Malaysian Gov't Spends $600,000 On 6 Facebook Pages

gizmodolt writes "The entrenched Malaysian governing party, Barisan Nasional, has spent almost $600,000 on six Facebook pages promoting tourism in the country. This has sparked criticism from opposition parties, decrying the 'ridiculous' reasoning behind this waste of taxpayer funds and garnered widespread recrimination from Malaysians around the globe, who have made their sentiments known, quite publicly, on those very same Facebook pages."

Comments

Tourism

[cgeys]

The summary says these are just pages, but they're actually applications and games. Those do cost a lot more to create. It also seems like with his saying "those are just facebook fan pages" he doesn't really understand how much behind the scenes work such things actually need. Yeah, some lovely video of cute cat on YouTube might go viral, but theres a small change of that with something like promoting a country's tourism. Companies also spend lots of money for marketing and those Facebook pages can be highly valuable resources to them. This being slashdot I'm sure I get responses like "if it's good enough people will come", but that just doesn't work with everything and even then you still need to make sure people know about it. There is a lot of work done behind the scenes on such things.

The $600,000 might be a little bit high, but it definitely isn't ridiculous compared to how much it can improve a country's tourism. South East Asian countries are highly dependent on tourism. There are many things I feel my country wastes money on, but this seems like a good deal. It definitely isn't waste, as it brings tourist to country and therefore jobs, money and wealth. My country spends cash on a lot more stupid things than that.

Re:Tourism

[jd]

Television ads intended to reach the same number of people globally would be pretty much guaranteed to cost more. In the end, you can't make money without spending money.

Re:Tourism

[cpu6502]

>>>you can't make money without spending money.

Well then let the BUSINESSES (hotels, amusement parks, restaurants, etc) that stand to profit from the tourism do the spending, rather than using tax dollars.

This sounds like Corporate Welfare --- the government is providing free advertising which businesses profit from, while the working class have to cover the costs of the ads. Steal from the poor; give to the rich.

In the US the equivalent is when I have to pay for a new Football Stadium in Baltimore, so the million-dollar owners can get rich off the ticket sales. It's BS and I can understand why the Malays are pissed.

Re:Tourism

[magarity]

Well then let the BUSINESSES (hotels, amusement parks, restaurants, etc) that stand to profit from the tourism do the spending, rather than using tax dollars

Most localities do have special taxes just on hotel stays. These go in to the general government fund and usually are more than what the government's tourism promotion agency spends. Umm, a well-run government tourism agency that is, not one spending piles of money on a facebook profile. In this case does it sound like a hotel association could oversee how advertising dollars are best spent but then you run in to a game theory problem; hotels that do not belong to the association spending on promoting tourism benefit from tourists being more attracted to the area without having the expense. This is why a general promotion of a city/province/country is better consolidated through a tax (preferably a tax on hotels and other direct travel related activities) subsidized program.

Re:Tourism

[mistiry]

The government also profits from the influx of tourists spending their money. Sales tax, gas tax, alcohol tax, cigarette tax...

Re:Tourism

[Asic Eng]

The $600,000 might be a little bit high

It's quite possible to overspend, even if the spending itself is for a reasonable purpose, and even if the amount of money is not all that high in absolute terms.

I'm trying to keep an open mind about this. Let's say $30k is a reasonable salary for a Flash programmer in Malaysia. So that's 20 man years development time. I've been searching for the pages, but it's difficult to find them using the names from the article (which is not a good sign):

• Karnival Jualan Mega 1Malaysia
• Cuti Cuti 1Malaysia
• Citrawarna 1Malaysia
• Fabulous Food 1Malaysia
• Kempen 1Malaysia Bersih, 1Malaysia

The Flash game seems to be here. Didn't feel like starting it, given that it asked to post stuff on my wall and send me email. Sorry about that - but maybe someone would like to give it a spin and let us know?

Is that really all they have - some plain text and photo galleries, plus a simple Flash game? Or did I not find the right stuff? Finding that should be easy though - otherwise it's hardly useful for it's intended purpose of convincing tourists to visit Malaysia. (I purposely searched for this marketing campaign and didn't find anything which would attract me to Malaysia - that can't be a good result for a country which I'm sure is an interesting place to visit...)

It really does look like a ripoff.

Re:Tourism

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

No, it isn't. Or are you arguing if a state, say Florida or Nevada pays for TV advertisement enticing would-be tourists to take a trip there and pour money into their local businesses? C'mon, you can't be that dumb.

That is corporate welfare. There is nothing to stop these businesses to pool money together to launch an ad campaign. Why should the State pay for advertisement? It is the same local businesses who bellyache and bitch to high heavens about government spending and deficit.

Re:Tourism

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

How about flipping that around. Letting sport teams to build their own stadiums but let it be a 100% tax free zone. No taxes on employees who work at the stadium (ie. no income tax), no sales tax, no building permits or fees, etc. We'll leave property tax in there to let them have policy/fire coverage. But we'd also enact a law the government for charging tax to out-of-state visitors who spend money at businesses near such venues. After all, the government didn't bring them in, private money did. They shouldn't have any right to tax them. See how absurd that picture is yet? Probably, but for all the wrong reasons.

Why should the stadia be 100% tax free? They will be treated just like any other business. No special privileges. If the mom and pop coffee store pays taxes, the stadia owners can pay the tax too. If the employees of the landscaping company pay income taxes the stadia employees can pay the same tax. Just treat them like any other business, with no subsidies.

The corporate owned media has completely brainwashed Americans into thinking that the corporations have to be coddled and allowed unlimited tax-deductible expenses in the elections, and be taxed at negative rates, given huge subsidies and then spend tax dollars to advertize for them, only then they will create a few mimimum wage jobs. We have the lowest corporate tax rate in the last 60 years, and it is not creating jobs. Bush administration was very lax with enforcement of all regulations. It did not create jobs.

It is high time we Americans stop subsidizing the corporations and ask them to earn a living on their own.

Re:Tourism

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Businesses benefit from increased patronage. Residents benefit from more affluent businesses. How do you think Florida manages without state income tax?

So the benefits of business profits will trickle down to the taxpayers eventually. What is galling is often the same people who tolerant of such taxpayer funded largess to the businesses argue that government does nothing well, government is a parasite, taxation is theft.

Let me tell you why the businesses don't pool their own money to create advertising. It is because of the free-loader problem. Some businesses would refuse to contribute to the pool, because they will get the benefit anyway. The only way to create such an ad program is by forcibly collect taxes from everyone and then fund it. Or you have to mandate the membership to the ad pool.

It is not so different from healthcare. We have mandated that Hospitals can turn no one away. Now people would not buy any health insurance because they can go to the hospital after they get sick and they will be treated. It is expensive to deliver healthcare this way. It is quite painful for the uninsured too. But the tragedy of the commons is that, there will always be welchers and free loaders. And the only way to avoid it is using a health insurance mandate or use tax money to cover all the uninsured or to allow hospitals to turn the dying uninsured patients away.

If you support government spending on tourism ads, you should at least understand the complexities of the health care issue. Hope you do.

As compared to commercials?

[Kenja]

Facebook pages make as much sense as all those stupid Wisconsin state tourism commercials I'm inundated with. The idea behind both is that you spend money to promote tourism which generates money. Not that I'm likely to go to Malaysia due to a Facebook page, but then I dont respond to advertisement in general.

Not that much actually

[Damnshock]

My company works mainly on building apps/making campaings on social networks and I can assure you those numbers are not that expensive. It is more that we would have asked for them but within the same digits range.

As usual: the "average Joe" doesn't realize how much things cost to do...

Regards

Re:Sounds like...

[Opportunist]

Please, if you have to use quotes, could you at least put that "experts" in them too?

Tourism in Malaysia

[westlake]

[T]ourism has become Malaysia's third largest source of income from foreign exchange and accounted for 7% of Malaysia's economy as of 2005. As of 2009, Malaysia ranks 9th among the top most visited countries in the world, after Germany, although the vast majority of Malaysia's visitors are from neighboring Singapore.

Tourism in Malaysia

Facebook has 600 million users.

How much global exposure will a $600,000 add budget buy in you print, television and other media?

italia.it

[ponchietto]

The italian government took 7 years and 55 million euro to create www.italia.it.

Ha! That's nothing!

[kikito]

My country has spent 600.000 *euros*

a) On a *single* static website (yes, static, only html + javascript + css)
b) Whose single purpose is basically *defending copyright*.
c) When the unemployment rate has recently surpassed 10%
d) And the site isn't even good looking.

Judge yourselves:

http://www.culturaenpositivo.es/

That's how we roll in Spain. Malaysians are just aficionados.

There is one born every minute,

[westlake]

but then I dont respond to advertisement in general.

I have heard this before - and very much doubt I would find anything the least surprising about where you live, what you wear, what you eat and drink, the car you drive, or how you stock your medicine cabinet.

Re:There is one born every minute,

[Kenja]

I live in a house, was built in the 50's, I choose the area because it was lower cost then the area I wanted yet still offered a reasonable commute to work and nice landscape (lots of undeveloped hills and woods). I wear pants and shirts, dont know or care what the brands are. I buy the most comfortable at the best price I can find. I tend to cook my own food using "produce" (I am unaware of a name brand potato). Dont really have much of anything in my medicine cabinet other then some old prescriptions, I take what the doctor says will help.

Re:Like me!

[jovius]

Iceland is currently drafting the new constitution on social media and especially on Facebook, and it has already gathered a lot of positive vibes from people around the world - http://mashable.com/2011/06/13/iceland-crowdsource-constitution/

After the devastating financial crisis the call for the people to participate must be revitalizing.

Governments can do very likeable things.

The Malaysian project pricetag was reasonable.

[hey!]

If you want to see real contractor rip-offs of the public, you should look at the US, where it has become an art form.

I once was invited to a meeting in which a state agency (state withheld to protect the clueless) discussed the next plans for a system it purchased from a major government contractor with an emergency two million dollar federal grant. The agency wasn't a bad agency, mind you. In fact it was a fairly good one, but used to operating on a shoestring. They had no idea whatsoever what things cost, and suddenly they had two million bucks dumped on them that had to be shoveled out the door faster than the speed of thought. A politically connected federal contractor landed the contract and delivered on time and on budget, but the system wasn't really useful unless it was integrated with the agencies various activities.

So I was asked to come and discuss how this could be done. In truth I think I was invited down so they could pick my brain for for free, because it turned out they didn't have *any* money left over from the two million they'd blown on initial development. Even if I'd offered my services pro bono, they wouldn't have had the money to pay my expenses. After the initial presentation, I asked the disgusted state IT guy next to me how much his department would have charged to build the system they'd just bought for two million. His estimate was sixty thousand. Mine was sixty-five.

I've always thought that the whole situation must have been a set-up. The grant was dumped on an agency that had no idea how to procure technology, and they weren't given enough time to put together a reasonable RFP or to obtain competitive bids. It was a perfect sting. Had the extent of the waste come to public attention, some hapless state manager would have taken the fall. People love to crucify bureaucrats. The politician behind the earmark would point his finger at his political enemies at the state level, and his (I am presuming) contractor cronies would truthfully say they had done everything they had contracted for.

The lesson is that while government is often infuriatingly slow, beware of any project where there's pressure to spend taxpayer money before it disappears. Never spend public money in a hurry. "Shovel-ready" equals "graft-ready".