ASSOCIATED PRESS This ad promoting Bermuda shows a model on a Hawaii beach. Bermuda admitted yesterday using pictures of other destinations to attract tourists, including photos of divers in Florida and this model in Hawaii.

Ad promoting Bermuda
features vision of Hawaii

Isle tourism officials are a little
miffed at the use of the photo

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By Erika Engle
eengle@starbulletin.com

Bermuda's Department of Tourism has acknowledged using pictures of other tropical destinations -- including Hawaii -- in its latest advertising campaign, according to the Royal Gazette newspaper in Hamilton.

The advertisements were placed in the February editions of Conde Nast Traveler and Travel and Leisure magazines, and included one picture taken in Hawaii. Others were taken in Florida and the Seychelles.

The Hawaii photo, originally featuring a topless woman, was submitted to the department's advertising agency as part of a portfolio by photographer Anne Menke.

"What happens is, when people want to bring in overseas photographers, they have to consult the Bermuda Photographic Association," said Stephen Breen, a reporter for the Gazette. Members of the association saw the picture with a caption clearly indicating Menke shot the photo in Hawaii.

Menke got the job, traveled to Bermuda and took pictures that were used in the ad campaign, but the department's advertising agency apparently lifted the Hawaii photo from her portfolio for use as well, Breen said. Retouched for the Bermuda ad, the model is sporting a bikini top.

The agency, Arnold Worldwide in Boston, is not returning media calls. However, Tourism Department Assistant Marketing Director Michael DeCouto is quoted in the Gazette saying the model's photo "is more for emotion, and that image could have been taken anywhere in the world. We felt it was fine to use that image."

"Stock images are used all the time in the industry," DeCouto said.

The news was greeted in Hawaii with humor and some indignation.

"That's funny," said Gail Ann Chew, vice president for global corporate communications and partnerships with the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau. "I've been at the bureau for 13 years, and it has always been a policy of this organization that our images are Hawaii.

"I think someone would be in pretty hot water, whether it would be someone in our bureau or any of our agencies, who would even venture to do something like that. It's appalling to me."

Years ago, Hawaii's Mokulua islands, off Kailua, appeared in advertising brochures for Australia.

And Chew and others remember advertising for Hawaii featuring pictures taken elsewhere, but not in materials for the bureau.

"Back in the '70s, when American Airlines introduced its new service to Hawaii, the ad showed the airplane approaching islands over water. It was a real picture of islands and water, but it was Tahiti. They'd taken the airplane and superimposed it over," said Jack Bates, chairman and chief executive officer of Starr Seigle Communications Inc.

The ad appeared on the back cover of Aloha magazine and was most likely the work of a mainland ad agency, he said.

"I know it has happened before, and it probably will happen again," he said. "Those of us in the industry will make a big deal out of it, but the public in general will probably never know."

Of the Bermuda bungle, Bates chuckled, "We'd rather, if they use our picture, please give us credit at the bottom of the page."