THE PHILIPPINES, AUGUST 13, 2012: Who knew that one simple tweet meant to raise the spirits of thousands of Filipinos affected by last week’s monsoon rains could turn into a full-fledged campaign?
On August 8, as torrential rains ravaged Metro Manila and other neighbouring provinces, the Ayala Museum tweeted a line of encouragement: “The Filipino spirit is waterproof.” Immediately, the online community held on to the idea and began sending in submissions to the Museum’s call for inspiring art work.
The idea came from Spike Acosta of the Education and Tours staff of Ayala Museum. The origin of the now popular tagline goes way back to his elementary days and one particular Science lesson. Acosta was captured by the idea that the body is waterproof and he got to test this when he would walk home from school especially when it was raining.
And last week’s events made Acosta realize that “‘waterproof-ing’ is not limited to the body. Waterproof talaga yung spirit ng mga Pilipino na tumutulong sa kapwa Pilipino. The rain [and] the floods didn’t deter them from doing what they wanted to do, which was to help,” he said.
The tagline, when it was posted, became viral instantly. According to Acosta, there were 150 retweets within five minutes and in a span of an hour, it spread through Twitter and Facebook.
Aside from the social media factor, another reason for the success of the campaign was the quality of the submissions coupled with the meaningful tagline. “…it’s a match made in heaven”, Acosta said.
Ayala Museum is still accepting submissions and the campaign will go on for an indefinite period. To view the entire collection, visit Ayala Museum’s Tumblr page at waterproofph.tumblr.com. To send in designs, just tag @ayalamuseum on Twitter.
