Ramon Reyes Jimenez, Junior. sometimes known as Monet or Mon Jimenez, is a prominent advertising executive and is notable for being the current Secretary of Tourism of the Philippines.
Education
Jimenez studied at the University of the Philippines from elementary school to college. He majored in visual communications at the Uttar Pradesh College of Fine Arts.
Jimenez, for his part, vowed to make Philippine tourism the “people’s business” and that the country with its picturesque destinations should be “as easy to sell as Chickenjoy”.
Speaking to Malacañang reporters in a press conference aired live on radio and television less than 24 hours after President Benigno Aquino III announced his appointment, Jimenez, an advertising executive, said he would “galvanize the DoT into an honest to goodness selling unit whose “ultimate goal” would be “not only to improve statistics but also ensure that the endeavor would be fulfilling and profitable for Filipinos”.
Career
On September 1, 2011, President Benigno Aquino III picked him as his Tourism chief following the resignation of former Tourism secretary Alberto Lim. assisted with the advertising campaign of Aquino earlier. began his career at Saatchi & Saatchi in the creative department, and then formed a start-up boutique agency in the late 1990s called & Partners which, after several mergers, became known in 2011 as Publicis Basic. His work at the agency has been closely associated with the rise of Philippine brands such as Jollibee, Selecta Ice Cream, Safeguard Soap, San Miguel Beer, Cebu Pacific and Ivory Soap, among others had also been the vice-president and executive creative director at Ace-Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising from 1988 to 1989, and also a consultant for marketing of the Ninoy and Cory Aquino Foundation. He has given numerous presentations at conferences on advertising-related topics He was instrumental in helping his extended family write a private book on five generations of his family, entitled Generations: In Search of Family, which chronicled the clan in the Philippines.
He took over the helm of the Tourism Department from Alberto Lim who resigned on August 12, 2011.
According to a report in Business Week Mindanao, as head of the tourism department after September 2011, an initial challenge for was to come up with a catchy tagline to promote travel visits to the Philippines to compete with tourism campaigns for nations such as Brazil and India and Singapore. was quoted in the journal Manila Bulletin Publishing Corporation about his sense of advertising: The Philippines is its people. And its people are the Philippines.
