Pilipinas Kay Ganda Tourism Campaign Disaster-- Who else should resign?

Tweet

I thought that the brouhaha over The Department of Tourism's Pilipinas kay Ganda new tourism campaign is over but I just heard on the news last night that some travel agency groups want Tourism Secretary Alberto Lim to resign from his post.

A couple of weeks ago, The Philippine Department of Tourism launched a new global tourism campaign called Pilipinas kay Ganda to replace former Dept. of Tourism Secretary Richard Gordon's WOW Philippines campaign.

I don't really have anything against new ideas replacing old ones as long as it's, at least, better, if not groundbreaking. Unfortunately, the Philippines' new tourism campaign is not.

Now, to give the new Philippine Tourism group, the benefit of the doubt, they probably have a strong tourism program to back it up, which is well and good, but, I do not think it's a good idea to mess up with a successful and well established branding tagline which is WOW Philippines.

How hard it is to implement new programs and campaign ideas without changing the brand name.

WOW Philippines is a short, catchy, well-thought- of phrase, and describes the Philippines in one simple adjective which every people on Earth can understand and remember. It's already an established Philippine Tourism brand name which shouldn't be messed up with.

Come on , guys from The Dept of Tourism. Do you really think that globally branding the Philippines' tourism campaign with a Tagalog phrase like Pilipinas kay Ganda is a good idea?

And, to make matters worse, not only did you come up with an altogether bland brand name, you also presented to the world a very unoriginal Pilipinas kay Ganda logo.

The logo is actually very nice; look:

Problem is, the logo was plagiarized from, err, stolen from, err, based on Poland's logo. How embarrassing is that?

Philippine Dept of Tourism Undersecretary Vicente Romano III already took responsibility regarding the whole issue and tendered his resignation as Undersecretary. But, what travel agency groups here in the Philippines want is for the person spearheading the Philippine tourism department to resign, as well. 

I couldn't agree more. Tourism Secretary Alberto Lim did not personally come up with the whole idea behind the Philippines' new tourism campaign, but, the fact that he spearheads the Philippine tourism dept and allowed the people working under him to launch this embarrassing campaign only mean one thing-- he knows zilch about the tourism industry. 

WOW Philippines, Malaysia Truly Asia, Amazing Thailand; these are just examples of successful branding and they're all in English. I don't really see the point in changing ours to Talgalog/Filipino. Pilipinas kay ganda is a beautiful Filipino phrase but doesn't cut it as an effective brand name.Not globally. 

Anyway, regardless, the Philippines is still one of the most beautiful countries in the world, and one of the nicest to visit. And, just like  its tourism's short brand name, WOW Philippines, here's a short video why:

This video is just one of the many successful promotional videos launched under the WOW Philippines tourism campaign.

Pin It