DOT's "It's more fun in the Philippines" Brouhaha

"It's more fun in the Philippines!" This is the new campaign that the Department of Tourism launched earlier today. I actually found the campaign good enough to boost the tourism here in our country. The tag line sounds simple and yet it creates this eagerness for people to start thinking about the reason why it is more fun in the Philippines. When I saw the millions of people hash tag-ing #ItsMoreFunInThePhilippines on Twitter and people positively talking about it on Facebook, I was amazed on how much DOT is creating such a huge impact to the people. Kudos to them, I say.

c/o DOT: Its More Fun in the Philippines (www.itsmorefuninthephilippines.com)

c/o DOT: Its More Fun in the Philippines (www.itsmorefuninthephilippines.com)

c/o DOT: Its More Fun in the Philippines (www.itsmorefuninthephilippines.com)

I love how colorful they made the website. It follows the "its-more-fun-in-the-Philippines-vibe". The slideshow of photos in the header of the website with the captions was also nice and creative. But lo and behold, after a few hours, a 1950s tourism ad of Switzerland suddenly became viral over the internet. Apparently, the Swiss already claimed that it's more fun in their country. What are the odds?

http://itsmorefuninthephilippines.com/

It's more fun in Switzerland! c/o www.vintagepaperads.com

I was saddened to know that DOT is again facing another rip-off controversy after the Pilipinas Kay Ganda campaign logo brouhaha. They were claiming that the ad was not at all intentionally copied from the Swiss. But I don't know, I'm kind of doubtful. Given that they already committed the same mistake before when the office was still under Secretary Alberto Lim, I'm just saying that MAYBE its not possible for them to do the same mistake again. Maybe they took another chance of ripping off another idea without knowing that people can find out soon, I don't know. I don't have anything against DOT, I applaud them for their effort in raising the bar for Philippine tourism but I just don't find what they did desirable (if ever they really did copy it from the Swiss). Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of "It's more fun in the Philippines" like what I said before but maybe, creating a more original idea would have been better. Perhaps developing the WOW Philippines campaign would've been better. I mean, okay, maybe everything was coincidental in DOT's part but knowing that the ad existed first in Switzerland, you can't stop people to assume that it is indeed a rip off. They should have researched more about the campaign first before releasing it to the public. Doing this would've been less painful for them.

It's not really a matter of copyright issues. Lets take a look at the bigger picture that maybe our country might be placed in a bad light because of this. Philippines might become an infamous copy cat of campaigns, slogans, logo, and the like of progressive countries. Who would want that, right? 

I'm not hating on DOT. It just makes me feel sad that they have to face another controversy like this. Maybe the right thing that we, Filipinos, can do is just support the campaign and forget about the existing Switzerland tourism ad. I mean, just let it go (I know I am). This way we could make the controversy die down a bit. We have to realize that the more we ridicule this issue, the more it'll become bigger and the more we're making our country look bad. Let's not be selfish for once. As the current Secretary of DOT, Ramon Jimenez, tweeted, "Tourism is successful in Thailand because their positive voice is louder than their negative voice." Maybe what we should do now is focus on the cause of the campaign and just support it. Never mind the Swiss, let's just prove that its MORE MORE FUN here in the Philippines.