Hawaii campaign targets L.A. & beyond: Get your ‘aloha’ on locally this month

Suddenly feeling some extra “aloha” in the air? If so, you might be on to something. The Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau’s “Hawaii: A Thousand Reasons to Smile” campaign has just launched in Southern California, and we’ll get to experience it in all manner of settings all month.

You may have already spotted evidence of that faraway (but so close) tropical paradise on the 405, pictured below. Just south of I-10, along the 405 North, the bureau has an ad up on a digital billboard (for you billboard spotters, the sign is on a building at 3415 S. Sepulveda Blvd.; GPS coordinates are latitude: 34.0209, longitude: 118.4236).

If they were going for a dependably traffic-clogged intersection where the tourism effort  might benefit from longer gazes at the travel deals they’ll be projecting onto the billboard,  they picked a good one.

Campaign-related events locally this month will include free events titled “A Day of Hawaii Smiles” on Sept. 12 and 19, 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. at the Grove.

Family-friendly highlights during both days will include crafts, a marketplace, island food tastings, a “Big Wave” photo booth and Hawaiian music and hula lessons.

Starting Friday, Sept. 4, you can check out the nightly Hawaii-themed fountain show at the Grove; performances are every half-hour throughout the night starting at 8 p.m., according to the Grove’s concierge desk.

And Hawaii is infiltrating our grocery stores too: At select Whole Foods Market locations in the region,
Hawaiian chefs will be hosting cooking classes and tastings. Participating markets are in L.A.’s Fairfax District, Venice, Pasadena’s Arroyo neighborhood and Orange County’s Tustin.

If you manage to avoid the island lure by road, mall and grocery aisle, you’ll have a hard time missing it online. A major social-media push was launched by the bureau a couple of weeks ago, according to a visitors bureau spokesperson, and that includes a Twitter page (@sharingaloha) and a Facebook page (facebook.com/Hawaii) dedicated to spreading the word on deals and events, among other Hawaii topics.

Via Twitter, you can learn about festivals on the Hawaiian islands in the coming months, and a tweet this morning directs us to Pandora.com for some lovely Hawaiian music. The Facebook page, for being so new, is a popular one, with about 1,400 fans and counting.

For schedules and further details on the month’s events, see the visitors bureau website.

—Susan Derby, Special to the Los Angeles Times

Top photo: Flower from Paia Maui; Credit: bbf; Your Scene / Los Angeles Times

Bottom photo: HVCB billboard on the 405 freeway, taken Sept. 1, 2009. Courtesy Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 2, 2009 at 1:10 pm by Susan Derby and is filed under Deals, Family & Kids, Festival, Hawaii, Islands & Beaches, Los Angeles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.