Bleah, Hawai'i. Finally, we have made The New York Times editorial page.

Not so ironically, the editorial piece on Hawai'i was third in a list — the first being The Wrong Priorities and the second being Great Wall of Fluff. That pretty much sums up Hawai'i's current dilemma.

Now we hear that "sewage spills are not unusual in U.S." — that Los Angeles has had more than 4,500 sewage spills in a 10-year period, that Louisville and Jefferson County have been dumping sewage and storm water into the Ohio River totaling "billions of gallons each year."

Well, as the Church Lady would say on "Saturday Night Live," "Isn't that special?"

This is a whole new twist on Hawai'i's age-old worry that things are better on the Mainland. In a real-life demonstration about the adage of birds not pooping in their own nest, Hawai'i has done that and more.

Never mind that we made the right decision to direct the stuff in the (recently cleaned-up) Ala Wai Canal, we have made the wrong decisions year after year after year. Hawai'i is the home of "If we can't see it, it won't hurt us."

After weeks of pointing fingers back and forth between the state and city, of saying we can't test the beaches because there are no standards (What! Hawai'i has no standards for the beaches that we invite 7 million bottoms to sit on every year?!), putting out press releases that say the sand is safe because no one has officially told us it isn't, it's time that our government owned up to its sins.

It isn't just in the arena of marketing that Hawai'i can learn from the corporate world. Beyond all the bad examples, there is the shining example of Johnson & Johnson and the Tylenol scare.

When seven people died from cyanide poisoning laced in Tylenol capsules, Johnson & Johnson moved immediately to withdraw more than $100 million worth of product from the shelves and to issue full-page warnings in every major newspaper in the United States.

Johnson & Johnson removed all Tylenol products from the marketplace, not just the capsules that had been implicated in the scare. Within five months of the disaster, the company had recovered 70 percent of its market share (35 percent of all pain-relieving remedies). It also "fixed" its product — even though the poisoning was not done at any Tylenol plant or by any Tylenol employee, by introducing tamper-proof caps.

The decision to pull advertising for Tylenol, recall all the bottles, send warnings to health professionals and place warning ads in the nation's news media was made with no hesitation.

James Burke, CEO of Johnson & Johnson at the time, said the company turned to its corporate business philosophy, which they call "Our Credo," to determine how to handle the situation.

Johnson & Johnson's credo begins, "We believe our first responsibility is to the doctors, nurses and patients, to mothers and fathers and all others who use our products and services."

It goes on to name responsibility to employees, then communities and, very last of all, stockholders. But that simple first sentence guides the company. The answer was easy: Pull the Tylenol. All of it.

Once the problem was handled, Johnson & Johnson sent 2,250 sales people to meet with the medical community to support the reintroduction of Tylenol. Two news services found more than 125,000 clippings on the Tylenol story.

And because they were honest to a fault, Tylenol and its parent company, Johnson & Johnson, won the day.

A brand is not a logo or a name. It is not advertising or public relations. It is not even a product or a place. A brand is a promise that you make to your customer. The other side of that coin is the experience that your customers have of you.

If they don't match, then you are in trouble.

Brand promises are intangible, they meet needs and solve problems, they are emotionally based and, most importantly, they belong to your customers.

This true definition of a brand is especially fitting in Hawai'i's case. Hawai'i is a place the whole world knows and loves. A place of staggering beauty and extraordinary gentleness. A place that offers rest and restoration. A place of unique heritage and culture. A place of aloha. A place of health.

This is what most people believe about Hawai'i, and this is Hawai'i's brand promise. And Hawai'i certainly belongs to the people who love her.

So if Hawai'i were Johnson & Johnson and Waikiki were its sub-brand Tylenol? Wouldn't it be great if we had a credo?

Wait a minute. We do.

It's "Ua mau ke ea o ka 'aina i ka pono" — "The life of the land is preserved in righteousness."

Maybe our elected officials ought to start taking it seriously.

Gloria Garvey heads the Brand Strategy Group of Honolulu. She wrote this commentary for The Advertiser.