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Marketing Expert Addresses Strengthening Hawaii's
Business Image
HONOLULU—It’s not that Hawaii suffers from
a bad business image, Hawaii suffers from the lack of a business
image, according to marketing expert Dick McDonald, of Milwaukee-based
BVK/McDonald, who addressed ways to strengthen Hawaii’s business
image at a Honolulu breakfast meeting on April 28.
"Convert everyone’s dream image of Hawaii
as a paradise into an image of a place where they would like to
do business," McDonald suggested. "Hawaii should capitalize
on the quality of life it can offer to business executives and other
workers."
After recounting many of the recent and ongoing negative
statistics about Hawaii’s economic and business climate—the
highest cost in the nation of doing business, high unemployment,
high taxes and union protectionism—McDonald reviewed some good
news. Hawaii is a model of an integrated society, it has a strong
environmental record, it has a history of being an intermediary
between East and West, and it is ideally located as a support point
for telecommunications technology. Package these strengths with
Hawaii’s quality of life, its focus on wellness and its beautiful
climate, and Hawaii could shape a business image that could be marketed
globally.
Marketing alone won’t solve Hawaii’s economic
woes however, McDonald noted. In the 1960s, BVK/McDonald was hired
by the state of Wisconsin to conduct a three-year advertising campaign
to change negative attitudes within the state, which at that point
had a reputation as being unfavorable to business. Most importantly,
Governor Warren Knowles empowered key people from the business community
to turn around the economy and gave them the resources to do it.
The breakfast meeting was cosponsored by JAIMS, The
Queen’s Health Systems and the state Department of Business,
Economic Development and Tourism. |
