Accepted and loved by all the stakeholders who agreed on the concept unanimously backed the campaign, it actually had a positive effect on visitors to the island, especially from the Australian and Japanese markets and if was allowed to continue would have developed into a very successful campaign.

If nothing else it restored a genuine feeling that Bali is about the people of Bali and what they offer the visitor – and like it or not at least it was genuine and not full of the overpromise and false Disney land approach of so many other destinations.

Take away the bad elements that exist in the administration and there would have been a potentially fantastic campaign that would have revealed many assets of the island to a world that has been brainwashed by bad news about Bali for so long.

I say take a campaign that was already accepted and worked and take it to the next level through propper funding. Some people actually have a genuine love of Bali are are trying to help the island.

Serious efforts are needed to reinforce the tagline on the back of someone’s head. I hope the efforts include some reality check

That’s like Rolls Royce interviewing their factory workers to come up with a marketing ploy. The “market” is not the locals. Bali’s “market” is middle- and upper-class Indonesians from other islands AND international travelers, NOT local Hindu priests.

Rolls Royce’s “market” is the top 1% of wealthy people worldwide, NOT a bunch of working class factory workers.

And… the English is just woefully cumbersome. A brand slogan must be something that rolls off the tongue, or something almost poetic with connotations that stir the emotions of the people in the prospective market. This slogan is none of those things, not even close.

Hence, as I commented yesterday about Governor-to-be Fuazi Bozo in Jakarta, blame the PR guys for society’s ills.

“Every big city in the world has similar problems like traffic jams, but it does not echo as hugely as Jakarta’s since their administrations have a good public relations division that bridges the government and the press,” he told the Jakarta Post yesterday. He acknowledged that the administration’s public relations division had been its weakest point because the less-competent officers were placed there.

So, ignore the “environmental degradation” in Bali and the negative impact of its tourism industry, polish up the image with a new logo and slogan and everything’s OK?

Teguh and his Bali Reborn team are hereby given a tagline obviously taken from the Expatriate Dictionary of Incredulity: Shitty, Shitty, Shitty.