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Countering Matthew: The “Florida Now” Playbook

By on October 31st, 2016 — 1:28pm

matthewAs the most dangerous hurricane in 11 years lashed the Sunshine State on October 6th and 7th, VISIT FLORIDA activated a well-rehearsed marketing response that would change the national story and show off Florida as it is post-storm: sunny and ready for visitors.

In short, here’s what has happened:

  • Teams of video journalists, working in cooperation with local destination marketing organizations, fanned out across Florida to stream live look-ins on Facebook and to report and produce 50 new video stories.  “For three weeks, we practiced daily journalism,” said Vice President for Global Brand Susannah Costello, “turning around our eyewitness reports in 24 to 48 hours to emphasize the state’s beautiful vacation destinations up to the moment.”
  • The freshly reported stories are being distributed on VISITFLORIDA.com, on YouTube, onDigital TV, and to all subscribers of Comcast nationally and New York’s Cablevision via Video on Demand.  Further amplification is occurring on VISIT FLORIDA social channels and through its Social Influencers network.
  • A national media buy is targeting likely travelers on Facebook and YouTube.  The Oct. 13-17 initial phase featured popular destination highlight videos and earned an estimated 23.4 million impressions.  The current phase is promoting 13 of the new video stories – with an emphasis on northeast Florida – and is expected to double the audience reach.  The final phase will feature stories reported in the most impacted areas from both Hermine and Matthew.
  • The storytelling blitz also has engaged more than 75 VISIT FLORIDA Partners.

“Florida had not seen a storm like Hurricane Matthew since 2005,” said VISIT FLORIDA President and CEO Will Seccombe, “but lessons from crises such as the oil spill have informed and fine-tuned our response.”

Before, during and in the immediate aftermath of Matthew, the VISIT FLORIDA Public Relations team communicated daily with DMOs to ensure consumer-first messaging.  Social Media directed industry Partners inside and outside Matthew’s path to tag social posts using #FloridaNow and in the process build trust among our followers.

Sometimes the crisis plan required a quick pivot.  The Digital team beefed up the Emergency Accommodations Module that aids evacuees by engaging reservations giant Expedia and linking to Airbnb’s disaster solution.

By Oct. 10, when the orange alert ribbon was removed from VISITFLORIDA.com, Hurricane Matthew had been a bad-news national story for 10 days.  Repetitive visuals flooded television and computer screens: Matthew’s storm bands covering half of Florida; water rushing through Flagler Hall; sections of A1A carried off by the ocean.  The cascading questions and likely conclusions followed for national viewers: Where is St. Augustine?  Disney, Universal and SeaWorld are closed?  That storm must be everywhere.

Research confirmed that Hurricane Matthew rivaled the presidential election for public awareness.  Nielsen conservatively estimated the cost of the around-the-clock media coverage at $40 million.  That’s what the Florida tourism industry was up against.

Richard Goldman, President and CEO of the St. Augustine, Ponte Vedra and The Beaches Visitors and Convention Bureau, spoke to the reality and the misperception.  “Flood waters were gone in five hours,” Goldman said, “but the awareness and perceptions of those pictures persisted and went viral.”

“Initially, you announce that you’re open for business,” Will Seccombe said. “But then you have to prove it.  The oil spill taught us that consumers trust the recommendations of strangers more than they trust official messaging or advertising.  So we needed to show them a story – or many stories – so they could see for themselves.”

Once Hurricane Matthew left the state, a cavalry of reporters got to work in Miami and the Keys, Fort Myers and Captiva, St. Petersburg and Tampa, Pensacola and Destin, and the most affected areas – Flagler, St. Johns and Duval counties.  The videos focused on the coasts and used drone and helicopter footage to emphasize Florida’s panoramic beauty.  The streaming digicasts on Facebook Live celebrated iconic destinations and experiences in real time.  A media buy with Facebook and Google exponentially increased the reach of the storytelling.

“The first thing was to get the rest of the state back online fast,” Susannah Costello said. “And with social targeting we didn’t have to tell everyone in the world that Florida was open, we just had to tell the ones who wanted to travel.”

Will Seccombe and Carol Dover, President and CEO of the Florida Restaurant & Lodging Association, led media and industry events around the state.  Florida Gov. Rick Scott hailed Florida’s resilience and invited visitors in a press conference in St. Augustine.

VISIT FLORIDA’s Industry Relations team offered free services to businesses in the 55 counties affected by hurricanes Hermine and Matthew.  Heathcote Botanical Gardens in Fort Pierce – incidentally, home to the nation’s largest public collection of subtropical Bonsai – is one of several to become a Small Business Partner for free through April 30, 2017.

“I know the value of VISIT FLORIDA and what it does to help us leverage limited dollars and reach the cultural visitor,” said Diane Kimes, the Gardens’ new Executive Director. “VISIT FLORIDA made it easy for us to take advantage of this important offer.”

In a future Sunshine Matters post, we will report the audience impact for all of this work, but already the coordinated response has made a difference.

“The social amplification of post-hurricane images using the hashtags #FloridaNow and #StAugustineStrong helped dispel the misperceptions about our area,” Richard Goldman said.  “Many of our businesses, especially our lodging businesses, are back on pace from before the storm.”


Kevin McGeever
Senior Editor
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