Have you made Phl more fun today?

It is definitely a new age we are living in. The tourism campaign was launched via social media with hardly a ripple in old media, yet people are talking about and debating its merits. It used to be that for a campaign to merit such widespread attention, it had to be launched with massive budgets to cover placements on print, radio, television and even outdoor and include other so called below the line activities.

The “Its more fun in the Philippines” campaign was launched last week and the Department of Tourism has yet to disburse a centavo, although Tourism Asec Benito C. Bengzon told ANC they spent a total of P5.6 million for development of the concept and audio-visual material. But I am almost sure the ad agency that conceptualized it is still out of pocket, given how it is trying to collect from government. The way it looks, the campaign is not even final yet. It is being crowdsourced, which in today’s techie language means being thrown to the social media crowd for their thoughts on it.

That is the real beauty of Tourism Secretary Mon Jimenez’s approach. He wants the Filipino people to own the campaign. By doing so, the responsibility of selling Philippine tourism no longer rests on DOT alone. Everyone now has a stake in seeing the campaign through.

Challenged by Secretary Mon J, to run with the new campaign line, Pinoys in social media responded with enthusiasm. Creative juices started to flow almost as soon as the campaign line was revealed. It didn’t matter that the line turned out to be one used by the Swiss 61 years ago. The line resonates so well that folks just took it as their own with their own take on it.

That’s because as Secretary Jimenez puts it, “the line is not manufactured. It is drawn from natural human conversation. It is its truth that resonates, not its originality.” Having been in marketing communications for decades, I can believe that this thing with the Swiss was more a coincidence than anything else. Having worked with Mon J, and given his track record and that of the ad agency he selected, I am sure there was no plagiarism.

In any case, Jose Ma. Lorenzo Tan of the local WWF office posted on FB: “I checked the Web and found that “Truly Tuscany” preceded “Truly Asia.” “Incredible Italy” came before “Incredible India.” And “Amazing Australia” came before “Amazing Thailand.” And, they are all making big bucks from tourism.”

Tony La Vina, dean of the Ateneo School of Government, commented also on FB: “And nobody complained in Thailand, India, and Malaysia. That’s why in the Philippines it is more fun for foreigners because they have fun watching us destroy each other, make fun not always nicely of each other, be self- righteous against each other, etc.”      

There were still those insisting that we should just use WOW, Philippines, saying we shouldn’t fix what isn’t broke. But the thing is, that tag had been broke badly for the longest time. Here is what former DOT USec Vicente Romano III had to say about this in a blog: “I can’t really blame them for their unwavering loyalty to the WOW brand. It appeals to us Pinoys. We use it for things we luv! But they don’t know that we don’t use it in Japan – our third largest market, because they don’t understand the word WOW and there is no direct equivalent of the word in their language.

“They don’t know that even in the US – our number one market (and where they fully understand the word WOW but maybe not appreciate it as we do), we dropped it and used another slogan because there was no traction. And they don’t know that in the last few years that we have been using the brand, we have steadily lost market share to the point where Vietnam has overtaken us in terms of tourist arrivals.”

Regardless, I can see why the new line is apparently working as Sec Mon J planned it. Other than the fact that the use of social media invites public participation, the more important consideration is our people’s deep love of country that had long been looking for public expression. Spread to all corners of the world, Pinoys are apparently tired of all the negatives being said about the Philippines and are just raring to share the great things about our country with their foreign friends and the rest of the world.

Of course there is no denying that there are still many things that we need to make right before any effort to invite visitors can really work. The natural wonders of our country are obvious attractions for tourists. But the campaign subliminally tells the world that the best reason to come here are the people.

And so we, the people, are now inviting visitors to our country. The government is just facilitating the process, coordinating efforts to bring in the tourists. But because it is we, the people, who are inviting the visitors to come, we have this sense of obligation to clean up our country, work double time to make travel amenities available and ensure our visitors have a lot of fun.

Because we are telling the world that we are a fun country, we feel an obligation to make sure that the promise is fulfilled. Sure, we all know the daily grind can be far from fun. But all countries have their share of daily challenges too.

None of those challenges should stop us from launching an effective program that would, in fact, create the jobs we need to lift a lot of people out of poverty, specially in the countryside. Tourism could well be the catalyst to a more balanced development of our country that would be significant enough to address countryside poverty.

Now that the administration has launched a tourism program, it is essential that all agencies of government work with DOT to make this effort successful. Infrastructure is one key requirement for a successful tourism thrust and DOTC in particular must prove it is up to the challenge. We need good airports, starting with NAIA 1. We need new gateway airports in Palawan and elsewhere. The air traffic congestion at NAIA has to be given some urgent attention.

I am frankly very worried that my good friend, DOTC Secretary Mar Roxas is proving not up to the task. The ability of Sec Mar to get going on the infrastructure side is vitally important. But even if SecMar takes his sweet time micromanaging each proposal, this does not mean we cannot start our tourism promotion program going. I got a very interesting post on my FB wall from Vien Cortes, who is apparently in the tourism promotion game. Here is her post:

“India was one of my markets for Spain from the regional office here in Singapore from 2000 till 2009. India does not have any ‘great infrastructure’, but the Spanish arrivals alone grows by a minimum of 30% to 40% per year (source: India Tourism office) into India. The Spanish need visas and there are no direct air connections, but I think the key was ‘right marketing strategies’ and the right target markets for the resources and the attractions available in India for the Spanish market.”

India is a good example, indeed. Philippine Airlines launched a direct service to New Delhi that is now losing money for the airline. There may be Filipino tourists going to New Delhi on package tours, but the flights back are near empty most of the time because very few Indian tourists are coming here.

One reason is the problem of visas. The Indians give Pinoy tourists visas on arrival. We don’t reciprocate and we lose. Some of our bureaucrats don’t want to lose a few million pesos in visa fees. But Sec Mon J told me he fixed that problem already. He convinced DFA and the Bureau of Immigration to grant Indian (and Chinese) tourists the same visa on arrival privilege.

We do have to do our homework and fix our policies and procedures to make it fun for tourists to come here. The rest of us folks should psych ourselves to be more positive and at the end of each day, we, specially you Mar Roxas, should have a good answer to the question: what have I done to make it more fun to visit the Philippines today?

Bourne in Manila

Bernardo Torres III wrote to suggest that “with regard to the Bourne movie having a car chase at EDSA, the movie outfit should just hire EDSA bus drivers to do the daredevil scene!!”

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]. He is also on Twitter @boochanco