It’s an unusual partnership. MTV is known for its hip culture, a youth “institution,” and has a target audience you really wouldn’t expect the Department of Tourism (DOT) would bother with. But, as DOT Secretary Ace Durano explained, this hip, new tourism campaign has a long-term goal—”catch them young,” as he put it.

Last week, Marc and I were lucky enough to be part of Awesome Philippines‘ unveiling. Apart from finally meeting travel bloggers I only see online, DOT and MTV Revelations showed us a preview of their campaigns both online and offline.

The main feature of this campaign is The Holiday Remix, where you’d be able to mix and match videos, music, text, and graphics from Awesome Philippines’ existing gallery, and create your own video montage of your dream holiday. This actually a online contest. Register online, publish your video (or videos… you can make as much as you want), and get a chance to win a dream holiday to the Philippines. Contest runs until May 24, 2009.

Another aspect of their online campaign is this custom resort island in the online game, Second Life. The “island” features beautiful destinations in the Philippines and information snippets. There’s a small scale of Boracay White Beach, and even Chocolate Hills. It’s pretty weird seeing the Chocolate Hills at such scale, but hey, it’s Second Life!

I’m not sure if Second Life is as popular as it is abroad—I don’t know many people playing the game. Though I haven’t been able to ask, I’m guessing the choice of Second Life had something to do with the fact that this specific part of the campaign is aimed to capture international markets (specifically the U.S., the U.K., Australia, Canada, Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore), encouraging them to visit the Philippines.

And I guess that’s the reason why they also have different versions of their TV campaigns—one for an international audience, and another for the local market. I wasn’t able to take a photo of the TV previews, unfortunately, but I can tell you that one really captured my fancy: a CG-animated short “tour” of the Philippines’ highlights, narrated by DOT Secretary Ace Durano.

The fact that they’re targeting the youth in this campaign is one of the reasons behind their choice of CG animation—the fast pace and the camera angles were done in such a way that it would hold the attention of a person (young or old) long enough to actually deliver the message: the Philippines is “the new cool place to be.” But, as Chris Pattinson explained, their choice would also be attributed to the fact that they would like the ad to stand out. Tourism TV ads follow a certain formula, a formula so common that taking out the brand at the end of the ad would make it indistinguishable from the other Asian country’s TV ad. So how to stand out? Use CG animation.

I’m honestly quite excited how this campaign will turn out. I’m proud of the natural beauty of the Philippines, and I really hope their efforts will pay off. Pinoy travel bloggers can only do so much online. But with such online effort and support from the Department of Tourism (and of course, MTV), I think the common goal of getting more people to visit the country will be more than just a possibility—it will be a reality.