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Visitor bureau launches hashtag campaign

COURTESY MAUI VISITORS BUREAU
The HVCB will encourage vacationing users of social media as well as local residents, to tag their social media posts with the phrase #LetHawaiiHappen.

The Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau will undertake a hashtag campaign to promote memorable images of Hawaii.

The bureau is again dipping its toe into social media tactics to promote and raise the isles’ profile and image as a fun destination where spontaneity is possible during a planned vacation.

The HVCB will encourage vacationing users of social media as well as local residents, to tag their social media posts with the phrase #LetHawaiiHappen.

The so-called hashtag "aims to let residents and fellow visitors alike show their friends and family what Hawaii is all about through their personal images as they weave their stories of having fun as they #LetHawaiiHappen on their own journeys throughout the Hawaiian Islands," said Jay Talwar, HVCB chief marketing officer, in a statement.

Such hashtag campaigns have backfired for other entities, including the New York Police Department, whose #myNYPB was used along with posts of officers engaged in unbecoming conduct. Among many others, similar unintended consequences befell McDonald’s #McDStories and Starbucks’ #SpreadTheCheer campaigns, in which the hashtags intended to promote the companies were instead turned into what marketers call "bashtags."

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