One of Ensen’s favorite birthday gifts he received was a Little Champs Sports Center from his Aunty Karen and Uncle Preston. From the video below, could we have a future Michael Jordan or LeBron James on our hands?

-NGK

UPDATE: Since this posting, two fellow bloggers - Melissa Chang and Christa Wittmier have passed along kind congratulations in their personal blogs. Thought I would share that with you. Mahalo for the support ladies! The Honolulu Advertiser also covered the event in the paper today.
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The HVCB PR team accepts the Best of Show award with our client Darlene Morikawa (in blue). From left: Kim Miyashiro, me, Rhegan Liwanag-Luat, Janet Crawford (PRSA Hawaii president), Michael Ni, and Karl Nakagawa.

As many know by now, our firm - McNeil Wilson Communications - won “Best of Show” in the 2008 PRSA Hawaii Koa Anvil Awards for its work on the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau’s “Hawaii: As Seen On TV” campaign. This is a program in which we target national broadcast TV shows to come to Hawaii and feature the destination “editorially” into the episodes. This award was won for our work on HGTV’s Design Star Finale, Food Network’s Dinner: Impossible, and Travel Channel’s Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations.

It was a great night for the agency and in addition to Best of Show, as we won 12 awards total for the night. Most of any agency/organization represented.  Erika Engle of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin did a nice story today on the event and all of the winners.

Mahalo to everyone that won and particularly to everyone at McNeil Wilson Communications. Great job done by all!

For more photos from the night, visit my Flickr page.

[Photo courtesy of Jennifer Lieu, Aloha Tower Marketplace.]

-NGK

Those who work with and know me understand just how much I love my job in public relations. It’s also exciting that our firm - McNeil Wilson Communications - is embracing social media and allowing us to explore ways to incorporate it into our daily work flow. PR and social media are two things I’m really into right now. So you can imagine how excited I was when I received this e-mail today from Alltop.com:

Nathan,

Spoke to Guy and he helped make it happen! PR.Alltop.com is now open thanks to you! Additionally, I added your company’s website to the Acknowledgments.

It would be awesome if you could tell everyone locally, but also PR Newswire Because of you, there is a PR category. We appreciate you very much.

Aloha,
NEENZ.
___
L.P. “Neenz” Faleafine
http://faleafine.com
http://truemors.com
http://alltop.com

UNREAL! I had pitched the idea of creating a PR Alltop category via Twitter to Guy Kawasaki (@guykawasaki) and Neenz (@infinitypro) and they said, “show me the feeds and we’ll consider.” I guess I did good by sending more than 40 of my favorite PR websites and blogs that I follow on a regular basis to get the ball rolling. Now the category has come to fruition which is a good thing for our industry. I’ll call this my contribution to advancing the public relations profession. Part of the mission being a member of PRSA.

BTW, did I mention Alltop received more than 1.2 million page views last month? This site is big time. If anyone has a PR focused blog or website they’d like to add, send your feeds to info@alltop.com.

Big mahalo to Guy and Neenz! You guys rock!

-NGK

Everytime Kelly and I watch Mark Kanemura perform on So You Think You Can Dance, she asks me the same question over and over: “Doesn’t Mark look like a combination of my cousins John and Bryan?” I’ve got to say she has a pretty strong case. What do you think?

Mark Kanemura

John and Bryan Watai.

Okay, so maybe it’s a stretch. But from some angles, we swear they could all be related.

In any case, GO GET ‘EM MARK.

-NGK

[Photo of Mark Kanemura courtesy of Fox.com.]

With the big announcement today that Colt Brennan signed a $1.8 million contract with the Washington Redskins, I’m anxious to see how many Hawaii faithful will be sporting his new jersey around town. A quick check on the Redskins website has the replica jersey selling for $79.99. I’m not the jersey wearing type myself, but may have to make the exception to support the guy that brought so much excitement to UH football the last couple seasons. Are you planning to buy one?

-NGK