In 2009, the non-profit Japanese Women’s Society Foundation (JWSF) approached me to do the public relations effort for the 55th Annual Anniversary and Fashion Show. The annual fashion show proceeds fund Kuakini Home, a senior care facility in Kuakini Hospital, and committee members were all volunteers. This year, the fashion show featured the Hakubi Kimono School from Kyoto Japan who were to model kimono dressing as well as various types of kimono. In years past, a Hawaii fashion designer who used kimono fabric or style in their fashion(s) were selected to headline the show.
The JWSF had no budget for advertising the event.
Kukui Marketing, with the help of creative designer, Kent Miyasaki of SDM Advertising, created an emailable flyer to promote the event. Starting with the fashion show committee a grassroots email campaign was started and expanded to include the entire JWSF membership asking all to forward the flyers to friends, family and business associates.
The internet effort continued with posting the event on Honolulu Magazine’s web calendar, Honolulu Advertiser and various online venues.
Concurrently, I wrote copy for a television public service announcement. The kimono school did not have digital photos for advertising, so Kiku Television’s commercial production manager, Andrew Imamura, made do with high resolution scans of kimonos. The produced result was highly complimented.
I also recruited the help of my television sales representatives at KGMB (Bruce Nakamura), KHON (Lea Owan) and KHNL(Barbara Scott) to run the public service announcement on their network stations. NGN (Bonnie Chika) also aired the JWSF psa. With their help, and the support of my own station , Kiku Television, the public service announcement achieved high visibility and committee ticket sales were boosted.
KZOO Radio representative, Misa Uyehara was also a big help in getting the word out to the Japanese speaking community through her radio station.
Just prior to the show, KGMB hosted fashion show producers Eric and Takeo and committee member Cathy Iwai on the morning news, KGMB Sunrise which was also posted on the web.
In the final phase, I sent the JWSF press release to writers from The Honolulu Advertiser, Honolulu Star Bulletin, The Hawaii Herald, Nikkan Daily Sun and the Pacific Press who all either ran stories or ran the event as a public service announcement.
On event day, I recontacted the television stations and KHON sent their reporter to cover the show.
In all, 511 people attended the event and the show was and is considered a great successfrom the efforts of its committee members and the public relations efforts of my agency.