Move Oahu Forward Reminiscent of ‘Thumbs Up, Hawaii’ Campaign

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BY CLIFF SLATER – And now, finally out of hiding, the suits come to the rescue of TheTrain:

We have not heard a peep out of the suits up to now. But one crack of the whip from Ringmaster Dan and they all jump to their appointed places to await the talking points memo, which assumedly will arrive shortly.

This is so reminiscent of the 1995 “Thumbs Up, Hawaii” campaign that Hawaiithreads.com rates as one of the worst ad campaigns of all time. They said, “What this campaign tried to do was whitewash Hawaii’s bad business image by painting a false and rosey picture that this was a great place to do business and a great time (circa 1995) for you to spend your hard earned money on big ticket items.”

The problem that the suits and Sharon Weiner, their PR group, face is that now that people have figured out that

a) traffic congestion will be worse in the future with rail, and

b) the train is less energy efficient than our buses, and

c) taking into account total costs, rail is far more expensive than buses, and

d) we cannot afford it, then that is a genie they are not going to be able to stuff back into the bottle.

If they couldn’t fool the public in 1995, before the Internet, before Facebook, before Twitter, they sure as hell are not going to be able to do it now.

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1 COMMENT

  1. The voters of Hawaii are like the continuously battered significant other. They keep going back for more of the same. Even when given an opportunity to end the abuse, they find it difficult to leave what they have become used to no matter how destructive it is.

    It’s time for we the people to realize that we don’t have to suffer anymore and vote out all officials who have served two terms or more.

    We can’t keep on allowing our tormentors to abuse us without facing justice or justifiable retribution.

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