Thesis (BA Communication Arts) -- University of the Philippines Mindanao, 2018

This study explores the different destination branding strategies of the Department of Tourism, Philippine Air Asia, and Cebu pacific to identify unifying concepts that would make a unified destination branding strategy of the Philippines. According to Swystun (2007), consumers seek brand consistency to seek the consumer experience they also wanted when it comes to a certain brand. The researcher used the Framing Theory of Public Relations as the back bone of the study. Specifically, the four framing structure: Syntactical, Rhetoric, Script, and Thematic structures, were used as variables for the analyses of the 15 purposively chosen videos for this study. The Visual Grounded Theory Methodology was used as the method of data analysis to further extract core concepts through the four coding stages; Open Coding, Axial Coding, Selective Coding, and the Forming of the Core Concepts. The study concluded with three unifying core concepts that make up the destination branding strategy of the Philippines: Culture, Physical beauty, and Progress. Culture was constantly used in all three campaigns to highlight the essence of life-seeing rather than sightseeing, with the two commercial airlines giving new perspectives on the concepts of culture. Physical beauty was also used in all three campaigns as this concept is always one of the most common techniques in making destination branding strategy. Lastly, the concept of Progress, was framed by the two commercial airlines in the form of self-rejuvenation and self-actualization, something that was missing in the destination branding strategy of the Department of Tourism.