We understand government agencies are allowed to spend millions to launch a campaign.
How can we forget the much-maligned 2019 SEA Games logo that cost the organizers a huge amount of money to conceptualize?
The logo, a combination of eight plain circles resembling the Philippine map, was supposedly made by a foreign design company.
Now comes this video fiasco involving the Department of Tourism and a multinational advertising agency.
The DOT was said to have allotted P49 million to develop its new slogan “Love the Philippines” as its newest campaign, to be kicked off by a promotional video showing the different tourist attractions in the Philippines.
This went puff as following discovery the videos were not originally produced and used stock footage of foreign locations. The agency was dropped, and the DOT is moving on and keeping the slogan.
Nothing bad, really, with the “Love the Philippines” event if it’s not an original idea.
This has already been used by the Dominican Republic for its tourism campaign called I Love Dominican Republic.
The word LOVE endears to all people of colors, sizes, and shapes and encompasses everything positive.
But the Philippines must do better. The DOT must show more unique reasons why foreign travelers love the Philippines.
The DOT or its marketing agency doesn’t have to go far to get precise answers.
Go ask the foreigners already staying for years in the country. Just watch the YouTube channels showing why foreign visitors love the Philippines.
There are Russians, Kazakh, German and American vloggers who command millions of followers on their YouTube channels and they have a lot of videos telling why the Philippines is a country worth visiting.
And they will tell you, that we have the nicest beaches in Asia and, most of all, it’s the people.
These foreign vloggers say Filipinos are the kindest people in the world.
That’s according to their personal experiences and after doing social experiments. Despite the economic hardship the country is going through, Filipinos always have time to smile.
It’s really not difficult to Love the Philippines.