I first got wind of this news over Twitter from Jonas delos Reyes, the Lead Community Manager for Yahoo! Southeast Asia. He was wondering aloud if any serious thought was truly given into coming up with the new slogan. One look at the new tagline, "Pilipinas Kay Ganda", and you can tell that it was most likely borne out of a no-brainer session. Because, really, come on! Is that the best they could think of for an international tourism slogan?
If you throw that tagline out to the rest of the world, two things will happen:
1 - Only fellow Pinoys will get it. It's even like an inside joke (which was confirmed at the PKG launch when "Umagang Kay Ganda" was played *facepalm*).
2 - Foreigners will go to Google Translate, only to see that "Pilipinas Kay Ganda" translates to "Philippines to beauty" in English.
I'm not kidding! Try it yourself. Go to Google Translate and type in "Pilipinas Kay Ganda". That's what you'll get. It's ridiculous!
Amidst protests to reinstate the former slogan, "WOW Philippines" -- which is 10x better than PKG -- some tweeters have begun suggesting other taglines. My favorite by far is Team Manila's "RAWR! Philippines!" :)) If they ever make that shirt, I will buy it.
As expected, the usual comparisons also came up. PKG has been pitted against "Malaysia Truly Asia", "Incredible India", "Vietnam: The Hidden Charm", and "Rendez vous en France". Unfortunately, PKG pales in comparison to all of these. PKG is neither pretty nor world-class, and it is most definitely corny. From the first time I saw it until this very second, all I can say is "YUCK!"
But before we could recover from our disgust with the new slogan, this was launched:
The new DOT website - beautifulpilipinas.com
It is so distressing. It is amateurish, rife with blunders, unoriginal, and boring. Carlo Ople from New Media dissected all that is wrong with it. I can't stand looking at it because it stresses me out. I'm still amazed that all this was assembled together by one of the major advertising machineries in town.
What really disappointed me about the entire campaign though, more than the actual output that we were unfortunate to witness today, was how it was handled. I believe I wasn't alone in thinking that DOT's campaign was going to be interactive, that it was going to leverage people's input to the #helpDOT hashtag. There was even a twibbon that could be used to spread the word. In fact, there is no shortage of pinoys (and foreigners) trekking all around the country and blogging about their experiences. Because of the abundance of information on the blogosphere, local tourism has never been so easy and affordable before.
So why didn't DOT leverage the local social media network? Had DOT sent out the call, pinoys would answer enthusiastically, I'm sure. DOT should've done it like "Mountain Dew"; they should've gone for the logo design contest, got people to suggest and vote on the best tagline, asked for photo contributions (people would definitely contribute hi-res photos if it meant getting their work displayed in a global arena).
DOT says that they're still open to suggestions, so in that we still have hope. It's important because this campaign represents the travel-worthiness of the Philippines. Pinoys who truly love their Inang Bayan know that "beautiful" doesn't quite cut it -- there is so much more than just beauty in this country of over 7,000 islands.
And if we truly want to keep the Philippines on the "top destinations" map, then we should also consistently do our part in keeping our home clean, green, and hospitable. And beautiful, of course :)
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