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: Top 10 Quotes About the Brouhaha

“It ain’t over till the fat lady sings.” Whether in opera or in real life, that’s what they always tell us. So in the case of the swirling controversy over the selection of the new Philippine tourism travel slogan, we were a bit excited to to see the massive image of Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago (a lot plumper than we remember) on TV giving us her latest nuggets of wisdom, hopefully providing us some indication that this 24-hour news cycle that had inexplicably lasted over 48 hours would be over. She had us on the edge of our seats, awaiting the first note.

But all she sang was that the logo “… is ignorant, and ignorance is boring.” Hello, National Geographic tagline yun ah. Well at least we know what cable channel she watches. And that she drives an 8-cylinder car.

Update: I thought that the DOT could finally sweep this under the rug now that the DOT’s digital guy Under Secretary Enteng Romano took the fall for his boss and accepted responsibility for the now-dead-and-buried “beautifulpilipinas.com” website. It’s all here, in a heartfelt apology posted on Facebook this morning.

Just like in business, the IT guy always gets the blame, eh?  But wait, no one was owing up to the new slogan and allegedly plagiarized logo that still keeps the cauldron simmering. No one has accepted responsibility for approving and pushing “Pilipinas Kay Ganda” and the logo allegedly plagiarized from Poland.  Could it be because this is a key strategic element and that the buck stops nowhere but the top? Guys, if you want to kill this story, kill the story already!

So since the story isn’t swept under the rug yet (yes, we can still see and smell it), here are Top 10 Quotes about the PKG brouhaha that were amassed over the past 24 hours from everyone from politicians and bloggers, who had their chance to say their barbs and zingers while the spotlight’s still on them.

[Cue Paul Schaffer and the CBS Orchestra...]

And the TOP 10 QUOTES ABOUT THE PILIPINAS KAY GANDA BROUHAHA ARE…

10. “Pilipinas Kay Ganda is, I think, ignorant and ignorance is boring.” Miriam Santiago, avid National Geographic channel viewer.

09. “Let’s start some neurons in our brains working. Their neurons are not working. They are not on full eight cylinders. They are on two cylinders.” Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago, still riffing on a theme.

08. “If you ask me, I think somebody is drinking on the job,” Sen. Miguel Zubiri.

07. “If ‘Wow Philippines’ ain’t broke, why fix it?” Rep. Teddy Casino, on Twitter.

06. “Pilipinas, Patay Kang Bata Ka.” – @GSChan, after learning the slogan’s logo was copied from the Polish tourism logo.

05. “The new DOT slogan ‘Pilipinas Kay Ganda’ is like the billboard message of Ricky Reyes’ ads, Ganda ng Lola Mo!” – Rep JV Ejercito’s Twitter account.

04 “Paano naman ‘yong Kapuso at Kapatid? Para kasing ‘Ganda ng Lola Mo.’ Hindi mo malaman kung morning show o si Ricky Reyes ang nag-coin.” – Rep JV Ejercito, expanding on his pa-cute tweet, as quoted by ABS-CBN.

03 “My Apologies to the Polish National Tourist Office. I’m really sorry for calling your logo a Google Doodle.” - Spanky Enriquez, the guy who blew the whistle about the Polish logo rip-off. He called the DOT’s new logo a Google Doodle.

02 “Hindi nga na-research ‘yon… wala kasi kaming alam sa mga porn sites eh” – Tourism Secretary Alberto Lim, commenting on the similarity of the beautifulpilipinas.com domain to a porn site. Was there supposed to be a smiley after that remark?

AND THE #1 QUOTE ABOUT THE PILIPINAS KAY GANDA BROUHAHA IS…

01 “There are similarities, pero sa pagkakaalam ko… sa atin mas makulay.” – DOT Secretary Lim, on the striking similarity between the new Philippine tourism logo and Poland’s. Oo nga no?

There were also a lot of comments about signing up Vice Ganda to be the new DOT spokesperson, but they were too numerous to include here.