pilipinas, kay pangit? yikes, yoly ong!

yoly ong’s rant over the pilipinas-kay-ganda fiasco is remarkable for its vehemence and venom.   “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”?

… I would rather be stoned, flayed, crucified and burned at the stake, than be cowed into condoning travesty. I would rather stake whatever reputation, credibility and success I may have, than shy away from laying bare the aggressive metastasis of a cancerous psyche afflicting some Filipinos. In spineless silence, we abet ignorance and envy, the lynch mob mentality and orchestrated demolition.

Never has such coordinated online outrage been more violently expressed, eclipsing the anger over the Maguindanao massacre, Morong 43 or the unresolved murders of journalists combined! One friend accurately described it as mass hysteria over a test logo! People screamed, why was it in Pilipino when we’re talking to tourists? Actually, the logo included an English translation and pronunciation guide. Blinded by rage or possibly other motives, they didn’t see it. Or didn’t want to.

yoly ong is hysterical.   she exaggerates.   there’s no way that the online “outrage” over pilipinas-kay-ganda eclipses, or even equals, the continuing OUTRAGE over the maguindanao massacre.   maybe it eclipses the anger over morong 43, yes, and the unresolved murders of journalists, yes, but then these are issues connected with the left, and the online community, just like the mainstream, is mostly, unfortunately, wary and tends to stay aloof of leftist issues.   but maguindanao is something else, and it is sad that yoly ong does not know it.

twould seem that she’s just another oldie who has all the wrong ideas about social media and the internet community.   in the first place, the reaction to the pilipinas-kay-ganda logo/slogan, across blogs, facebook, and twitter, was more like plain disappointment dismay disgust because it just wasn’t great enough for a country brand.   if at all there was outrage, it was over the P5M spent on that premature flop of a preview.

in the second place, except for relief operations during and post-disasters, there is no such thing as a “coordinated online” anything, be it outrage (aug23 bloodbath) or anger disgust (maimislang-rickycarandang tweets) or even a rave review (pacquiao, charice).  yes we post blogs, shout-outs and links but “friends” are free to agree or disagree, repost or ignore.   there’s no one central network — with 10,000 friends that includes all of us who dissed pilipinas-kay-ganda — that dictates, much less orchestrates, anything.   facebook is a zone of free spirits, and thoughts ideas expressions live and die on their own merits.

ONG: In a democracy everyone is free to express his opinion. But not all opinions carry equal weight, not all reactions are intended to help. Not all objectives were about national branding, but aimed to achieve more sinister results.

in social media, all opinions carry equal weight, everyone is free to support or dissent, which sometimes makes for entertaining if not enlightening comment threads.   yes facebook can get toxic and virulent, especially about perceived injustices and incompetencies, but on the rare occasions when netizens happen to agree on something, well, that’s worth acknowledging and looking into, i think, rather than judging it sinister, which is just so praning, sabi nga ni butch dado, the warrior lawyer.

ONG: Right after the DOT event, a dyed-in-the-wool ex-cabinet member of the past regime called to “console” and probe me about the controversy. I immediately knew that the Gruesome Malicious Army will seize this golden opportunity to wreak havoc on the new, popular government. I was needled: Do I still support this “incompetent, weak and indecisive leader”? You mean will I always be on the side of an honest and incorruptible President? Absolutely YES! But my antenna was up. I knew a tidal wave of malevolence was about to hit.

But the bile that gorged out of faded advertising luminaries was too toxic even by industry standards. One accused us of being irresponsible for allowing the client to make us party to supposed plagiarism. That could have passed as a high-minded comment if his own brother wasn’t sued by a leading ad agency and ordered by the Adboard to cease and desist from airing a TV ad that was judged copied from Coke!

Then there was a former Creative Director for an airline account who mocked my Harvard degree as ironic under the circumstances. How quickly he forgot that he was fired by his Agency for allegedly receiving kickbacks from production suppliers!

salamat naman sa tsismis but really, the ad hominem blind-item attacks on the “gruesome malicious army” (gma! to the hilt!) out to “wreak havoc” on the popular aquino government AND on her fellow “faded advertising luminaries” belong more in a tabloid or the entertainment section of a broadsheet.   blind items are so showbiz.    next time, name names, dearie, go the whole hog, we like women with balls.

ONG: … what finally made me decide to write is this last item of iniquity.

When Undersecretary Vicente “Enteng” Romano exited with grace, he demonstrated a miracle of public office never witnessed in this country: a government official taking full ownership of a tempest-in-a-teacup-blown-up-into-a-Category-5-hurricane. Although his heroic gesture was praised by many, a malicious text immediately circulated: “Enteng Romano commissioned a company for P5M for the grand launch of the new DOT slogan. The company has reported ties to Enteng’s son. This is accdg to some sources in media.” I got this SMS three times.

What makes this so nauseating? First, the information is fundamentally wrong. Enteng has no son. Second, all the Media who attended the event said it was too lavish to be considered a “preview”. Therefore if P4.7M was really spent, every centavo must have gone to food, drinks, fireworks, talents, staging, etc. It didn’t line anyone’s pockets, much less an imagined son’s. Would a thinking man risk criminal jail-time to steal a paltry $105K? Were these braying critics just as indignant when “BurjerBen”, FG and cohorts were allegedly skimming $130M from NBN-ZTE?

this is the first i’ve heard about a son of enteng allegedly being involved in the launch.  i may have missed it lang or maybe it wasn’t picked up and bandied about so it died on its own demerits?   but hey $105K is not a paltry sum, and hey we brayed like anything over burjerben and nbn-zteFG.   did you?

ONG: Enteng cut a few corners because he instinctively saw what must be accomplished quickly. Last year, there were 3M+ tourists. Twenty-six percent were North Americans (60 percent of whom are FilAms), followed by the Koreans (20 percent), Chinese (13 percent) and Japanese (9 percent). Forty-two percent don’t speak English and couldn’t care less if the themeline was written in Aramaic.

ah, finally we get to the heart of the matter.   the question still is, why did ms. ong allow the client to break all the rules?   was it against her better judgement at all?   was she being experimental?   anything to make sure the account went to campaigns & grey and not to the competition?   this intense defense of enteng romano only makes me wonder if maybe ms. ong feels responsible for his resignation.   if she hadn’t condoned the corner-cutting, then maybe none of this would have happened?

as for using tagalog rather than english, i still don’ t buy it.   i’m convinced that instant recognition & comprehension are key.   specially post-pacquiao’s 8th wonder, wow philippines!   and even if it doesn’t matter to the 42 percent who don’t speak english anyway — except, that is, to the people of india for whom “ganda” means “dirty” or “crazy”, depending — what about to the 58 percent who do speak english?   okay lang to risk losing them with pilipinas kay ganda?

ONG:  If God gave the themeline in tablets, it still wouldn’t be accepted by the likes of net-dicts who fancy themselves divas of righteousness, but neglect to issue receipts for a lucrative pasta sideline. A Damaso-morality and a pathological need for attention? True, it’s all about you.

ah, a final blind item.   kakaintriga nga naman.   da who are dis net-dicts, dis divas of righteousness with a lucrative pasta sideline na di nag-i-issue ng recibo: kulang sa pansin na, isip-damaso pa?   hayyy.   what does this have to do with god, or a good themeline.

ONG:  Majority of 8000 tourists who were surveyed said they visited the Philippines for its beautiful scenery, good food, shopping and above all the hospitable people. Sometimes, it’s hard to see our innate kindness. Vileness overwhelms virtue. Tearing down is more fun than building up. Detractors impact more than supporters. Pilipinas, kay pangit!

sorry, but where in that logo does it suggest good food and shopping, hospitable people and innate kindness?   on the other hand, kitang kita, feel na feel, the vileness, the tearing down, right there in her rant.   kay pangit, yoly ong.   ang totoo, it’s all about you.

let winston churchill be a source of inspiration for people who, thinking they are god’s gift to the filipino people, feel demeaned, and are felled, by criticism:

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.”

***

Pilipinas Kay Praning
Yolly Ong, former Usec. Vicente Romano III, and “Pilipinas kay ganda”
Social Media gave us a voice (No it wasn’t GMA’s fault)
Campaigns and Grey’s Ong in Defense
Are you a diva of righteousness?
Huling Kabit — Magapatuka na lang ako sa ahas

televise the trial

In spite of the fact that the Maguindanao Massacre is an open-and-shut case, with the guilt of the accused very clear, justice for the victims and their families is still far off.

Can’t P-Noy’s administration and the Supreme Court make the wheel of justice move faster? Why is it much faster in other countries but very slow in ours? It is this slow justice that encourages crime in the Philippines. Even if a criminal is caught, it takes the government many years to send him to jail. In the meantime, he is able to continue committing more crimes, kill, buy or threaten witnesses against him, or bribe even judges and justices and therefore escape justice.

Why conduct only two hearings a week for the Ampatuans? And why only two witnesses per hearing? The Maguindanao Massacre is the most cold-blooded mass murder in the history of the Philippines and it shocked the whole world. It should not be treated so cavalierly like most petty crimes. What is wrong with holding daily hearings with no limit to the number of witnesses to be presented daily? What is wrong with holding hearings the whole day? The other cases of the court trying the Maguindanao Massacre can be transferred to other courts. What’s wrong with that?

Too bad capital punishment has been abolished in the Philippines, thanks to the bleeding hearts. If there is anybody deserving of execution, it is those who were responsible for the Maguindanao Massacre.

i agree with neal cruz.   besides, the law is biased enough in favor of the accused.   back in the ’90s i remember hearing the late quezon city regional trial court judge maximiano asuncion (branch 104) on tv saying that under our laws napakaraming karapatan ng akusado at iilan ang karapatan ng biktima o ng pamilyang naiwan ng biktima. to be sure, i googled it, and the issue turns out to be a very current one in the international arena, and there are continuing attempts to balance the rights of victims with the rights of the accused.   check this out, and this, and this.

of course there is dissent. belinda olivares cunanan, once of the inquirer, now of the the blog political tidbits, is one of many who are against media coverage:

First, the print media are already doing extensive  coverage of the trial. Second, live coverage could exacerbate the already super-high nationwide tensions over the mass murders, sapping the national energies further and making independent judgment impossible for a judge already boxed into an extremely difficult position when she accepted the Ampatuan case. Moreover, as De Lima correctly noted, live coverage could violate the court’s rule prohibiting the witnesses from hearing the testimony of their fellow witnesses.

first, the print media, due to space limitations, never quite capture and report all of the proceedings; neither do broadcast media, due to time limitations.   second, the slooooow pace is already “exacerbating the already super-high nationwide tensions over the mass murders.”   let’s not worry about judge jocelyn solis-reyes — she’s doing a good job off-cam, i expect she’ll do a good job on-cam.   as for witnesses being influenced by the testimony of other witnesses, surely each one has executed an affidavit beforehand, and testimony beyond such would not get past defense lawyers who would be very vigilant about calling public attention to anything like that.   and, finally, a televised trial would not sap national energies, rather, a televised trial would ease the tensions generated by the 53 victims’ families’ woes exacerbated by the supreme court’s seeming indifference to their very valid grievances.

as for those who are afraid that televised hearings might prove a diversion (distracting from the aquino admin’s serial flops, flaps, flip-flops?) or even as a means of entertainment, i suppose they’re coming from lessons learned in erap’s impeachment trial that led to edsa dos.   but there was a lot that was laughable about that proceeding, which cannot be said of the ampatuan trial that is seeking justice for the 58 lives violently ended, massacred in one sweep, by a private army in broad daylight.

Sen. Joker Arroyo has warned that with almost 200 defendants and 300 witnesses it could take 200 years for justice to be meted out to both the perpetrators and victims of the Maguindanao massacre. If it should take long to prosecute the case, let it go the whole route. Fiat justitia, ruat coelum. Let justice be done though the heavens fall. But surely something can be done to speed things up. Probably the number of witnesses can be limited to the most important ones and marathon hearings can be held. Judge Jocelyn Solis-Reyes of Quezon City Trial Court Branch 221 could also be relieved of her other cases so she can focus on the massacre trial.

The Maguindanao massacre trial should be no less important than the Estrada case, in which the fortune of one man was involved. Here the meting out of justice to 57 victims and 200 defendants is involved. The people also should know how a political Frankenstein’s monster was pampered and allowed to grow by a Machiavellian president to the point that they thought they would perpetually escape the clutches of justice. Televise the trial and let the people know.

yes, and hold daily hearings, eight hours a day, five days a week.   justice delayed is justice denied.

Slow wheels of justice encourage crimes
Balancing rights of the accused with the rights of the victim
Victims’ rights and the rights of the accused
Victims’ rights
Live trial coverage will exacerbate tensions
Ampatuan Watch: Elusive justice
Trials are not entertainment
Television and the Ampatuan trial
Televised trial
Former chief justice backs live feed for Ampatuan trial
Televise the trial

only in the philippines!

95 million copywriters
Greg B. Macabenta

I used to complain about 60 million copywriters. That was the population of the Philippines decades ago, when I was working with an ad agency in Manila and was handling the Nestlé account. It was my way of protesting the way every Juan, Pedro, and Maria felt competent to criticize and suggest improvements on the advertising campaigns we created. Invariably, 10 different people had 10 different ideas on how to improve our work.

Poor Secretary Bertie Lim and Campaigns & Grey. Now, they’re hearing from 95 million copywriters.

…  I had written a piece entitled, “Proud to be Pinoy,” referring to the fact that Manny Pacquiao and FilAms like California Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye and Giants ace pitcher Tim Limcecum have given us reason to hold our heads high in the world.But I also added that there are many other reasons to feel proud of ourselves as a a people:

“And yet, we have many reasons to feel Proud to be Pinoy, and not just vicariously. Not the least, the beauty of our people and our land.

“I guess this is the rationale behind the new campaign of the Department of Tourism revolving around the theme, ‘Pilipinas Kay Ganda’ or ‘Philippines, the Beautiful.’

“I think it’s a good advertising theme, reminiscent of America, the Beautiful.’ But to make this campaign fly, we need to work on our national psyche and imbue our people with genuine pride in ourselves as a nation.”

That really means creating a culture of tourism.

That, in turn, means improving our tourism infrastructure, ensuring peace and order and security, and investing in advertising and promotions to reach, create awareness and persuade tourists, sportsmen, adventurers, World War II veterans, retirees, businessmen, investors, conventioneers and assorted travelers, as well as overseas Filipinos, to visit our shores.

…  Heck! Why argue that “Pilipinas Kay Ganda” cannot be understood by non-Filipinos? It’s the easiest thing to add a parenthetical phrase that explains what it means. The more important point is whether or not we can support that statement.Was Senator Chiz Escudero right in commenting that there is no reason to change Dick Gordon’s “WOW Philippines” campaign?

Yeah sure. But if no advertising and promotions money is invested, it won’t work, either. And if the culture of tourism isn’t developed in our country and among our people, there will nothing to be “wowed” by.

…  The reason Las Vegas is such a major tourist draw is that the casinos are investing heavily in tourism promotions. The reason Hawaii is such an attractive tourist destination is that the travel and tourist industry in the islands are investing heavily in tourism promotions.But in the Philippines, the Department of Tourism is expected to do all of the investing, while the travel and tourism industry does the complaining and criticizing.

…  So what are they suggesting?Are they going to launch a contest on the best tourism slogan?

Will they create a committee of creative geniuses to concoct the right combination of words? Will Chiz Escudero and the Senate constitute a committee that will conduct an investigation into the reasons why our tourism industry has been left biting the dust behind Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the rest of Asia? Will Miriam Defensor-Santiago demand that Bertie Lim be replaced with “heavyweights”?

Or will someone sit down, do a reality check, calmly assess what resources are available and work on a viable plan that doesn’t depend on the syntax or symbolisms or visual appeal of an advertising slogan?

Several months ago (before P-Noy became president), I submitted a plan to Director Rene de los Santos of the Department of Tourism in San Francisco for a sustained media advertising campaign in the US, combining the limited budgets of the various stakeholders in the travel and tourism industry, as well as those government agencies desiring to reach out to the overseas markets.

My thesis is that, individually, none of them can afford to sustain a year-long effort — not even Philippine Airlines. But intermittent promotional blitzes and “marketing roadshows” are a waste of money. Without a follow-through, fat chance these efforts will sink in.

Breaking into a market is like pushing a boulder up a hill. If you don’t have enough muscle to push it all the way up to the top, as soon as you run out of steam, the boulder will roll right back to where you started.

So how to fund a year-long campaign? One way is to combine the limited resources of the stakeholders to make them add up to a substantial sum that can pay for such a campaign.

How does that work? Imagine a series of TV commercials and full-page or even double-spread full-color ads that talk about all of the wonderful things that all kinds of people can discover and relish in the Philippines.

Of course, that brings us back to making sure that all of those wonderfulthings are in place and worth offering to the world.

But, as far as I can tell, there are enough of them to get a viable campaign started. What I think needs to be done is for all of the interested parties to get together to agree on getting the infrastructure in shape for the follow-up campaign and for the long haul.

Pero, utang na loob, leave the copywriting to the copywriters.

the oldies & social media

post-mislang there was The petty perils of tech and sosyal ek-ek from krip yuson, “an older writer’s diatribe about online youngsters and their tweeting ways” (as the editor puts it, in the intro to katrina’s response) even if it was also about facebook and blogs “demonizing” the “poor lady”:

All this excited, excitable talk about the glories of new media and sosyal ek-ek-working can really be only signposts to something possibly overrated. The jury should still be out on whether some benefits — like tweeting disasters and calls for relief aid, or finding long-lost cousins via Facebook to get up to speed on who’s won any Lotto draw — outweigh the nakedness of public spectacle, or expose the sloth of universal interest in what anyone may have had for breakfast, or how many corny pictures one can take at a barbecue party, thence parade onscreen as an imposition of generosity.

But then geeks, techies and faddists tend to view everything new with rose-colored glasses, like Manong Johnny who only wanted to make you happy. So the darned bandwagon begins to creak under the weight of too many cock-eyed optimists hailing a brave new world called the kingdom of sharing.

Whatever happened to the fine memory of Groucho Marx begging off from joining any group that would have him?

Sure, it fills the vanity void, expands virtual friendships. But what about the sensitivities of the poor lot who are defriended, or maybe worse, ignored, denied entry into private settings, or laughed out of an unsolicited tag?

I still don’t understand why one can’t just join a specific e-loop, which is like having a more intimate soiree, rather than have to cast one’s lot with a street hoedown where stalkers can turn up to foist their graceless manners and bad grammar on non-peers of greater cachet.

and then there was The connectivity society from randy david, an academic’s misgivings about the over-sharing on social media, and the loss of privacy, maybe daw even of our humanity.

THERE’S A theory in the study of social relationships that became quite popular in the 1960s. It was called “dramaturgical sociology.” Its author, Erving Goffman, adopted the Shakespearean insight that “all the world’s a stage,” and worked out a cool set of concepts that view human actions as sequences in the elaborate art of impression management. We want other people, he said, to see us according to how we wish to portray ourselves. Instead of leaving it entirely to chance, this is something we can control to some extent. Success is never assured. But we are not crushed when we falter: the audience is usually polite and helpful.

Goffman would have found the new culture of instant digital connectivity in which many of us today are immersed fascinating. Because of the radical changes in communications technology, our lives take place, more than ever, in what he called the “front stage.” In other words, we are constantly performing. Between performances, we find that there’s less and less time to retreat to the “back stage,” to take a break and be ourselves.

Our solitudes become public. The most intimate of our relationships, in which we used to be able to take refuge, can be viewed by people we hardly know but who are part of an ever-expanding social network. We are trapped in roles from which increasingly we cannot take a rest. We can no longer talk in whispers, or tell a joke that will not potentially be a scandal. It has become difficult to indulge in private moments that we’re sure will not be photographed, or recorded, and posted on YouTube or somebody’s Facebook.

Mobile communication instantly connects us to an amazing number of people everywhere, all at the same time. This has multiplied exponentially the power to do good and to spread the good news. But it has also empowered meanness. It has made bullying not just more vicious because of its capacity to be anonymous, it has also made it virulent. By providing easy access to the various media of public discourse, mass connectivity has democratized opinion-making no doubt, but it has not made it as easy to come to any agreement on what is to be regarded as true. Indeed, it has also become the most effective tool for repeating and spreading a lie. We may keep a tally of the number of people who “like” a particular opinion, blog, tweet, or post. But that only tells us what’s popular at any given moment, not necessarily what’s true.

as an oldie, too, but female, who’s been blogging since september 2007 and posting on twitter and facebook since early 2010, i wonder if it’s a macho thing, the writer’s and the intellectual’s shared disdain of social media – to join would be to succumb to a weakness?   or it could also be a class-sort-of thing, they who snub social media deem themselves a breed, a class, apart – it is below them to rub virtual elbows with a mean and disputatious techno-mob?

or it might even be just a mainstream-media thing, the two being old-hands at column-writing, opinionating, in the arts & opinion sections, respectively, of their broadsheets.   suddenly they don’t have a monopoly on “what’s true”, theirs are no longer the only opinions that matter, suddenly they’re competing with and/or being criticized by self-proclaimed writers and thinkers on the internet who are into the worldwide web of wide-ranging and relevant information that democracy requires and who love passing stuff on, and sharing their own ideas and opinions, just because they can.   yes it doesn’t make it easier “to come to any agreement on what is to be regarded as true” and it may also be a “most effective tool for repeating and spreading a lie” but the same can be said of print and broadcast media.   mas virulent nga lang sa social media because of the reach, across all computer-literate thinking classes, and because of the radical feedback, forward, and re-post devices.

and so post-pilipinaskayganda what a surprise to read Unoriginal from alex magno, an oldie but goodie?   even if a mainstreamer, too, an opinion columnist too, he seems to have no problem with social media.

In this age of social media pervasiveness, a consensus could be formed in the public mind within hours. That consensus is freely arrived at by all the participants in the sum of all blogs and tweets on a particular matter. It is, therefore, a consensus that can no longer be reversed.

We were made to understand that the “strategic communications group” — or at least part of it — was organized to manage the social media environment. That was, as we now see, probably and erroneous premise. Indeed, how could the social media be managed? How could this administration even dare aspire to manage the social media environment?

When the hostage tragedy happened, government portals were flooded with hate mail. Some portals were actually taken down by the sheer volume of mail coming in.

When Mislang made that casual comment about the quality of wine served by the Vietnamese, the outrage over the sheer lack of manners and pure pettiness of the comment flooded the blogs. Special websites were set up as impromptu public billboards to accommodate all the indignation expressed.

This week, the provocation is that completely unoriginal DOT campaign logo. This is a controversy that ought to have been avoidable. Before making that logo public, the DOT might have quietly conducted focus group discussions. They did not. They simply threw out that logo to the public to be feasted upon by the bloggers .

Today, for all intents and purposes, the public resoundingly rejected that logo. No need to do “public consultations.” That is so 20th century. The public review is done. It was accomplished in the world of social media. Traditional media can only echo the consensus that only social media can forge at such speed.

of course magno’s thumbs up could be just politics, ‘no?   unlike yuson and david who are identified with the president, magno is identified with the ex-president.   still magno had great hopes for aquino.   once upon a time he thought aquino could be a game-changer, and now that it’s not happening, well, it’s great that he has the sense to appreciate rather than denigrate social media’s awesome powers.

these oldies should give social media a try.   really, it’s all quite easy to learn.   one doesnt have to be a geek, a techie, or a faddist, one doesn’t need the latest gizmo, to blog, twitter, facebook, and google.   neither does it mean a serious loss of privacy – there are ways and ways of calibrating one’s engagement with the online world.   kanya-kanyang diskarte.   true, there are meanies out there, i mean, here, and there are many who wear rose- if not yellow-colored glasses, what else is new, microcosm of the macrocosm.

but yes, it does take receptiveness to the new and the radical, and an openness to criticism from left right and center.   no sacred cows here.   if all the world’s a stage, all the world’s a critic too.