Hurricanes?

Dominican Republic leverages digital tools to show itself in all its glory

In the wake of Hurricanes Irma and Maria, Newlink countered misperceptions about conditions in the Dominican Republic with the campaign #RepúblicaDominicanaLIVE and achieved the following outcomes:

+10.8

million impressions

+1.3

million interactions

+7.5

million in reach

Objective

After two Category 5 hurricanes –Irma and Maria– swept through the Caribbean, many tourists decided to cancel their flights and change their travel destination due to concerns about the damage the Dominican Republic may have suffered.

The country’s Tourism Ministry (MITUR) decided to inform the rest of the world that the Dominican Republic had not been affected in the slightest by the hurricanes and that the tourism sector was operating as usual.

Solution

To address the situation, Newlink’s digital team created an online campaign that leveraged a key feature of today’s social platforms: the Facebook Live format. The goal of the campaign was to communicate in a dynamic and original fashion and provide a “real-time” look at the excellent conditions in the country, which was ready to receive tourists in the wake of the hurricanes. That was the genesis of the #RepúblicaDominicanaLIVE idea.

Execution

In cooperation with our production team, we sent camera crews to the Dominican Republic’s leading tourist sites so they could document conditions in the Caribbean nation and interview people in those places.

As part of the campaign, we created a main video known as “República Dominicana LIVE” and a series of capsules showing each tourist locale (La Romana, Punta Cana, Samaná, Santo Domingo, and Puerto Plata). We then created some short videos for distribution on social platforms aimed at showing the excellent conditions in the country and countering misperceptions about its status in the wake of the hurricanes.

Outcomes

The campaign was a total success for MITUR and the Dominican Republic because it made more would-be tourists interested in traveling to the country.

The campaign reached the desired audience with a highly unexpected amount of reach and interaction and attracted people who did not know much about the country. The audience’s response to the content was very positive, leading to millions of impressions and thousands of “shares,” “likes,” and comments.