens classes at 4-5:15pm on Tues/Thurs he
couldn’t get anymore teachers to run anymore classes. He wouldn’t change the schedule
even though TBI Bandung apprently ran their childrens classes on a Friday morning. So I
think he only recruited 1 new class of 6 students and maybe a few other students in the
other classrooms, so maybe 10 students overall.

The TBI childrens classes hardly compare at all to the EF childrens classes. At EF East
Jakarta we had two periods 3-4:20 and 4:30-5:50 on a Mon/Wed or Tue/Thurs. The
classes were usually around 10 students, sometimes up to 15 students. TBI Bekasi in
comparison has an average of 6 students in a childrens class and never exceeds 8.
Quality of