“Good advertising can only make a bad product fail faster.”

By Pedro Pizano
Jul 15, 2009

In the art or science of thrusting things into people’s attention when people do not believe that they deserve to be there, (i.e. MARKETING), the “Colombia is Passion” video has made its claim to fame.

This three-minute clip has been broadcasted over the Internet and on national TV, both in English, Spanish, French and German, as part of a nation-wide campaign to change the world’s perception of Colombia.

The story is as follows. In 1996 the Colombia Government approached one of the leading authorities on country branding, Mr. David Lightle, to ask him to create a marketing campaign to improve the country’s image. Mr. Lightle went to Bogotá, looked around and said, “Don’t waste your money,” according to Matt Moffett from the Wall Street Journal.

When the new government headed by Alvaro Uribe called Mr. Lightle again in 2004, the country seemed to have become better organized (or in the very least had money to waste) and Mr. Lightle accepted the offer and designed the “Colombia is Passion” campaign of which the video is its flagship.

The video has become so popular that, on YouTube alone, many different groups have uploaded about 300 videos on the same subject. Some of the titles are as follows: “Find out the truth about Colombia,” “The Colombian army is full of Passion”, and “The risk is wanting to stay”.

The original video “Colombia is Passion”, designed by Mr. Lightle, has been watched almost one million times on YouTube. It uses a little sweet-voiced Colombian girl that speaks in English to narrate a carefully constructed discourse. For example she says, “and all of them share one thing….[a] passion for peace. Perhaps, now you will think differently about my country because what I have just showed you reflects who we truly are. Colombia is all about Colombians, that’s why Colombia is Passion!”

Apart from the obvious grammatical error, the angle from which is made seems to be quite clear. That is, the over-the-top hyperbolic reworking of Colombia’s élan vital with the objective to change the world’s perception of a country that in the 1990’s had been put on the U.S.A. black list with countries such as North Korea and Cuba.

The clip starts off with the sounds of coffee beans splashing across the screen falling at the rhythm of rapid-fire drumming, and then moves on to show the famous emeralds, a parrot to endorse the country’s biodiversity and finally in a carefully constructed transition we start hearing new-age operatic voices while we watch the beaches and mountains of Colombia as if seen from the window of a private airplane. Afterwards, we hear for the first time the voice of the little girl, while at the same time we are shown a picture of a blonde girl perched upon a tractor. In the next clip we see her cuddled by her mother. She says: “This is how my country looks from the outside. Now I want you to see it from the inside.”

And so it continues, the girl is always the narrator, and the positivist images, coupled with slide-shows, come in rapid succession as the girl describes them. “There is progress, exquisite coffee, countless beautiful women and orchids… we have art, just think of Master Fernando Botero’s art. The man who made the world fall in love with the chubby ones…”

It is very well made and carefully constructed. The girl provides emotional appeal, the images visual stimulation. The film-making leaves you breathless and at the end your perception of Colombia has been changed forever and for the better. Let’s just hope that the prophetic words of Bill Bernbach don’t hold true in this case: “Good advertising can only make a bad product fail faster.”

Picture taken from nation-branding (Good resource about this advertising phenomenon)

First sentence by Simon Anholt.

By Pedro Pizano
Jul, 15, 2009

Colombia has been nation-branded, following the latest fads in advertising, as “Colombia is Passion.” The ulterior motives for such a campaign are unclear but it is obvious that the intent is to change the world’s perception of its war ridden hostage situation.

The flagship of this campaign is a video, in English, blatantly advertising all the wonders of Colombia. It is complemented with “Colombia is Passion” merchandise and a countrywide campaign to change Colombians’ perception of themselves. This campaign has achieved spectacular results. In just two years tourism increased by 65%, and not only that, it has created what can only be called a brainwashing of its citizens. Colombians now believe they live in one of the happiest countries in the world, as related by two studies on world happiness done in 2003 by the University of Erasmus at Rotterdam, and in 2005 by the New Economic Foundation in London.

Brainwashing may be strong term but it can be argued that the campaign of Colombia is Passion is partly responsible for Colombian’s thinking so highly of themselves. In a nation-wide summon for letters, The Luis Angel Arango Public Library (the most visited public library in the world per day), received around 7,000 letters that related personal stories of dealing with violence. The subsequent exhibition was called “Letters of Persistence.” According to the curator, Maria Ospina, a Harvard PhD in comparative literature, about 500 of them (10%) echoed the words of the “Colombia is Passion” advertising. 

“People were asked to write about how they had overcome and persisted violence through their personal life stories,” Ospina said in an email, “About 500 of those letters responded with: “Colombia is beautiful, it has two oceans, many natural resources, frogs, etc. That is, they couldn’t talk about their personal life but rather fell back into what the propaganda [Colombia es Pasión] was saying.”

If Colombians have a passion for something it’s a passion for killing their brothers. A passion that has spanned a couple of centuries and has left the county ravaged by “underground” civil wars after civil wars. Yet, the country still manages to proclaim itself as the longest standing democracy in South America. It seems then, that this whole self- deception has become a habit in Colombia.  Colombians can’t handle the truth, so they prefer to hide it. Even Gabriel Garcia Marquez disguises it in his style of writing, which has been tied up in the most simplistic of terms as “magical realism”: “Magical realism is perfectly suited to a country like Colombia, where the truth is often so terrible and unspeakable that it needs to be told as if it were a fantasy,” according to New York Times contributor Silvana Paternostro.

Here’s a bit of that truth. In the 1990’s the eruption of cocaine consumption and the subsequent rise of Drug Barons such as Pablo Escobar made Colombia one of the most dangerous countries in the world. At some point it had the highest murder and kidnapping rate in the world. Put on the black list with countries such as North Korea and Cuba, tourism was at an all time low in the 1996. In 2002, Alvaro Uribe’s new government created and paid for an advertising campaign to brand Colombia as a country of passionate, good people.

There’s nothing wrong with advertising a country’s positive points but the historical situation in which this advertisement was created and the denial of where the money comes from to pay for this advertisement (The government paid for 65% of the costs) seems to tell another story. (Read a brief history of the Colombia is Passion Campaign)

How does the video make us forget all of this underlying violence?

With mesmerizing cinematography of the countries astounding biodiversity and a little girl speaking in English with a Colombian accent, the video tells the world how Colombia is composed of “ many, many, many good people… we Colombians, are ordinary people…people with problems but who are nonetheless considered among the happiest under the sun.”

Sometimes the video comes through as a catch-22: trying to hide the holocaust behind the images using all the tricks of the trade. Again, much in the same way Philip Morris was able to market filtered cigarettes as being healthy in 1932. Where does advertising stop and deceiving begin?

As Simon Jenkins says in the Guardian on Feb 8, 2007, “Passion alone won’t rescue Colombia from its narco-economy stigma.” Colombia still produces 80% of the cocaine that is consumed in the U.S. and 50% of its heroin (even after 6 billion dollars of U.S. aid to fight the drug war). Whichever way you turn the pancake, it is a country laden with Drug Money.

If you want to delve further into it, it has one of the biggest populations of displaced people in the world, second only to Sudan and there are still 700 people, or more, held hostage in the jungle by left wing narco-terrorist group the FARC.

St. Tertius, on a comment left on the guardian article mentioned above, equates the video “Colombia is Passion” to what the Catholic Church has been doing for years on end, i.e. concealing and distorting the truth. He says on Feb 9, 2007,  “I hate the “Colombia es pasión” advertisement. Its not-so-subtle religious undertones reminds many of us of the times when referring to Colombia as “el País del Sagrado Corazón” [Land of the Sacred Heart] wasn’t intended as a complement, but as an indictment for the most backward aspects of its culture.”

Nonetheless, the video is very well made, so much that Colombians themselves have begun to believe that Colombia is a perfect, happy place and that it can live up to the Lonely Planet accolade as the 9th best tourist attraction in 2006.  Aren’t there some really obvious problems that have to be dealt with, though?

Where is the fine line between fantasy and reality? It lies in the crack between the message announced by the Colombia is Passion video and the Confession of one of the para-military leaders, (private armies who vow to kill every last FARC rebel) who avowed before an U.S. court to at least 300 murders (the Colombian police holds him responsible for the deaths of more than 7,000 Colombians).

Where is the truth? It’s certainly not in this Public Service Announcement.