DOT bags Internet marketing award

The Department of Tourism’s website promoting the Philippines to overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) and Filipino-Americans and Filipino-Canadians in North America was awarded a gold medal for its excellent use of the Internet in a marketing campaign.

The DOT Team North America’s “The Philippines: Explore. Experience. Return.” (PEER) cyber-campaign anchored on their www.explorephilippines.ph website, won the Gold Cyber Boomerang Award in the first-ever Boomerang Awards 2007 last Aug. 10.

The award made DOT the only government agency to win in the competition. 

The Cyber Boomerang Award is given to Internet-based marketing campaigns launched in the Philippines between Jan. 1, 2005 and March 31, 2007.

The cyber-campaign’s www.-experiencephilippines.ph website, developed by leading advertising agency Euro RSCG 4D, includes interactive and user-friendly features that enable visitors to explore, experience and return to the Philippines’ best natural and man-made wonders, finest indulgences and world-renowned attractions.

DOT Team North America head Ma. Corazon Jorda-Apo, member Zeny Pallugna and Euro RSCG 4D Business Unit Head Bambie Paguia received the Gold Cyber Boomerang Award from Internet and Mobile Marketing Association of the Philippines (IMMAP) officials during the awarding ceremony at the Hotel InterContinental in Makati City.

The DOT’s PEER campaign bested Chowking Food Corp.’s “3G Web” and Smart Communications’ “Smart 3G,” among other finalists.

The IMMAP’s Boomerang Awards is the first in the country to showcase and give recognition to outstanding marketing campaigns that have utilized the Internet and mobile devices.

The award recognizes the success of campaigns in using the web as a central marketing tool, distinct from the traditional marketing media like print, television and radio, and values the ability of such marketing efforts to quantify its gains and results.

The Boomerang Awards 2007 was the highlight of the two-day Internet and Mobile Marketing Summit, which brought together international and local Internet and mobile marketing companies to discuss campaign strategies and techniques for Internet and mobile marketing as well as interconnection, integration and innovation in the industry.

The IMMAP said that an international panel of judges composed of marketing experts and new media specialists from the United States, Australia, Singapore, China, and the Philippines selected the winning entries based on their “strategic significance in meeting the desired business objectives and creativity and innovativeness in using the Internet and/or mobile devices as communication mediums.”

“I congratulate the Department of Tourism for winning the Gold Cyber Boomerang. Their PEER campaign clearly demonstrated what a successful Internet-based marketing campaign should do – reach its market, hit its mark, and return tangible and measurable outstanding results,” said Rob Martin Murphy, Boomerang Awards juror and creative director of The Furnace, Australia.

The DOT PEER campaign is a revitalized balikbayan program which promotes the Philippines as a top tourist destination among second and third generation Filipino-Americans living in North America. The program invites them to come home, rediscover their roots and experience the present-day Philippines.

DOT’s web-based tourism marketing program used non-traditional elements and strategies in attracting its target market.

Negative images that were wrongly associated with the Philippines were used in the website in ways that made them attractive and positive, eventually appealing to and exciting the PEER campaign’s target market.

To generate a tourist database for North America, the PEER campaign also launched “The Great Philippine Free-Flight Giveaway” promo from October to December 2006. Thousands of North America-based Filipinos registered and joined for a chance to win one of 250 round-trip tickets to the Philippines.

The PEER campaign proved to be a success in a short time, reportedly getting viewed more than seven million times in just four months since the launch.    

During the course of “The Great Philippine Free-Flight Giveaway” promo, the Filipino-American segment also posted a five-percent increase in visitor arrivals.

The free flight giveaway promo was also credited for the establishment of the setting up of an equally important database of 85,000 names and email addresses as well as 70,000 OFWs and Fil-Ams and Fil-Canadians.

Through the PEER website, over 10,000 website visitors also participated in an online survey and over 2,000 provided additional information on Filipino-Americans, their travel preferences and insights on heritage and travel purchase habits. 

Norman Agatep, managing director and chief creative officer of Euro RSCG said the Gold Cyber Boomerang award won by DOT greatly acknowledges the tourism department’s commitment to understand the second and third generations of Filipinos living in the United States.

“The award recognizes the fact that the Department of Tourism wants to understand this new generation of Filipino-Americans living in the United States and they really want to determine what would interest these people to come to the Philippines,” Agatep said.

He also pointed out the significance of the tourist database that the PEER program has created.

“The amount of information that the project has produced and will generate in the future will greatly help in shaping upcoming projects and programs of the Department of Tourism especially for the North American region,” he added.

Agatep and his Euro RSCG team are already working with DOT’s Team North America on the second phase of the PEER campaign, the “Out of the Box” promo where exciting prizes such as hotel accommodations, roundtrip airline tickets to international and local destinations, LASIK eye surgery, money cards and gift certificates are raffled off to lucky North Americans who qualify in the monthly and quarterly draws.