Close

Research Update: Live Boricua Continues to Stand out in the Market

Monday, March 10, 2025 Research

Live Boricua reaches 54% recall, surpassing market standards

Discover Puerto Rico launched “Live Boricua” in May 2022, and today, it continues to generate some of the highest ratings among all destination marketing campaigns.

Ad recall measures how well an advertisement is remembered by viewers and is often used as a metric to gauge the effectiveness of an ad campaign. It is typically calculated by surveying viewers after they have been exposed to an ad.

The first wave of surveys took place midway through the 2024 calendar year to understand the first two quarters and the launch of Live Boricua 3.0 in March, while the second wave, conducted in January 2025, captured the full 2024 calendar year awareness.

Looking at both waves, overall awareness increased by six points to 54%, while the industry benchmark is around 40%. According to Strategic Marketing Research and Insights (SMARI), "given the fragmentation of consumer behavior and how they consume media, this is going to be about tops whenever we're looking at market potential models and campaigns providing this kind of aspirational reach, Discover Puerto Rico reaching 54% of this highly targeted audience is very successful".

An award-winning campaign

Paid media ad recall reaches 54% of target market

They not only recognize the campaign but are also inspired to take action

In addition to testing how effectively a message is communicated, determining if the advertisements successfully generated action, such as driving people to learn more or visit a destination, also contributes to campaign effectiveness.

Since it is more difficult to motivate a consumer to act than it is to communicate a message, the impact ratings SMARInsights developed are reflective of this slightly more difficult goal. Based on a 5-point scale, the average rating for impacting consumer attitudes and behavior is 3.7, with campaigns in the top 10% generating a rating of 4.0.

Both iterations of the campaign, Live Boricua 2.0 and Live Boricua 3.0, score over 4.0, placing them in the top 10% of DMO campaigns tested in driving people to learn more about Puerto Rico and want to visit.

Additionally, virtually all the demographic groups analyzed (age, income, race/ethnicity, identity) rated these aspects over 4.0, underscoring the campaign's effectiveness.

LIVE BORICUA PERFORMS IN TOP 10% OF DMOs tested in driving interest & visitation

It dramatically improves the destination's positive perception

The Live Boricua campaign also improves the destination’s competitive position in comparison to the pre-identified competitive set.

Assuming that unaware ratings of the perception of Puerto Rico is what its competitive position would be without media investment, we see that Puerto Rico placement in this competitive set is in the bottom tier, at 40%, just above Dominican Republic and Colombia.

However, among those AWARE of the campaign, Puerto Rico's perception improves to 58%. With this increase from aware consumers, Puerto Rico’s position within the competitive set rates second to the Caribbean.

This reaffirms the importance of continued media investment in the Live Boricua campaign to build on the strong evolution of brand health KPIs which typically take decades to move.

paid media's impact on perception of Puerto Rico

Among the most likely Caribbean destinations for travelers to visit

Of the destinations in the competitive set, the Caribbean region overall leads in KPIs, including likelihood to visit within the next 12 months.

Without paid media, Puerto Rico visitation would be second to last among the competitive set. However, because there is recall of the media investment. Puerto Rico rates third in consumers being likely to visit.

The lift in likelihood to visit from unaware to aware consumers was the highest in the Miami/Ft. Lauderdale (+29ppts), Dallas ( +24ppts), Houston (+22ppts), and New York (+19ppts) markets.

Find more Research Updates Here

Paid media’s impact on likelihood to visit Puerto Rico