Who coined the “Pilipinas Kay Ganda” slogan anyway?

It was a tempest in a teacup, a controversy over a silly little country marketing slogan, but it was the talk of the Net for days, and managed to spill out into the mainstream media via the TV news shows, galvanizing public opinion against it. A reputable advertising agency was being dragged through the muck and decided to strike back – against the clowns in the Philippine government who gave them so much grief.

That dreaded “P” word – Plagiarism – reared its ugly head in the government once again when it was revealed that yes, the DOT’s chosen logo was a veritable intentional rip off of a design made for Poland’s Tourism Board.

Such was case of “Pilipinas Kay Ganda” – three little words that riled the nation. The President did the right thing by pulling the plug and ordering the DOT to junk the slogan and start from scratch.This kept the issue from getting any bigger and distracting the tourism industry – and the nation – to no end.

But who really coined that slogan anyway? The ad agency Campaigns & Grey claimed in its statement that they had a part, since the slogan was “developed as one of the 5 concepts for testing among the market segments.”

But the venerable TV host/newspaper columnist Julie Yap Daza notes the idea was being bandied about  by Tourism Secretary Alberto Lim himself just two weeks after his appointment. Writing in her long-running “Medium Rare” column in the Manila Bulletin, she says that the slogan first surfaced from Sec.Lim’s own words months ago:

From the column entitled “Filipinas, how pretty!” posted online on November 19:

Maybe that’s what the author of a “branded” Philippines meant when he chose “Pilipinas kay ganda!” to sell our beautiful emerald, sapphire, jade and aquamarine islands.

Truth to tell, “Pilipinas kay ganda!” did not originate from any advertising agency, nor was it the product of months of consumer research as claimed, because about 14 days after his appointment, Tourism Secretary Bertie Lim was already telling stakeholders during a getting-to-know-you at the Manila Peninsula that he thought Dick Gordon’s branding of “WOW! Philippines” was uninspired and needed retooling.

In the next breath, Mr. Lim said he needed something more catchy, “something like Pilipinas kay ganda,” to market our tourism program.

Maybe it came to him in a dream, complete with visions of dozens of little tarsiers scampering up coconut trees.

SEO-Friendly version of Campaigns & Grey’s Statement on “Pilipinas Kay Ganda”

This statement has been doing the online rounds lately, scanned jpegs of the just-released statement of the ad agency Campaigns & Grey regarding their participation in the Department of Tourism’s “Pilipinas Kay Ganda” brouhaha. Talk about “furious backpedalling” – they are trying to put as much distance as possible between them and the DOT campaign. I guess the association must be bad for business.

Through it all, I get the impression that a) doing business with the government is a bummer, b) the agency feels really crappy about doing pro bono work for government entities with big budgets, and c) the DOT was a “client” from hell. But due to love of country, they did it anyway.

The closer is the killer. “We shall take this experience as a cautionary tale against giving in to the client and allowing their over-enthusiasm to override our better judgement. It was a reminder that the road to perdition is paved with good intentions.”

It makes for fascinating reading – except that the fonts on this scan are so tiny, my eyes hurt after two minutes! iPad readers will have a better time putting their thumbs and forefingers together and then apart, doing the whole multi touch thing.

“Pilipinas Kay Ganda”: The new Philippine Department of Tourism slogan is loads of FAIL

photo: the old (and much better) Philippine tourism slogan

We recently got wind of the Department of Tourism’s new slogan. It’s supposed to be the Philippines’ new country marketing slogan, after about 8 years of “WOW Philippines“. The new slogan is “Pilipinas Kay Ganda” – obviously a rip off that old Metropop anthem from the 70′s, “Umagang Kay Ganda“. Hey, any Tillie Moreno and Ray-Ann Fuentes fans in the house? Or if you prefer, it also reminds us of that morning show that ripped off the song title years later.

Of course it just literally means “Beautiful Philippines” but the pun is lost on people who can’t connect the dots to make the pop culture reference to the song or TV show.

Well I don’t like it, and apparently the slogan has picked up quite a few other haters on the Net as well. If the ad agency that created the campaign announced the new slogan early to create a buzz, they are certainly reaping a whirlwind of a social media backlash that just might rival the recall of the new GAP logo some weeks back.