First Boomerang Award Won by Philippine DOT
September 8th, 2007 Posted in NewsRecently, the online promotion of the Department of Tourism (DOT) in the Philippines known as the Great Philippine Free-Flight Giveaway has been awarded the first Gold Cyber Boomerang bye the Internet and Mobile Marketing Association of the Philippines (IMMP). The judges composed of expert marketers and specialists of new media from US, Australia, Singapore, and China. A boomerang awards reflects a marketing strategy that goes beyond reaching the market with its campaign but it also assures tangible and quantifiable results. This is according to one of the juror of the Boomerang Awards, Rob Martin Murphy from Australia, who believes that the DOT has been able to meet such criteria.
Boomerang Award is recognized to those who were able to create a campaign that employs the worldwide web as its primary marketing tools and that it has the ability to measure result of such campaign.
DOT was the only competitor as a government agency among other finalist who belongs to a consumer product companies for the Gold Cyber Boomerang. Ma. Corazon Jorda-Apo who is the head of the DOT team North America along with her team member, Zeny Pallugna, and the head of the Business Unit of the web developer, Bambie Paguia, received the Boomerang Awards trophy. The ceremony was held at the Intercontinental in Makati City.
DOT’s The Great Philippine Free-Flight Giveaways is part of their promotion known as the Philippines: Explore, Experience, Return (PEER) campaign under its web portal www.experiencephilippines.ph. The website was established by the Euro RSCG 4D advertising agency. It is considered as one of the most visited and successful website which is able to reach significant markets in North America as the PEER promotes the Philippines as the top tourist destination among North Americans. The Great Philippine Free-Flight Giveaways gave out a total of 250 Philippine Ariline tickets in raffle for those residents and nationals of US and Canada who earn entry points by visiting the PEER portal and participate in online activities such as surveys, answering trivia questions, booking destination packages and referring friends.
According to the research done by the DOT, there are about 1.5million tourists in the Philippines between January and June 2007. Twenty percent of these tourists are from the USA. This goes to show that the Great Philippine Free Flight Giveaways was successful on its implementation in lifting up tourism in the country as observed Tourism secretary Joseph Ace Durano. ”It also encourages us to think of other ways to effectively use the cyberspace as a tool to entice more tourists to visit the country”, the proud official said.
DOT Team North America launched a new raffle activity as a follow up on the Great Philippine Free-Flight Giveaway. This time it is called Out-of-the-Box which still targets Canadian and American nationals but this time all the contestants need to do is to complete their contact details and other relevant information earning them a chance to win shopping sprees on high end stores, an accommodation in a condominium, Philippine holiday packages, and business class airline tickets.
DOT Team North America Head Ma. Corazon Jordo-Apo explains: “Our target tourists from North America rely heavily on technology and the internet for information. Projects like Out-of-the-box and constant enhancements to the portal give them a reason to keep visiting the website and eventually encourage them to experience what Philippines have to offer”.
