#OurTaiwan: A Crowdsourced Campaign to Promote Taiwan Tourism
Use hashtag #OurTaiwan to share your Taiwan-related stories to friends and visitors around the world. 我們大家來用 #OurTaiwan 向全世界的朋友介紹台灣的特色！
To my friends around the world, please consider visiting Taiwan, despite our government tourism bureau’s less-than-stellar marketing campaign.
To my fellow Taiwanese in Taiwan and in the diaspora, to the expat and immigrant communities in Taiwan, and to friends of Taiwan everywhere: I am writing to share an idea and to recruit a little bit of your time, talent, and positivity. Rather than relying solely on the government to promote Taiwan to the world, let’s crowdsource our own campaign to share our stories, culture, cuisine, nature, and more.
Let’s use #OurTaiwan on social media to share our own stories to promote Taiwan. Let’s introduce Taiwan to friends and visitors around the world. In doing so, we can also demonstrate to the folks working on the official Taiwan Tourism campaigns the potential of what we can do together, and challenge them to do better. We can’t just rely on our government to do this for us. I don’t want to just complain and call people out. Let’s use #OurTaiwan to build a grassroots, word of mouth movement to share Taiwan with the world.
Background
#OurTaiwan is a response to a blog post by Kathy Cheng at Tricky Taipei, who pointed out the “amateur, unprofessional and embarrassing” posts on the Trip to Taiwan Twitter and Instagram accounts, which are meant to promote Taiwan tourism to American audiences. I am going to try to keep my own post short and positive, so I’ll let you check out Kathy’s blog for the embarrassing details.
In response to Kathy’s call-out, Trip to Taiwan blocked Tricky Taipei on social media. The story was then picked up and reported on in Mandarin by Apple Daily, a newspaper in Taiwan. Trip to Taiwan has since apologized, unblocked Tricky Taipei, and deleted or fixed some of the offending posts. But there is more we can do.
We have an opportunity now for a teachable moment and for more public participation. It’s not just about calling out mismanagement, mediocrity, and misuse of public funds. Let’s use this moment to harness the creativity and talent of Taiwanese people and friends of Taiwan.
I look forward to what you come up with for #OurTaiwan, and I will do my best to amplify and support you. I look forward to your feedback and ideas as well. While I am proposing the idea of #OurTaiwan, it is not my intention to “own” it. #OurTaiwan belongs to all of us.
To clarify, I want to move forward with positivity. I don’t want anyone to lose their jobs or contracts over the Tricky Taipei and Apple News stories. But I do think that crowdsourcing with #OurTaiwan can help generate creative ideas and more engagement and participation. In the meantime, we will continue to demand accountability and a strategy.
Let’s use #OurTaiwan on social media to share our own stories to promote Taiwan.
Sample Posts
I wanted to share some examples of the kinds of social media posts that we could share for #OurTaiwan. I encourage you to draw from your own life, your perspectives, and your relationship with Taiwan. If you are able to translate the stories and content of friends and family who don’t know English very well, please do that too. Like I said, this is just a starting point for inspiration. I look forward to your ideas and creativity.
1. Beef Noodles
Many Taiwanese consider beef noodles to be our “national dish.” In Taiwan they are an inexpensive treat from street vendors and mom-and-pop shops. Or go for the ultra premium $325 USD version at Niu Ba Ba. You can also try them before you go to #OurTaiwan. The bowl above is from Ho Foods in NYC’s East Village.
2. Kavalan Whisky
Kavalan Whisky, named after an indigenous people and place name, is Taiwan’s first whisky maker and only family-owned whisky distillery. Kavalan has won several international awards and is the perfect punctuation to a long day’s work. #OurTaiwan
3. Presidential Office Building
The president’s office is a European-style building in the middle of Taipei. It was designed and built during Japanese colonial rule. It reflects the rich and complicated history of #OurTaiwan.
4. “Taiwanese Tamales”
These bamboo leaf sticky rice parcels are called zongzi (粽子) in Mandarin or bazang (肉粽) in Taiwanese Hokkien, two of Taiwan’s main languages. Growing up in a Taiwanese family in Arizona, I just introduced them to friends as “Taiwanese tamales.” They are filled with meat, peanuts, and other delicious fillings. Families make them together on special occasions, or you can buy them from vendors all over #OurTaiwan.
Additional Strategies & Thoughts
To folks working at the official tourism campaign, we in the diaspora and expat communities are here to help. We want to help. Please ask. We appreciate it when you engage us, and we hope that we don’t have to call you out again. Believe me, it’s embarrassing for us too.
There are some no-brainer lessons that Kathy already pointed out in Tricky Taipei: use spellcheck, don’t block people trying to help, and develop a strategy that showcases Taiwan’s unique selling points, and not derivative references to our neighboring countries.
Like I tried to demonstrate with my sample posts above, I think the key is to be personal with the storytelling. To entice and to spark a curiosity from people, so that they want to learn more and visit Taiwan. Let’s meet people where they are in terms of cultural references, or Taiwanese restaurants in the US. We are asking people to make a big commitment in time and money to get on a plane and visit Taiwan. So how can we start building that relationship over time and for the long term?
Let’s think of the crowdsourcing idea behind #OurTaiwan as an experiment. Let’s see what people come up with. But crowdsourcing is just the tip of the iceberg for designing participation and engagement. Let’s also see if we can incorporate “new power” strategies to shape and harness the power of mass participation to promote Taiwan and Taiwanese stories to the world. New power is the topic of a new book by my friends Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms, and in this case, does not refer to the New Power political party in Taiwan. Jeremy and Henry’s thinking has inspired and shaped my ideas for #OurTaiwan.
Let’s think about how we can engage Taiwanese people and friends of Taiwan, giving them a platform that can be amplified with public funds. For inspiration, check out the Sweden Twitter account, which gives a platform to a different Swede every week.
Who is this guy?
For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Lee-Sean Huang. I am Taiwanese (and American) living in New York City. I was born in Kaohsiung. My mom is from Taichung, and my dad is from Taipei.
I am a designer and an educator. I have a background in storytelling and campaigning, and have worked on communications for other local and national governments. I am not affiliated with the Taiwanese government, any Taiwanese political party, nor official tourism organization. I am just a citizen who cares about Taiwan and sharing its beauty, charm, and culture with friends around the world. I hope you will join me in sharing your stories with #OurTaiwan.
