National State Tourism Directors Mercury Awards > Public Relations Campaign

#CoverTheProgress

About This Entry:

In September 2017, Hurricane Maria destroyed Puerto Rico. One year later, the island braced for another crisis: 90% of anniversary coverage for disasters is negative. To counteract this, we challenged media to #CoverTheProgress instead. We returned to a storm-ravaged town where residents painted an S.O.S. message that became viral, and replaced the message with: “Bienvenidos!” (Welcome).

With this campaign we aimed to:
• Influence the tone and nature of global broadcast, print and online media coverage of Puerto Rico around the high profile one-year anniversary of Hurricane Maria
• Discourage the world’s media from rehashing the devastation of the hurricane, which could discourage tourism.
• Create awareness that Puerto Rico was back in business and ready for tourism.
• Drive positive recommendations and reviews of the island by influential travel industry media.

Given that Puerto Rico is a destination that attracts audiences of all different ages, genders, religions, national and ethnic groupings, our campaign aimed to influencer the influencer, to reach these audiences. Research from the World Travel and Tourism Council shows that travelers stay away from a destination after a natural disaster for up to 23.8 months, so we also decided early on in our communications planning to zero in a new subset of travelers we discovered through research that are motivated to travel to make and economic difference.

This was uncovered via an online survey conducted by YouGov in May 2018. We uncovered that Americans are happy when their vacation dollars support the local community of a destination. In fact, 63 percent of Americans actively think about how the money they spend on vacation impacts local communities, so we took advantage of this passion point as well to ensure we were driving the right travelers to Puerto Rico.

Campaign Strategy:

We chose to zero in on the most iconic — and viral — image from original Hurricane Maria coverage. It was the disturbing S.O.S. image drawn on the street in storm-ravaged Humacao, alerting passing aircraft to their dire situation.
What if this single image was our trigger to make a statement? What if we revisited the same residents on the same street to capture both their current condition and Puerto Rico’s strong tourism progress? What if we gave the media the “money shot” it needed to tell our story of progress instead of a story of the former destruction?
In a bold move, we decided to directly challenge the media to take responsibility for the tone of its Puerto Rico coverage around the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Maria given how much it can influence perception, which impacts tourism. #CoverTheProgress would demand fair, forward-looking coverage of Puerto Rico’s tourism industry, and the resilient people whose future was at stake. We would be the first hurricane-ravaged destination to defy the usual negative coverage around milestone hurricane anniversaries – because in truth, so much progress had been made.
The eye of our strategy would be the iconic image of that recovery: the same devastated intersection in Humacao was no longer a call for help but an uplifting story and an invitation to visit: Bienvenidos (meaning Welcome!)
#CoverTheProgress wouldn’t attempt to sugarcoat what happened. But, we would shine the media’s cameras on the true stories and scenes of the resilient people who have brought the island back to life, and welcome tourists, once again, with open arms. And we’d ignite a ground movement.

Results:

Budget $297,666

We put Puerto Rico back on the map in record time. 2019 Q1 lodging demand is on par with 2017 Q1 levels just fourteen months post-hurricane Maria, signaling an unprecedented pace of recovery for a destination. Total demand for independent rentals is up 72 percent from 2017 Q1 levels, underscoring a large growth in visitors. Forecast for the rest of the year looks promising as the remainder of 2019 is booking 24.1 percent higher than 2018 levels. This is expected to continue to rise as the average booking to arrival window is approximately 2.5 months.

• 2019 Q1 leads and bookings in the Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Events (MICE) space far surpass past 3-year and 5-year averages.
• San Juan International Airport (SJU) saw a 23.8% year-over-year increase in air traffic in the first quarter of 2019 compared to the first three months of 2018.
• January 2019 cruise numbers reflect an increase from previous years of 28.9% of visitors to the port as well a 56.6% increase in homeport cruise passengers compared to January 2018.
• Demand for travel packages to Puerto Rico increased 440% in Q4 of 2018

Puerto Rico has been included as a top destination in 22 leading travel and lifestyle media, and was named #1 place to go in 2019 by The New York Times
Our campaign effectively influenced media coverage to prevent media history from repeating itself.
• While barely 10% of most disaster anniversary coverage is positive, ours was 70% positive (15% neutral and less than 15% negative). We’d practically achieved a “180.”
• Positive conversation surrounding Puerto Rico tourism grew from 50% in July to 80% post-anniversary in December.
• The most popular anniversary media themes became ‘Open for Business’ with facilities ‘better than ever.’

We influenced traveler perceptions:
Our studies showed 23% improvement in positive perception of Puerto Rico in one year.
Roughly 50% of travelers surveyed would somewhat/very likely consider visiting.

And the world’s media have #CoveredTheProgress.
#CoverTheProgress anniversary campaign coverage generated 1B earned media and social impressions in four months -- producing hundreds of positive headlines.

Why This Is A Finalist: 

Puerto Rico had a well-defined approach and deliverables, and incredibly strong results were reported. They had a great strategy for discussing a sensitive issue like hurricanes and overcoming assumed objectives rather than hiding from the issue. The tactics were very good and creativity was excellent.