It's More Fun in the Philippines

Confirmed 54,437

About

"It's More Fun in the Philippines" is the slogan of a tourism campaign launched by the Filipino government in January 2012. Mainly due to its similarity to the 1951 Swiss tourism slogan "It's More Fun in Switzerland," the phrase has since become a subject of captioned parodies and spawned hundreds of tongue-in-cheek image macros based on the phrasal template "X, More fun in the Philippines."

Origin

The slogan "It's more fun in the Philippines" was developed for a campaign by ad agency BBDO Guerrero/Proximity Philippines for the Philippines Department of Tourism. The website itsmorefuninthephilippines.com^[1] was registered on December 29th, 2011 and according to GMA News^[7], the campaign officially launched on January 6th, 2012. Shortly after the announcement of the campaign, some recalled the slogan's similarity to Switzerland's 1951 tourism slogan ("It's More Fun in Switzerland"), which led to a heated debate on the web. On that day, the hashtag #ItsMoreFunInThePhilippines^[9] became a globally trending topic on Twitter and similar conversations began to surge on the social networking site Facebook, where dozens of fan pages were launched in dedication to the slogan. Soon, the official Facebook page became the hub site for the captioned images.

Spread

On January 7th, 2012, BuzzFeed^[6] published a post titled "25 Things That Are More Fun in the Philippines" featuring a compilation of image macros. On January 8th, 2012, the Philippines-based news site Phil Star^[3] published an article about criticism that the campaign received for bearing a striking resemblance to a vintage Swiss tourism ad from 1951 that used the slogan "It's more fun in Switzerland!"

According to Phil Star, the Philippines Department of Tourism (DOT) Secretary publicly responded to the criticisms:

“The line isn’t a manufactured slogan. It is simply the truth about our country. Don’t be swayed by people who are trying to punch holes in it… No one can own the expression ‘it’s more fun’ but it’s very true for the Philippines so it becomes ours.”

On January 14th, 2012, the Philippines-based news site Inquirer^[5] published an article titled "Memes-more fun in the Philippines", noting that new images mocking the campaign were being uploaded to sites like Facebook and included several example images. As of January 17th, 2012, there are over 50 Facebook pages titled "It's More Fun in the Philippines," and the official page^[8] has gained over 12,138 likes.