A Philippine advertising agency “caught up” in quite a scandal, which “advertised” tourism in the Philippines in an original way. The fact is that in the commercial filmed as part of the country’s new tourism campaign “Love the Philippines”, there were “appropriated” attractions from other countries.
According to the local press, the scandal began just a few days after the launch of the campaign on June 27. Careful users quickly found out that the video featured rice terraces in Indonesia and dunes in Brazil as sights of the Philippines.
As a result, the Department of Tourism (DOT) was forced to say it had launched an investigation into the allegations. Moreover, at first, the agency stated that they requested confirmation of the originality and ownership of all materials repeatedly used in the video, and the agency “repeatedly assured” that everything was “okay.”
However, the fact was revealed — and as a result, ad agency DDB Philippines apologized for the “extremely inappropriate” imagery: “While the use of stock footage in mood videos is industry standard practice, the use of foreign stock footage was an unfortunate mistake on our agency’s part. The use of foreign video materials in a campaign to promote the Philippines is highly inappropriate and contrary to the goals of the DOT,” the agency said.