THE tourists will act as ambassadors of Cebu in a proposed promotional tagline called “Cebu: Your Story, Your Island.”
This campaign pitch or integrated brand, chosen by the committee composed of industry leaders, will be presented to the Metro Cebu Development Coordinating Board (MCDCB).
Carol Ballesteros, Mega Cebu communication and stakeholders relationship manager, said during the kickoff of the Mega Cebu Month yesterday that it will be used as a master brand for Cebu under the Mega Cebu campaign.
Milagros Espina, chairperson of the CCCI tourism committee that is spearheading the branding exercise, said the brand is not final yet.
“What we have now is still not final. This branding that we are developing now was agreed upon. It was very democratic, and will still undergo a lot of process,” Espina said.
She said they will again discuss the proposed branding with other stakeholders before presenting it to the MCDCB.
This proposed brand was chosen about four months after a branding exercise was held, with branding expert Jacqueline Alexis Thng as facilitator.
During the exercise, some participants said Cebu is a woman, a Siloy (black shama) and summer.
Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry president Ma. Teresa Chan said they had five meetings with representatives from the Cebu Association of Tour Operators (CATO), Hotel, Resort and
Restaurant Association of Cebu (HRRAC) and other organizations before they picked the tagline.
She said they were still open to more comments and suggestions.
Encouraging brand
Espina said they got help from branding and marketing agency Publicis, the same agency that worked on the new brand for the Mactan-Cebu International Airport (MCIA).
Publicis will send a complete branding package with creatives including the logo in two weeks.
Espina said Publicis did a survey among tourists in Cebu and used the results as well as the committee’s initial output to present two branding proposals — ”Cebu: Your Story, Your Island” and “See Everything in Cebu.”
Chan and Espina said they chose to develop “Cebu: Your Story, Your Island” further.
“I initially like the ‘See Everything in Cebu,’ but later realized that we cannot claim to have everything when we still lack a lot like infrastructure support and more. We think the ‘Cebu: Your Story,
Your Island’ is a more encouraging brand,” Espina said.
“We don’t want to over-promise and under-deliver. Instead we want them to decide and experience what Cebu is for them,” Chan said.
Disclaimer: The comments uploaded on this site do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of management and owner of Cebudailynews. We reserve the right to exclude comments that we deem to be inconsistent with our editorial standards.
