Colombia, the only risk is wanting to stay

After talking about national branding in class today, I thought about an ad that I saw in Mexico City this past summer for Colombia. I remembered the ad because their tagline for tourism is “Colombia, the only risk is wanting to stay.” I found this somewhat funny, but also interesting because by having that tagline, it actually made me think of all the reasons I wouldn’t feel safe going to Colombia. I’m sure they wanted to portray the image of a safe country, but it had the opposite effect on me. What do you think? Do you think it’s an effective tagline?

I looked up the ad to see what the rest of it included since all I could remember was the tagline, and I found a two-minute version on YouTube. I’m posting the English version, but they also have it in Spanish. I noticed that they included very brief snippets of the people/culture by showing traditional dancers and some food, but a majority of the commercial was the same as all the commercials we watched today in class...beaches, historic buildings, boats on rivers, etc. There are multiple versions of the commercial on Youtube, but most of them show the same images and are just edited differently and have different voice overs.

From a PR and tourism standpoint, it is a very effective ad because it appeals to what tourists want to do/see. However, from a Colombian standpoint, it doesn’t really show the people or the culture at all. Even the somewhat traditional parts and people included look contrived and set up. It’s amazing to me that a commercial from Colombia is pretty much exactly the same as those from Eastern Europe.

Here is the commercial.