“Never outshine the product you are selling”
As one who has spent years in marketing and brand development, I see the current controversy involving Tourism Secretary Christina Garcia Frasco not as a political issue – but as a communications breakdown that should never have happened.
Let me be blunt: the DOT needs an honest-to-goodness communications strategist or senior brand consultant—someone empowered to say no when executions drift away from brand fundamentals. Because what we are seeing now is another Frasco fiasco, one that was entirely avoidable.
Branding is not about visibility. It is about discipline.
In tourism marketing, the product is the destination—not the official, not the department head, not the campaign architect.
When a government tourism material places the secretary’s image at the center, it violates a basic branding rule: never outshine the product you are selling.
What makes this episode more damaging is context.
Netizens have long memories.
They still recall the earlier controversy involving foreign stock footage used in a thematic tourism television commercial – an incident that triggered public scrutiny, professional embarrassment, and questions about authenticity.
That episode should have been a hard lesson in brand governance.
Instead, we are seeing a pattern.
From a marketing standpoint, this is not about intent or effort. It is about process failure:
No credible brand gatekeeper
No independent creative check
No strategist asking, “What will the audience think?”
In the private sector, this would not pass a brand review.
In multinational campaigns, senior strategists exist precisely to protect brands from self-inflicted damage.
Government communications should be held to the same—if not higher—standard, because public trust is the currency at stake.
Filipino audiences are brand-savvy.
They understand visual hierarchy.
They immediately sense when a campaign slides from destination storytelling into personality projection.
Once that perception sets in, no amount of post-facto explanation can undo the damage.
The narrative hardens. Credibility erodes.
This is why the “epal” backlash matters. It is not mere noise.
It is market feedback—raw, unfiltered, and brutally honest.
In branding, feedback ignored becomes crisis repeated.
If the Department of Tourism wants to protect both its institutional credibility and its long-term brand equity, the solution is clear:
Separate governance from promotion.
Remove personalities from campaign assets.
Restore destination-first storytelling.
And bring in professionals who are empowered to challenge bad calls.
Branding, after all, is not about who is seen.
It is about what is remembered.
Right now, what the public remembers is not the destination—but the distraction.
(The writer, who holds an MBA from National College of Business and Arts, is a public relations and media affairs professional, author, and consultant currently serving as a senior adviser at the Stratbase Albert Del Rosario Institute.)
