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.