StarBulletin.com

HPU team carries flag for Hawaii


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POSTED: Sunday, May 10, 2009

Hawaii Pacific University advertising students will represent Hawaii in the finals of the American Advertising Federation's National Student Advertising Competition in Washington, D.C., next month after winning the local competition.

If they win the national, it is unlikely the team will celebrate with a kegger—the theme for this year's competition is combating binge drinking by college students.

This year's NSAC sponsor is the Century Council, a nonprofit organization that seeks to combat underage drinking and drunken driving. It receives its funding from distillers and wine and beer makers.

The HPU team, nearly three times the size of Team Chaminade, presented its “;Aftermath”; campaign, which incorporates multiple advertising strategies and tactics the judges found “;innovative, nontraditional ... visually powerful (and) in some cases, shocking,”; according to Jeff Zimmerman, vice president of AdWalls.

Around the country, teams from more than 100 colleges and universities participated and were whittled down to 16 finalist teams representing each AAF district.

AAF-Hawaii officials hope the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu Community College and BYU-Hawaii will be able to field teams next year, said Paul Lam, president of AAF-Hawaii, in February.

In a way, HPU students were lucky in that they were not subjected to multilevel competitions as were other teams.

On the other hand, teams from states with multiple AAF chapters got more under-fire practice, honing their presentations more than once, to win their D.C. shots.

Twitter Tuesdays

Big City Diner President Lane Muraoka is hurtling up the power curve of using social media for his business and is about to launch “;Twitter Tuesdays.”;

Muraoka has been exploring Twitter.com for the last few months and has decided to extend a 20 percent discount on entrees on Tuesdays to password-bearing Twitter users who follow the restaurant's updates.

“;We're going to send out the password Monday into Tuesday,”; he said.

Discounts can be used by parties of four or fewer.

 


Erika Engle is a reporter with the Star-Bulletin. Reach her by e-mail at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).