Last night, 7News showed you the debut of the long awaited promotional video for the rebranding of the Belize Tourism Board's marketing identity. It's part of their new campaign called, "Discover How To Be."
As we showed you, the video is built around "Santo Negro", a song from Honduran Aurelio Martinez. Since it made the news, there has been backlash from the public who have voiced their discontent that the BTB chose Martinez's song to highlight Belize, when he is of a different nationality - even though his song was recorded and produced in Belize by Benque Viejo's own Stonetree Records.
Today, we spoke to the Marketing Director of BTB who defended the decision saying that Martinez's music identifies with the Belizean culture:
Alyssa Carnegie, Marketing Director
"When we were choosing the music, we actually had several considerations. Of course being Belizean is one of them and the cultural component and the Garifuna culture is very strong. We thought it was very beautiful music and was also really well-known and so we thought well lets go with something that was Garifuna. But when we looked at the style of the video and we were thinking about what song would work best, we really tried different songs and it's not to say that we don't have talent here in Belize because we absolutely do.
When we tried different songs, this one really blended very well, the timing was exactly right, it gave us the kind of spirit we were after with the video and when we debut it to several people they thought it was wonderful. Internationally. This video was really meant to promote Belize to an audience that's maybe not as familiar, but when we saw the video we thought that this would be a really great opportunity to bridge that local audience with the international audience because I felt so proud of it. I thought we did a really great job in terms of bringing across what the Belize experience is and we thought Belizeans worldwide would feel that way.
When we looked at Aurelio, he's worked with the greats; Paul Nabor, Andy Palacio, his recordings are done here in Belize. He signed to Stone Tree Records which is a local company, a local label and he performs in Belize and internationally and he does a really great job at promoting Belize.
We felt it was less about the person and more about the music and more so the music that would help to get that story across about what the Belize picture is and we felt that this was a very genuine authentic and interested approach to getting that done. To tell you the truth, what the song was was more than an artist. It was not a conscious effort to promote someone foreign over a local. That was not the intention at all and I won't be put in a box to say that that was the intention. It just happen to be that he was born in Honduras but he is also an artist who produces music with a local recording company along with local artists, stalwarts and leaders in this cultural music revolution for Belize."
According to the Marketing Director, this is the first in a series of promotional material for their campaign, and they will take this reaction from the public under consideration when making different decisions on their material.
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