Senator Nancy Binay on Wednesday said the campaign for the country’s new tourism slogan is now in “marketing limbo”
Binay added that the Department of Tourism should “accept” that the enhancement of the Philippine tourism branding is going through uncertainties following the video mess by its contracted advertising agency.
The DoT said an “exhaustive” investigation on the non-originality of footage by its contracted agency, the DDB Philippines is ongoing.
The probe was followed by the DoT’s termination of the contract with the ad agency for more promotional tourism videos.
“We appreciate the actions taken by the DoT against the ad agency. But the big question right now is whether or not to continue with the ‘Love’ campaign,” Binay said.
The senator lamented the use of non-original footage in the video has put the tourism industry into trouble and become a “laughing stock” with people creating memes and lampoons—poking fun at the “Love the Philippines” slogan.
“We need to accept that it really happens—marketing campaigns fail. In DoT’s case, it’s best to move forward from failure and save the brand at all costs,” Binay said.
“We cannot afford to put to waste everything that we built for Philippine tourism. Let’s do the right thing to protect the integrity of the brand,” she added.
Binay underscored that tourism should be taken as a “sensitive market.”
“Political unrest, negative media and people’s perceptions influence travelers’ decisions…It is not wise for the DoT and the people behind the marketing campaign to insist on continuing with “Love the Philippines” given the negative impact brought by the video fiasco,” she further stressed.
She said the people are now awaiting the “iteration of spoof” as DoT pursues the replacement of the tourism campaign.
“The recommendation is to revert to the tried-and-tested campaign, and from there, create a tactical marketing plan to prevent a window for sabotage,” Binay said.
The goals set by the DoT have already been tilted and shifted, she added, noting that the entire plan “may look good on paper, but the campaign was beaten and battered in the real world.”
“The DOT’s enhanced campaign has lost the persuasion game. We all can sense the discombobulating algorithms with promotion-limiting consequences,” Binay said.
“The campaign has lost its redeeming value and has become unsalvageable—I hope the DOT is level-headed enough to accept this. We expect them to be agile and move forward from failure because we don’t want the slogan to become a national embarrassment and look like losers,” she maintained.
Binay urged the DoT to stop forcing its rebranding saying: “Love was not meant to be. Let us all move on and just bring back the ‘Fun’ to the Philippines,” referring to the success of the previous tourism campaign.