Archive for November, 2010

A Philosophy of Bleaching

A Philosophy of Bleaching

People often ask me how I keep my skin white.  My answer: genetics, anemia, and overdressing.  My mother is fair-skinned.  I have a pretty low red blood cell count.  Wearing black keeps the ultraviolet rays away, keeping my skin a little bit pasty-white.  It is far departed from the tall-dark-and-handsome that defines perfection in males, but for women, it’s somewhat almost there.

How that reflects in the world, I do not know.  In department stores, entire shelves and racks are filled with creams and soaps and lotions that promise fairer skin.  Pills and peels abound, claiming everything from lowering melanin production to exfoliating damaged skin to reveal whiter skin.  Billboards and TV commercials prominently feature glutathione; as if the whole philosophy of the body is towards cleansing.

Skin whitening, as a philosophy of life, lends itself well to dichotomies.  Dark = bad, light = good.  Dark = dirty, light = clean.  Dark = exotic, light = necessary.  Dark = dulled, light = renewed.  Dark = diseased, light = healthy.  From this black-and-white view of the world from lenses smeared with whitening cream, it’s fairly easy to understand where the philosophy of whitening comes from.

November 30, 2010 2 comments Read More
Drop It

Drop It

If you can’t sell the concept to the Filipino people, you can’t sell it to potential tourists abroad.

It’s a lack of research and a lack of skill in execution that should have “Pilipinas Kay Ganda” dropped, the big idea pushed back to the drawing board, and the whole concept and strategy sent to the proverbial meat-grinder.

I think it was David Ogilvy who once said that people have the tendency to use research like drunken people do street lamp-posts.  Research is often used to support something, instead of illuminating people into why that something is the way it is, and how it could be changed.  In the wake of the whole “Pilipinas Kay Ganda” fiasco, the problem is exactly that.

November 19, 2010 2 comments Read More
Branding Gone Bongga

Branding Gone Bongga

It’s not yet final, but for now, the new campaign slogan for the Department of Tourism is “Pilipinas, Kay Ganda.” I’m not saying it’s wrong, I’m not saying it’s stupid, I’m not saying it’s pangit or whatever.

I’m being gentle.

It’s a matter of execution, DOT Undersecretary Enteng Romano says, but that’s just it: it’s part of the execution.  “Pilipinas, Kay Ganda” may be the big idea of a whole set of specific executions for the DOT’s campaign, but even the creation of a tagline – the definition of the ought-to-be-situation of Filipino tourism – should be meaningful.  Should it translate to “Pilipinas: Life is Beautiful?”  Or “Beautiful Pilipinas?”

David Ogilvy puts it quite succinctly for copy headlines, but I think the same is true for slogans:

On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.

Which brings me back to why the campaign handle, well, sucks: in my view, “Pilipinas, Kay Ganda” is a good slogan, and a campaign in good spirits, but is out of context.

November 17, 2010 0 comments Read More
Icons

Icons

After 15 years, Aung San Suu Kyi is finally free.  For the longest time, she represented democracy in her country: looking out for Burma from her windows, her view framed by barbed wire and security forces from the military junta that ruled her people and put her house arrest.  Today, Burma rejoices – the free world rejoices – not without pensive thoughts or scenarios, but Daw Suu Kyi is as free as any believer of democracy there is in the free world.

Here, it’s a different story.  Raul Manglapus, with his acerbic wit, has highlighted our situation – then and now – in a trite but true phrase: we are Constitutionally free. We may be the freest country in Asia by all means and  provisions in our Constitution, but we are anything but living free.  Our democracy is in coinages and bills, in stamps and monuments, but it seems that we’re living long past the struggle to get it.

November 14, 2010 0 comments Read More
Let There Be Rock

Let There Be Rock

Go to gigs.  Buy original records.  Jam with your friends.  Listen.  Support rock.

They say that we’re running out of people to put in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  Some people say we can’t agree on what “rock music” is.  Today, the last bastion of rock on the airwaves is closing down.  What with all the revivals, bubblegum pop, dance and techno tunes from the very depths of auditory purgatory.  Maybe we’ll be stuck with faces and not music.  For the meantime, we’ll be stuck with singles and hits, and not legacies and discographies.

Maybe that song is right: rock is deader than dead.

November 7, 2010 3 comments Read More
Laws of Online Memetics

Laws of Online Memetics

Law of Memetic Inertia

If the sum of all forces acting upon a subject is zero, then the trajectory of thought of that subject is constant.

A subject at rest will move towards a bias when force acts upon it.

All forces on the Internet are biased.  There is no objective solution.

Law of Accelerated Opinion

A subject subjected to a force accelerates towards opinions that have the same direction and trajectory as the opinion.

The magnitude of the acceleration of the subject’s opinion is directly proportional to the mass, and inversely proportional to the force applied on it.

Opinion does not need an issue in order to be formed and accelerated.

Law of Non-Commensurate Overreaction

For every action offline or online (or lack thereof), there is an unequal and non-commensurate reaction online.

The mutual actions of two subjects acting upon each other are dependent on supporters, followers, gall, and the amount of time a subject is willing to spend online to defend the non-commensurate overreaction.

November 7, 2010 0 comments Read More