The Campaign

Photo fails in paradise is a social media campaign launched to encourage more tourists to visit the Philippines again. The campaign called for tourists’ worst travel photos—from badly cropped and photobombed to mom’s-giant- thumb-in-the-face. The best (worst) pictures were rewarded with a free ticket back to the Philippines.

Creative Execution

Most tourism campaigns try hard to make their country look idyllic, showcasing tourist sites with only the best photographers. But we think our slice of paradise can’t take a bad picture. Not even with the world’s worst photographers. So we launched Photo Fails in Paradise, a social media campaign that asked tourists to share and post their photobombed, thumb-in-the-face, caught-in-the- surf photos in the Philippines for a chance to win a free trip back. This got tourists to look back on their old photos, reminding them of the country’s unfiltered beauty and the many sites they could visit once again. It also got travellers to share credible content about the Philippines, driving tourism awareness.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

We received thousands of entries from all around the world. Throughout the course of the campaign, there was a significant increase in awareness or searches of terms relating to the Philippines online. Social mentions around “visit Philippines” grew by 242% versus the previous period. Interest towards the Philippines grew as seen in an increase of search queries by 7% and social mentions by 16 times!

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

The Photo Fails campaign was specifically designed to target previous visitors of the Philippines. Travelers were encouraged to send in past photos of themselves in the country with the hashtag #visitphilippinesagain2016 for a chance to win a free trip back. Through this mechanism, we reignited interest in the country among our target market of travelers, as many revisited old photos reminding them of the time they spent in the Philippines. Moreover, we set off an explosion of free user-generated promotional content for the country, with participants freely sharing personal photos of their travels.

The Department of Tourism wanted to follow up the success of the previous year's Visit Philippines campaign (which brought 11% growth in arrivals). The country is still a relatively unusual destination compared to its neighbours so the brief was to drive social mentions and word-of-mouth recommendation. So for 2016, we launched Visit the Philippines Again Year. Targeting visitors of the previous year to come back and see all the things they might have missed out on. Tell their friends they are going back again. And perhaps even bring new friends along.