Love the Philippines: An [Unqualified] Review of an “Engineer”
The new release of the tourism campaign of the Department of Tourism Philippines surely made a lot of noise in social media–a street head turner and a subject that created a divided opinion among us.
At a glance, the tagline itself can be misinterpreted on so many levels. The phrase is an imperative tone and although some PR professionals can argue that it can still be an effective strategy campaign if we look at the concept and deep dive into the context however, isn’t the tagline’s purpose is as to be simple and catchy? If the actual tagline brings misimpression rather than invitation, then we really got a problem.
According to veteran broadcast journalist Howie Severino who is best known for his work on Investigative Journalism, a simple comma would change the tone from a blunt command to a gentle declaration of affection from the rest of the world.
From “Love the Philippines” to “Love, the Philippines” it surely is more fitting and less open to misinterpretation. It exponentially changed the context of the statement using the power of punctuation. You don’t need doctorate degrees to come up with such beautiful suggestions!
If we are taking more time explaining things in our tourism campaign concepts rather than promoting actual tourism contents, then we have to re-evaluate our strategies. There’s nothing wrong with getting input from people. Experts are not always right all the time. A collaborative approach would be much more helpful in achieving successful tourism campaigns.
Now if we are to look with other Asian countries tourism taglines:
Indonesia — “Wonderful Indonesia”
Japan — “Endless Discovery”
Malaysia — “Truly Asia”
Taiwan — “The Heart of Asia”
Thailand — “Amazing Thailand”
These are all simple and catchy phrases that need no elaborate background context just to get its essence. No need for extensive approaches just to make it work. No misimpressions and some of them have been their tourism campaign tagline for years already. The “It’s More Fun in the Philippines” tagline was not actually bad. It may not be as catchy and unique compared to other countries’ tagline, but it surely made an impact. Also, it’s actually hard to make a retention out of our tourism campaigns if we will change it every new administration. If we are to change everything from an old and perfectly working theme to a new one, it better should be impeccable.
But the most questionable thing out of this, is the use of STOCK footages on the actual Love the Philippines promotional video launch. There is more than one instance from which the scene are NOT original Philippine tourism contents but rather stock footages from other countries like Thailand, Indonesia, and Dubai.
Stock footage links and the timestamp on the Promotional Video:
https://rb.gy/8c6sh — 0:16
https://rb.gy/iyi0l — 0:21
https://rb.gy/5scmp — 0:25
https://rb.gy/apvgu — 0:37
Just exactly how much did this tourism campaign cost the Filipino taxpayers? MORE THAN 50 MILLION PESOS. A lot of money for a campaign that caused mixed feelings and contain cut and paste footages that are not even tourism sites in the Philippines.
I may not be a PR professional with meritorious awards and recognitions but this one looks like a bad PR from an Engineering professional’s perspective. No amount of alternative context can hide the fact that this budgeted campaign looks more like a late-night project. I’d be more than happy to know that competent governing bodies are making an investigation if there’s a violation for Department of Tourism officials into entering a contract that is grossly disadvantageous not only to the government but to the Filipino people as well.
Sabi nga ng mga tao: “Love the Philippines” sapilitan na’to.
