TheBuzz
TheBuzz
On behalf of the Oahu Visitors Bureau, FX Group President Hugh O'Reilly has been pitching paradise. Beyond swimsuits
and the beachThe company's work for the bureau last year landed Hawaii on 289 pages of publications in North America and Europe.
Broken down that's 39 feature stories in 70 publications, reaching 65.4 million readers. To achieve that reach with advertising would have cost $15 million, O'Reilly said.
While FX is paid by OVB, the media value for Oahu and the rest of the state "doesn't cost anything," O'Reilly said. The publications send their own photographers, writers and models.
Hotels and attractions may be featured in stories and photos, but O'Reilly said, "There's nothing advertorial about it. We're given producer status on these shoots. We help them make editorial decisions."
He's at it again this year, having recently returned from a three-and a-half-week tour of New York City and several European countries.
Having worked abroad and married an Indonesian-Dutch woman, the Hawaii-born, Irish-Japanese O'Reilly laughed, "I can keep myself out of jail in several languages."
He met with the editorial decision-makers of more than 100 upscale lifestyle publications such as Esquire, Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, Elle and Marie Claire.
In addition to enticing visitors to buy plane or cruise tickets, FX's goal is to get the proverbial ball rolling.
The publications, particularly in Europe, are upscale trendsetters that dictate answers to the "what is hip?" questions for their readers: what to wear, what to eat, where to go and what to do upon arrival, said FX Communications Director Chris Gahl. Other publications often follow suit.
Given the OVB wish-list of topics to get covered this time around, O'Reilly encouraged editors to cover Hawaii's romance, cuisine, and health and wellness in their pages.
"In the industry itself, what we do is unique," he said.
FX's portfolio of magazine articles and pictorials it has placed is about four inches thick, full of pages from various high-end magazines.
It will soon include an Esquire magazine cover feature on Pierce Brosnan in Hawaii, since a sequence in the next James Bond movie was shot on Maui.
Erika Engle is a reporter with the Star-Bulletin.
Call 529-4302, fax 529-4750 or write to Erika Engle,
Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., No. 7-210,
Honolulu, HI 96813. She can also be reached
at: eengle@starbulletin.com