PacRim Announces Launch of Official Hawaii Podcast for Japanese Listeners.
HONOLULU, HAWAII (August 22, 2007) - Peter Williams, ceo of Tokyo's Orbitune, Inc., Kamasami Kong, president of Nickong Enterprises, Inc., and Dave Erdman, ceo and president of Hawaii's PacRim Marketing Group, Inc. revealed today the inaugural episode of the Official Hawaii Podcast, a new, weekly, 20-minute audio show recorded in Japanese available for download for free at www.hawaiipodcast.jp. The Official Hawaii Podcast is owned by Orbitune, Nickong and PacRim. PacRim Marketing Group is also the exclusive sales agency for the Official Hawaii Podcast. Start-up figures for the project were not released.

Visit Web site (Japanese):
http://www.hawaiipodcast.jp

Read Honolulu Star Bulletin article:
http://starbulletin.com/2007/08/22/business/engle.html

Content for the Official Hawaii Podcast will feature the best Hawaii has to offer from food, entertainment and special events to culture, shopping and lifestyle. The podcast is hosted by Akira Okada in Tokyo and Yuki Hata in Honolulu with various special guest segments such as Kalapana's Malani Bilyeu and his Hawaiian "Word of the Week".

Okada is a Japanese FM radio personality who is also one of the main hosts of Lawson CS Hot Station heard by over 7 million Japanese each day while Hata, a bilingual Nikkei - Nisei is well know to Japanese FM audiences nationwide for her numerous appearances and programs in Japan emanating from studios in Hawaii. Programming for the podcast will also feature interviews and comments from some of Hawaii's best known recording artists courtesy of The Mountain Apple Company.

According to Williams, "The Official Hawaii Podcast is a great way for Japanese fans of Hawaii to get their weekly "Aloha Fix" at their own pace. Once they download the episode, listeners can enjoy immediately or store on their personal audio device and play at their convenience; perhaps on their daily transit commute to work."

Kong added, "Our audience will feel the magic of Hawaii and be able to imagine the sights, sounds and smells of the islands. Essentially, the podcast is a call to action to travel to Hawaii." The targeted demographic for the Official Hawaii Podcast are the highly sought after, well traveled, tech savvy, active listeners, 25 - 40 years old.

The Official Hawaii Podcast merges the exclusive talents of each of its three partners to create a powerhouse of a product. PacRim, a seventeen year marketing veteran of designing customized integrated marketing solutions and pioneering on-line content about Hawaii for the Japanese market will use its skills to set the course of the podcast in motion first through content creation, then by building its listener base and lastly by pursuing sponsorship and advertising.

Aside from the hawaiipodcast.jp URL, the primary portal to the Official Hawaii Podcast will be via links found on the Hawaii No Arukikata website, (http://www.hawaii-arukikata.com), the largest Japanese commercial web site about Hawaii. Created and managed by PacRim, the travel site receives over 100,000 unique visitors per month. PacRim's web division of bilingual editors, writers and staff hunt for news relevant to the Japanese visitor and update content daily. The dynamic nature and usefulness of the site is what attracts such a strong and faithful audience. PacRim's team will now also develop unique content for the podcast, and "push" Hawaii No Arukikata visitors to download episodes of the podcast.

As a producer, Kong will oversee the Hawaiian musical content based on his successful career as a multi-national DJ and unofficial ambassador of Hawaii to Japan for over 30 years. Kong will also be a guest host from time to time sharing his experiences about Hawaii's lifestyle. Orbitune will produce the Hawaii podcast with its team of bi-lingual audio, radio and communications professionals and the latest internet architecture available. Orbitune currently produces one of Japan's most successful downloadable daily programs, the Yomiuri (Shimbun's) News Podcast, a 20 minute digest of the morning newspaper.

Williams, a pioneer in the development of digital content for multiple blue-chip Japanese clients based on the concept of "narrow-casting" said, "The Official Hawaii Podcast has teamed some of the most creative marketing minds, fluent in both Japanese and English, to ensure it will be one of Japan's most successful to date. By utilizing Orbitune's narrow-casting philosophy in tandem with Kong and PacRim's content development knowledge, our listeners will consistently receive the information they are most interested in hearing about." Comparable to the rifle shot of a sharpshooter, narrow-casting defines and refines the message to serve the end receiver.

Website statistics and user data will be analyzed regularly to measure the traffic between the Hawaii No Arukikata pages to hawaiipodcast.jp as well as to identify additional subset demographic groups.

The consortium also intends for the podcast to become financially viable, which means selling advertising. Since podcast listeners are notoriously less tolerant of long commercial breaks as compared to those of traditional radio, the Official Hawaii Podcast is creating ways to include less obtrusive approaches to advertising such as special offers to exclusive listeners. For advertisers and sponsors, special segments and editorial support programs are in development by PacRim Marketing Group.

Erdman, whose company has separate editorial and advertising divisions, believes now is the time for companies to consider the cutting edge medium where their advertising budget will go further. "This consumer group is an active, technologically savvy audience riding the wave of the Internet (ie: MIXI, a Japanese version of Myspace). Advertisers should now begin to integrate podcasting and on-line media into their traditional off-line media plans such as print or broadcast in order to create a new platform to connect with these consumers on multiple levels." he said.