"pilipinas Kay Ganda" : How Not to Brand Philippine Tourism

The nationwide flak the Philippine Department of Tourism got for the “Pilipinas Kay Ganda” (literally, "Philippines, So Beautiful") positioning statement for the country’s tourism promotion efforts may go down in advertising and marketing communications as a classic case of ineffective branding. Philippine Senator Miriam Defensor –Santiago called it “ignorant,” which, as she rightly pointed out, is “boring.”

Had the deluge of criticisms come only from the political opposition like Santiago, we could let it pass. But, branding experts are in unison in dismissing the concept as sophomoric, with each giving free advice on how to brand Philippine tourism properly. Worse, not only is the positioning statement badly constructed, there also are allegations that the logo is  a close copy of the Polish “Polska.” I checked out the alleged infringement in Google Images, and the glaring evidence stared at me like mad. Some people simply don’t work for what they’re paid for?

The Department of Tourism Secretary has mustered courage to defend the indefensible by saying that everything was some sort of a test run to generate public reaction so that the concept could be improved. That explanation is yet another indicator of a lack of basic knowledge and skills in branding. It’s elementary that when you test a concept, you don’t go public right away because you might unknowingly wash your dirty linens in public as is the case here. This is specially so in the age of the Internet where "public" refers to the entire world. You do pilot testing. You do focus group discussions with scientifically chosen representatives of your target market or audience, generate feedback from this select group to inform your decisions on how to go about with the branding.

The last time I checked, Google alone yielded 28 million plus results on the subject of branding. Those behind this “Pilipinas Kay Ganda” misbranding were, as Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago said, apparently not using enough neurons.