NO new advertising or commercials for television will be produced for the Department of Tourism (DOT) this year, its officials said.
In a recent news briefing, Tourism Undersecretary for Public Affairs, Communications and Special Projects Katherine Chloe de Castro said of the DOT’s P650-million advertising budget for 2017, the remaining amount is P170 million, which has already been “obligated for media placements” for its current television commercial (TVC) for Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia.
The media placements are still being carried out by the McCann WorldWide Group, she said, although the DOT’s contract for new TVCs with the advertising giant has already been cancelled.
She added the ad being used in overseas markets is the “Anak” TVC, where model/travel writer Jack Ellis is portrayed as interacting with a host Filipino family in Blue Lagoon, a popular tourist destination in Surigao del Sur. The mother enjoins him to eat with them, calling him anak, which Ellis later learns means “my child”. It ends with the line, purportedly written by Ellis,that says: “When you’re with Filipinos, you’re with family.” The ad was also produced by McCann, and was premiered during the Miss Universe beauty pageant in January, which was held in Manila.
De Castro said new terms of reference (TOR) will be drawn up for the bidding for a new advertising campaign in 2018. “So we want to appeal to more advertising agencies to get themselves accredited with PhilGEPS (Philippine Government Electronic Procurement System), if they want to participate in the new bidding,” she said.
PhilGEPS is a centralized web portal where government projects for bidding are listed and published. The portal allows companies to register as single proprietorship, partnership, corporation and cooperative.
She also said Tourism Secretary Wanda Corazon T. Teo wants advertising agencies to bid for each ad, instead of an entire campaign as has been done in the past. The strategy, de Castro explained, would enable “smaller advertising agencies” to participate in the DOT’s bidding exercise.
She noted that the usual advertising giants have won most government advertising campaigns.
While de Castro acknowledged the possibility that advertising firms may shun the bidding if next year’s campaign is broken up into smaller, individual projects, she said the DOT is still refining TOR for the bidding exercise and will consider all possibilities or issues that may arise from this tact.
The advertising campaign of the DOT was derailed this year after it was discovered that McCann WorldWide Group’s “Sights” ad, featuring a blind tourist, was copied from a tourism ad by South Africa. Though McCann denied this and refused to apologize for the alleged “plagiarism”, this led to the DOT dropping its contract with the award-winning
advertising agency. (See, “DOT stops airing of McCann’s ‘Sights’ as unofficial tourism ad reaps praises” in the BusinessMirror, June 15, 2017 https://bit.ly/2yAfkd7 )
The Sights ad would have been the second in a series of four ads McCann was supposed to produce for the DOT and was aimed at promoting the northern destination of the Ilocos region to foreigners.
DOT sources also intimated to the BusinessMirror it was Malacañang that requested the government agency to come up with a new ad, due to the tourism backlash received by the country after President Duterte proclaimed martial law in Mindanao on May 23.
Since said proclamation, visitor arrivals, specifically in Davao, have slowed down, with hotels and convention spaces reporting decreases in bookings.
Image credits: Photo courtesy of D.O.T.