Street ad gimmick irks Abby, late senator’s kin

Makati Mayor Abby Binay FILE PHOTO

Two advertising agencies and a company selling sleep aid were behind the campaign that—to the confusion of motorists—briefly renamed Makati City’s Gil Puyat Avenue to “Gil Tulog Avenue,” a play on the surname of a former Senate president.

An irked Makati Mayor Abby Binay on Friday ordered the street signs corrected, saying the City Hall officials who approved the campaign had been reprimanded.

The company, Wellspring, has apologized.

According to the city’s public information office, the request to change the street signs came from Gigil Advertising and NCP Advertising Studios.

‘So disrespectful’

The ad campaign also tinkered with the street’s name on the navigation app Google Maps. When the Inquirer tried to locate Gil Puyat on the app on Friday night, one of the search results pinned it as “Gil Tulog.”

READ: ‘Gil Tulog’ road signs removed as Makati execs behind it ‘reprimanded’

The marketing gimmick was a wordplay on the Filipino term for lack of sleep (‘’puyat”) and the word for sleep (‘’tulog”).

A great granddaughter of the late Sen. Gil Puyat didn’t find it amusing. In a Facebook post also on Friday, Erika Puyat Lontok said: “Besmirching my late great grandfather’s name to sell freaking melatonin is so disrespectful!”

Her post tagged the official social media pages of Gigil and Wellspring, a local company that sells health supplements, such as melatonin, in the form of “gummies.”

In a statement, Binay called what happened a “glaring oversight” and directed the immediate removal of the “Gil Tulog” signs.

Company says sorry

“It is unfortunate that the request for a permit for the so-called advertising campaign to change the street signs of Gil Puyat Avenue did not reach my office,” the mayor added.

The city officials who approved the name-change should have “exercised prudence,” she said. The erring officials were not named in the statement.

Wellspring issued a statement on Friday, admitting its “misstep” and apologizing for the “insensitivity” of its campaign.

“It was never our intention to offend anyone in our marketing execution, which used word play to draw attention to the importance of sleep,” it said. The company vowed to “practice better sensitivity in our campaigns moving forward.” Gil J. Puyat Avenue traverses is one of the major roads in the Makati City roads, such as Makati Avenue, Ayala Avenue and Chino Roces Avenue.

It central business district. It was named after in memory of the 11th Senate President of the Philippines, who led headed the upper chamber for five years until the late dictator then President Ferdinand Marcos, Sr., Marcos Sr. declared martial law and dissolved Congress in September 1972.

A son of businessman Don Gonzalo Puyat, the late senator initially worked in his family’s business before entering politics in 1951 when he won a Senate seat. He died in 1980.