Hawaiian Airlines Produced An Incredible Hula Documentary—Here’s How

By Jordan P. Kelley, Content Director, Brand Storytelling

PepsiCo’s Head of Content Development Allison Polly has never been to Hawaii but ask her now and she swears she’s going to go – all because of a film she saw; a film produced by a brand.

“Ka Huakai: The Journey to Merrie Monarch”, a documentary film made by Hawaiian Airlines, centers on the journeys of three different hula hālaus (hula schools) each preparing to head to the Merrie Monarch Festival. The festival is a week-long celebration that perpetuates and preserves the traditions, native language, and arts of the Hawaiian people. At its center is the largest hula competition of its kind, sometimes referred to as “the Olympics of hula.”

As a part of Brand Storytelling 2022: A Sanctioned Event of Sundance Film Festival, Polly moderated a conversation with Hawaiian Airlines brand representatives Alisa Onishi and Avi Mannis along with Jason Cutinella and Gerard Elmore, representatives from production partner NMG Network, to discuss how the film came together between brand and production studio and what it means to the people of Hawaiian Airlines to see themselves and their culture reflected back at them in such a pure and artful way.

“Ka Huakai: The Journey to Merrie Monarch” is a documentary that captures not only the aesthetic beauty of Hawaii, but the beauty of the culture and traditions at the film’s core. The idea for the film came about as a product of Hawaiian Airlines’ decades long partnership with The Merrie Monarch Festival and a desire to honor that relationship in some way. Hawaiian Airlines is one of the largest employers in the state, with many employees participating at various levels in the festival.

Senior Vice President of Marketing Avi Mannis pitched the idea that the travel company make a documentary following their employees as they prepared for The Merrie Monarch. The idea sparked a question: what does it take to be a hula dancer and participate in Merrie Monarch? “We’re not just a company that brings people from point A to point B,” said Hawaiian Airlines Director of Brand Management Alisa Onishi, “we do it in a way that honors our culture. You wouldn’t bring someone into your home and not tell them the story and the beautiful culture and the history of the place.”

Mannis and Onishi turned to their creative partners at NMG Network, a company they’d worked with prior to create other smaller pieces of content for the airline. Jason Cutinella, CEO of NMG Network, and Gerard Elmore, VP of film, approach the business as filmmakers, not just creators of branded content. Each of their projects executed on behalf of the Hawaiian Airlines brand is done with that mentality. So, when they were approached to make their first feature length film for the brand, they were primed and ready to get to work, being given complete creative autonomy by the airline.

Elmore took the helm as the film’s director and, with support from Onishi, leveraged friendships and developed new relationships with members of the hālaus to gain intimate access that would otherwise go unseen by most. Even for Elmore himself, let alone the greater people of Hawaii who annually gather to watch The Merrie Monarch on television, behind-the-scenes spaces are kept very private; not all get to see what goes into the making of the event. The brand knew they needed insiders to make the film possible. They turned to 30 employees with expert-level experience in hula and The Merrie Monarch, who were brought in as a sort of focus group and consulted on who to follow for the documentary and what stories to tell that would best capture the spirit of the event and put the best of the culture on display.

The result is a beautiful film that takes its viewers on a journey that not only educates and informs but inspires the desire to engage with the beautiful landscape and culture at the center of the film. And while it’s plain to see that Hawaiian Airlines stood to benefit from consumer brand lift, one of the less expected outcomes was affinity for the documentary from within the brand, from whom the project had been largely kept under wraps. “For an audience that understood the context of this (film), it resonated in deep and profound ways”, said Mannis. “This movie made a really big impact on the people and the community who saw it… we made this for us.”

In achieving Mannis’s personal goal, the film manages to inspire all who see it, like Polly, who, at the top of the conversation, talks about her newfound desire to visit the state. And although that shift in personal choice and perspective may feel like a small one, ultimately that choice, multiplied however many times over by each person who is inspired by their viewing of this beautiful film, has the potential to create enormous impact for the brand behind it.