The Department of Tourism (DOT) rolled out its new campaign, dubbed “Sights”, on June 12, Independence Day, with the tagline “Experience the Philippines”. The new advertisement features M. Uchimura, a Japanese retiree, as he visits the Hundred Islands in Pangasinan, Banaue Rice Terraces in Ifugao, Paoay Sand Dunes in Ilocos Norte and Calle Crisologo in Vigan City, Ilocos Sur. At the end of the commercial, viewers find out that Uchimura is blind when he brought out a folding walking cane and says, “You don’t have to see to feel you are home.”
Tourism Secretary Wanda Corazon T. Teo said the campaign seeks to portray the unique experiences that each Philippine destination could offer, capped by our own brand of Filipino hospitality. Teo believes that Filipinos personify the basic element of fun because it is the people themselves who make the total tourism experience fulfilling and memorable. In other words, the Filipino people are the heart and essence of the tourism campaign.
Unfortunately, netizens used the social media to virtually bash the DOT campaign. Detractors said the new tourism video is a copycat of South Africa’s 2016 campaign, which also featured a tourist who turned out to be blind.
McCann Ericksonn, the advertising agency behind the ad, said it takes full responsibility for the controversial video. It added that “there has never been any intention to copy others’ creative work”, and that the ad portrays the real experiences of a retired Japanese who felt he was at home in the Philippines.
Although the concept may be similar to South Africa’s tourism campaign, everything else in Experience the Philippines is original and different. As a cool head explained, with the advent of Google there’s hardly any original idea these days because there’s a thin line between finding inspiration and outright appropriating somebody else’s idea.
Unfortunately for the Tourism department, this is not the first time it got itself embroiled in a controversy. In 2010 the DOT’s “Pilipinas Kay Ganda” slogan and web site were criticized. Detractors said the design of the campaign’s logo was copied from the “Polska” tourism logo of Poland. Former Tourism Undersecretary Vicente Romano III, who was the former head of the DOT’s Planning and Promotions section, resigned from his post after he took responsibility for the controversial Pilipinas Kay Ganda campaign. However, Romano believed that the public was mistakenly concerned with the campaign’s originality and not on its effectiveness in attracting tourists. “I think part of the problem is our hang-up with being original. In other industries, we literally copy business models and concepts and apply it to our own business without paying any royalty or even giving due recognition to the original author. It’s called best practices,” Romano said.
We understand that every citizen has a right to express his thoughts or feelings about the new tourism ad. But we must also understand what it takes to launch a tourism campaign, which is a difficult endeavor. Tourism Assistant Secretary Frederick M. Alegre said the DOT stood by McCann Ericksonn, saying that despite the similarities, the agency was able to present the campaign in a different manner.
Alegre wanted to focus on the campaign’s effectiveness, rather than on its originality. He said the DOT succeeded in attracting nearly 1.8 million foreign travelers to the country in the first quarter of this year. “We should use social media to trumpet our massive investments in infrastructure, the DOT’s aggressive marketing efforts in selling the Philippines abroad, our efforts to expand airline routes and our success in lowering crime rate, which is good for tourism,” he said.