The Philippines are a particularly beautiful country, fantastic beaches, lush nature, cheap compared to Dubai or Switzerland, for example, untouched compared to Brazil or Bali. Tourism is a major industry, but the Philippines saw just 2.7 million visitors last year, down 68 percent from before the pandemic. For comparison: Thailand can look forward to 25 million tourists again in 2023. So the Philippine Tourism Authority commissioned a study that found visitors want “authentic interactions with the community” most of all — and a commercial.
It’s been causing a stir since last weekend, despite having been up and running since June 27th. In the spot you can see people dancing, diving and eating, along with the slogans “Love the Adventure”, “Love the Moments” and also “Love the Culture”. The entire campaign is called “Love the Philippines” and was intended to replace the old motto “It’s more fun in the Philippines” – more love than fun. Stupid only: Some of the recordings that you see are not from the Philippines at all. Beaches from Brazil can be seen and the really famous rice terraces of Bali, cross-sectional images from Switzerland and the Emirates were used.
A well-known blogger in the Philippines had expressed doubts about the provenance of the recordings, then came an analysis by the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency, which confirmed that the advertising agency commissioned had apparently used so-called stock footage, i.e. already existing recordings, which are offered by photo agencies for a fee. Such clips are free of rights, but not always useless. It wasn’t so much the new spot that went viral as the mockery about it.
The tourism ministry confirmed the embarrassment on Sunday, removing the video from the Facebook page and blaming advertising agency DDB Philippines, which also apologized for an “unfortunate oversight.” However, this hardly diminished the criticism of the tourism ministry, which does not seem to know its own country. The spot, which cost 49 million Philippine pesos, about $900,000, will not be paid for.
In the Philippines, things have become political. On the one hand, the Ministry of Tourism is accused of doing a “lazy job”. On the other hand, individual provinces are now complaining that their attractions are not featured in the spot. Tourists are being misled, and the campaign is too close to Cyprus’ self-promotion (“Love Cyprus”). According to the Philippine news channel One News, there was even a slogan “Love Barbados”.
It is actually rather interesting that very, very many people did not even notice that the pictures did not belong to the country and that the slogan applies to many countries. Food, dancing, friendliness – there are similar promises that lure people everywhere. As such, the Philippines filmed a Vacation Anywhere commercial. love the world Nice slogan actually.