“Will Bagong Pilipinas succeed in uniting us all towards a common aspiration of what Duterte simplified as ‘a more comfortable life’ for the present generation, and a secure and progressive future for our next generations?”
Here we go again.
So our suspicion this craze over logos was really part of a grand plan, a re-branding, was true after all.
It started with LOVE… which we thought was part of the usual practice in the DoT where a new secretary wanted to “own” his or her tourism slogan.
Turns out the first attempt at adopting a new slogan began with a BBM-initialed slogan. But many criticized the plan as plain “sip-sip.”
Then DDB proposed a concept where a tourist was enticing her friend, supposedly a “David,” to see and experience the beautiful Philippine islands, through a “letter” which she signs off as Love, the Philippines.
But DoT decided to remove the comma, and out came LOVE the Philippines, first shown in Cambodia, as revealed by Indonesia’s tourism minister.
Then, on a big event celebrating the 50th anniversary of the elevation of tourism into Cabinet status, the grand reveal came out.
Giddy about the “successful” event, many in media failed to notice the borrowed screen shots, until someone in DoT uploaded the video, which caught the eye of blogger Sass Rogando Sasot, a diehard Duterte supporter.
What DDB presented as a “mood board,” intended for internal consumption by the client and not as final product, was shown for country and world to marvel at.
Thus, the embarrassment.
Followed soon enough, while embarrassment over LOVE was still in the air, gaming regulator cum practitioner Pagcor came out with its own re-branding, through a new red and blue logo that did away with the green and yellow logo where green hand symbols were catching a ray of yellow good fortune, quite symbolic really.
Once again, everyone and his mother rightfully bashed the new logo, its copy-cat design lifted from the University of Delft in the Netherlands with the light blue color now changed to the favorite red and blue of the former and current president.
I submitted my Monday article early Saturday morning, and missed the “mother of all brands” which was unveiled later in the day.
Later I was informed by a very reliable source that in both LOVE and the Pagcor/Delft logo, the Presidential Adviser on Creative Communications Paul Soriano was involved in the concept and production stages.
Now comes “Bagong Pilipinas,” with a soccer ball-stylized red and blue intertwining stripes that suggest unity, and the flag’s yellow sun and stars on top.
According to the official release from PCO, the Bagong Pilipinas logo features three red stripes that represent post-war agricultural and rural development, the post-colonial period, and the current metropolitan development, but you would need to strain your brains to see the connection.
“The two blue stripes represent future goals: a progressive Philippines that leverages technological advancement in pursuing sustainable industrial development,” the press release further says.
Red, blue and yellow, the colors of the flag.
Without the yellow, it would not be unity, n’e c’est pas?
Unity, battle cry of the last campaign, is the only message that ordinary folks will understand out of the soccer ball stripes of red and blue plus the yellow sun.
Which has already been achieved among politicians for in this land of turncoats where every official. save for a handful, revolves around the fount of favors — the presidency and whoever sits on its throne.
So will the nascent opposition, likely the diehard Dutertistas, adopt the color green, which after all is Inday Sara’s favorite color?
But the not so big reveal that is Bagong Pilipinas seems too much a redux of the post-EDSA-vilified Bagong Lipunan, emblazoned everywhere as the battle cry of the martial law administration, complete with a Felipe Padilla de Leon-composed march and the lyrics:
“May bagong silang,
May bago nang buhay,
Bagong bansa, bagong galaw,
Sa bagong lipunan.
Magbabago ang lahat, tungo sa pag-unlad,
at ating itanghal, bagong lipunan!”
So let us parody that promise of “everything’s turning out roses” in today’s milieu:
“May bago nang buhay” where inflation rules, and food is getting more and more scarce, with “bagong galaw” referring to increased importation of food to counter the inflation.
“Magbabago ang lahat, tungo sa pag-unlad” with the Maharlika Investment Fund being the key to progress towards a New Society, rather, a New Philippines!
How cute!
ES Lucas Bersamin directed every agency of government through Memorandum Circular 24 dated 03 July (prior to Pagcor’s logo mutation) but released only last Friday, to adopt the new “government brand of governance and leadership…focused on implementing an all-inclusive plan for economic and social transformation.”
The press office, recognizing adverse public opinion over the Pagcor and DoT “fiascoes,” assures us no public money was used in the rebranding.
Labor of love?
But the bean counters, and who won’t be in a country bedeviled by a P14.1 trillion debt (and counting), high food prices and food insecurity, sluggish economic growth with a huge trade imbalance, and the prospect of being caught in the theater of war between two hegemons, will surely recoil at the next part of the memorandum.
“All national government agencies and instrumentalities, including GOCCs and SUCs, shall adopt the ‘Bagong Pilipinas’ logo and incorporate the same in their letterheads, websites, official social media accounts, and other documents and instruments pertaining to flagship programs of the government,” the Malacañang memorandum said.
For a cash-strapped nation, burdened with an ever-ballooning military pension system that would lead to fiscal collapse, and pork-hungry legislators appropriating for their graft-riddled pet projects almost a trillion pesos of the national budget, that directive for new letterheads, website designs, signages, and every other adaptation of “Bagong Pilipinas” will cost hundreds of millions, tong-pats excluded.
Soon, if they had not yet commissioned TVJ or Tape, maybe the musically-gifted Larry Gadon, or whoever Paul Soriano decides upon, there could also be a new anthem for Bagong Lipunan’s re-brand.
Are our leaders trying to salve the realities of high inflation, low wages, and under-employment through new logos, re-branding and artsy-fartsy, New Society-like illusions of forthcoming “greatness?”
Can optics and slogans thwart hunger, the progressives in Congress ask?
FVR gave us aspirations of “Philippines 2000” as his economic reforms began, but his term ended in 1998, when President Erap’s battlecry “Para sa Mahirap” electrified the lumpen.
Successor GMA promised a “Strong Republic” which fell on the shoals of a Hello Garci scandal and monumental corruption, thus paving the way for Cory’s son, Noynoy, who became PNoy as president brandishing “Daang Matuwid.”
One does not credit President Duterte with any purposive re-branding, and associates “Tokhang” with Bato de la Rosa who became a senator on its recall, something human rights champions accuse the previous government of violations.
The “malasakit” in our campaign tag for Mayor Duterte as “Tapang at Malasakit” was later effectively used by Senator Bong Go, who put up hundreds of Malasakit health centers for the needy.
“Build, Build,Build!” was not national branding.
It merely emphasized the need to catch up on our woeful infrastructure, and Duterte delivered massively on that. In fact, many of the projects President Marcos Jr. inaugurated in his first year were initiated by the past government.
Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. captured the presidency by a crafty, well-executed revision of the yellow-reviled history of his father’s authoritarian rule, sweetened by his later clarion call for “pagkakaisa,” which captured the electorate’s dislike for the toxicity engendered by the politics of conflict.
Now he seeks to institutionalize both the re-writing of history in their family’s favor, this time through a remake of Bagong Lipunan into Bagong Pilipinas, while the logo visually tries to repeat his campaign theme of unity.
Will Bagong Pilipinas succeed in uniting us all towards a common aspiration of what Duterte simplified as “a more comfortable life” for the present generation, and a secure and progressive future for our next generations?
Hopefully.
But only, as Mayor Benjie Magalong of Baguio City and others suggest, if we can excise the culture of corruption and greed institutionalized by years and years of the unbridled practice of rent-seeking by the economic oligarchs and self-aggrandizement of our political leaders.