Hasty rollout

Has the love gone out so soon from the “Love the Philippines” tourism rebranding? Last Wednesday, the tourism chief indicated that the slogan would be retained anyway.

The creative souls behind advertising campaigns should be aware that in this digital age, it’s pretty easy to detect plagiarism and its sources – whether in video, images, text or music.

Digging for unoriginal materials should also be expected when there is criticism of the expenses for a particular program, such as P49 million for tweaking the national tourism slogan.

Why focus so much on a slogan? It’s not a magic wand that can wave away all the problems bedeviling our travel industry. There are no quick fixes; we can’t even provide decent toilets to tourists.

The NAIA is a mess, with local carriers now aggravating the problem. Several Filipinos who attended the World News Media Congress last week in Taiwan missed their Philippine Airlines flight from Manila and had to rebook for the next day because they couldn’t check in online and thought the flight had been canceled.

It turned out that it was a co-share flight with a foreign carrier, and they were supposed to check in through that carrier’s website. But they weren’t notified about it.

I had the same problem during my online check-in. Fortunately, I knew someone at PAL, who told me the flight was a co-share with China Airlines and I needed to use that airline’s website. I was able to check in online, and my China Air flight landed on the dot in Taiwan. But what about people who don’t know anyone at PAL?

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States and territories have slogans to anchor their tourism programs, but what draws travelers are not slogans or ads but the products themselves.

I’m not familiar with Taiwan’s tourism slogan, but it’s a terrific travel destination, from the delectable food to the highly efficient mass transport to cyber connectivity and the sites themselves, both natural and manmade. Pre-pandemic, Taiwan drew 11.9 million foreign tourists in 2019, when the Philippines registered 8.3 million.

We’ve changed our tourism slogan so often that I doubt if the world even remembers what it is. The world’s top five travel destinations – France, Spain, the US, China and Italy – can use any blah slogan and still draw hordes of visitors. Thailand, the top travel destination in Southeast Asia with 39.8 million visitors in 2019, merely tweaks its basic “Amazing Thailand” slogan for its tourism programs.

What’s wrong with “more fun in the Philippines”? For that matter, what was wrong with “Wow! Philippines” – a slogan that was coined at no cost to taxpayers? “More fun” – believed lifted from the 1951 slogan “more fun in Switzerland” – cost P5 million.

“Love the Philippines” even has a controversial supporter picked out for posting by the Department of Tourism (DOT): Apollo Quiboloy, wanted by the FBI on charges of sex trafficking, fraud and bulk cash smuggling.

Every rebranding means additional expenses for tourism industry players, who usually include the national slogan in their marketing materials.

The P49 million, incidentally, is P1 million shy of the P50-million threshold for a plunder indictment, in case anomalies are unearthed that are more serious than presenting foreign scenery as Philippine sites.

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As many have pointed out, P49 million can buy a lot of other stuff that can actually improve the travel experience in the Philippines – such as heavy-duty generators and top-of-the-line circuit breakers for the Ninoy Aquino International Airport.

The Super Ate ng Pangulo had a hilarious reaction to the DOT video: she thought the sand dunes of her hometown Paoay had leveled up, she said, only to find out that the scene was actually shot in Dubai.

Clearly, Senator Imee had nothing to do with the video created by DDB Group Philippines.

There are questions on whether the video, now taken down from social media sites, was not yet the final product, and the images lifted from other countries to depict the Philippines were just pegs.

It didn’t seem that way, however, as the video was presented at the launch of “Love the Philippines” and stayed in the DOT website for several days until an alert Pinoy blogger, Sass Rogando Sasot, posted evidence of the plagiarism, with subsequent fact-checking by the Agence France Presse.

This looks like another case of haste makes waste under Marcos 2.0, with the rollout of the video apparently rushed mainly to coincide with the 50th anniversary celebration of the DOT.

The same half-baked, rushed work has marked the Maharlika Investment Fund, starting with the indecent haste of its passage by the House of Representatives just so BBM could find an excuse to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos. It must have meant a lot for him to visit Switzerland as head of government, instead of being the son of a couple whose $356 million stashed away in Swiss banks had been declared ill-gotten and returned by the Swiss to the Filipino people.

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Now the two chambers of Congress, whose leaders are both hounded by rumors of ouster plots, are again being stampeded into passing the Maharlika, just so BBM can have something for his State of the Nation Address. Never mind if too many aspects of the MIF are still in the realm of bahala na si Batman, as long as the word “Maharlika” can be touted at the SONA.

The same indecent haste marked the enactment of the law postponing last December’s barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections – a law that the Supreme Court has struck down, in a decision peppered with the word “unconstitutional.”

The DOT had said the rebranding would be synced with the “we give the world our best” country branding. For this one, the image of Filipina nurse May Parsons, armed with a hypodermic syringe, was used by the brains, Fil-Am presidential adviser on creative communications Paul Soriano.

How much did it cost to put that ad on a London bus? Secret. It was launched in the UK to coincide with President Marcos’ attendance at the coronation of his polo playing buddy King Charles.

As Pinoys normally do, we’re laughing away our frustrations. The tourism chief is now called Secretary Fiasco. There were jokes about outrage erroneously directed at the other “DDB” – the Dangerous Drugs Board. Social media is flooded with puns on love, notably the unrequited kind.

In the spirit of unity, there’s a suggestion to make the slogan inclusive and just use “Wow, it’s more fun! Love the Philippines!”

At least it’s still more fun in the Philippines.