The recent development about the new campaign to promote the Philippines having the same logo with another site and having a domain name that resembles a pornographic site is something we can't be happy about.  Why is this so?

Promoting the country to the world is no joke.  It's like marketing a major product - that requires a lot of research, preparation before you even dare to execute it.  I am not faulting anyone here nor am I here to put a blame on anyone.  But I simply want to point out where the mistakes are so that we can avoid them in the future.

The similarity of the logo with another site is no accident.  Whoever designed that logo should have his head cut.  It's a simple case of laziness, opting to shortcut his/her job.  Why would you copy a logo from another site?  We have a theme, we have our own objective, we have a purpose - so we should design a logo that will represents the theme, objective and purpose.  Present four to five logos and ask the directors to choose one.

With regards to the domain name.  A lot of rules in selecting a domain name was violated by whoever is in charge of this project.  First, in selecting a domain name - the rule is the shorter the better.  If one can limit the domain name to 5 to 6 characters the better.  The domain should also represent the name of the site.  What is the relation of beautifulpilipinas.com to Pilipinas - Kay Ganda?  Do you expect foreign visitors to know that beautiful in Tagalog is "Kay Ganda"?

Another mistake and for me the biggest mistake they committed in selecting the domain name is the failure to know that there is a site beautifulfilipinas.com out there that redirect itself to a pornographic site.  The answer of Tourism Secretary Albert Lim that they cannot have known the existence of beautifulfilipinas.com because they don't visit pornographic sites is a very lame excuse.  Do you have to be bitten by a dog to know that it's painful.  Or do you have to drink poison to know that its lethal?

We are just referring to the logo and domain name here.  We have not discussed the content of the site.  What will the site contain is still a question.  How will the website help the country attract tourists to visit our country is still unknown?  Will it help us or will it break us?  As it is right now, I think I don't have to tell you the answer.

I am logging off.  Stay cool and God Bless us all!