How Florida ad agencies kept business going during Hurricane Milton

Several Florida advertising agencies have spent recent weeks preparing for Hurricane Milton, which made landfall near Siesta Key on Wednesday as a Category 3 storm, mere weeks after the state was ravaged by Hurricane Helene. Ad Age spoke with three such agencies—Dunn&Co., PPK and FKQ—about how the storm affected them. All three agencies said all of their employees are safe and accounted for. For Dunn&Co., a full-service shop based in Tampa, prepping began around April or May, before hurricane season. “Hurricanes are something that we plan for every year,” said Kamden Kuhn, executive VP of strategy at Dunn&Co. “We have a planning meeting annually to make sure that we’d be ready should that happen.” Dunn&Co., which usually requires employees to come to the office three days a week, allowed its 50 local staffers to work remotely the week before Hurricane Milton, giving those who needed to evacuate the opportunity to do so. Agency Review Tracker Stay up to date with the latest account reviews Click here The agency’s operations team also started “rerouting” work to available or fully remote employees, helping manage clients’ needs, Kuhn said. “Some of our clients are in Florida, but we have many clients who are not in Florida, and they still have campaigns that need to run this week,” she said. “They don't stop because there was a hurricane.” Not everything could be salvaged. The NHL’s Tampa Bay Lightning, one of Dunn&Co.’s top clients, had to pause paid media efforts—which had already been trafficked—to account for the storm and the postponement of a Saturday game against the Carolina Hurricanes. One of Dunn&Co.’s billboards featuring Lightning goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy (seen in the post below) was also destroyed during the storm—though the agency plans to rebuild it. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Andrei Vasilevskiy (@andreivasilevskiy88) Before Milton struck, Dunn&Co. moved critical data and information onto a backup drive, which it then transported to a safe location. It also established an emergency text message channel, where it could send updates to employees. “We’ve had that in place for a couple of years. We use it really specifically for hurricanes, and maybe even more so this time, because I think—this is sort of a guess—that [between] 80% to 90% of our employees could be without power right now at their homes,” Kuhn said. Over 2 million customers were without power in Florida on Friday, according to utility tracker Find Energy. Dunn&Co.’s office, a cigar factory that it recently restored (above), “lost five windows, and rain was actually coming into the building during the hurricane,” Kuhn said. “So there was some water damage, but it’s not significant.” The agency also moved sensitive equipment to the top of the building, such as its camera equipment. Dunn&Co. is considering investing in automatic storm shutters for the future, Kuhn said. The hurricane, she said, also presented some other learnings. “It restores your faith in humanity a bit because you see everybody helping each other, and the community really comes together to put the city back together,” Kuhn said. While Tampa Bay-based PPK’s office had minimal water damage, President Garrett Garcia estimated that 30%-40% of its employees sustained water damage or flooding in their homes. The agency is currently operating remotely. PPK’s executive team also formed a GoFundMe to provide financial relief to employees who have been affected by Hurricane Helene and Milton. “These funds will be disbursed to PPK team members that have flooding in their homes to cover costs of these damages, and to cover deductibles for damage to their vehicles by flooding or debris falling,” the page reads. A spokesperson for FKQ, a full-service agency headquartered in Clearwater, Florida, said in an email it has a dedicated hurricane committee “that tracks storms, provides alerts and resources to our employees.” “Since centralizing our operations to our current headquarters in Florida during the late 1980s, we’ve seen over 80 hurricanes and tropical storms come through the state,” the spokesperson added. “So needless to say, we’ve had a strong hurricane plan in place for decades.” The agency’s headquarters sustained some water and wind damage from Milton and Helene, but it’s already in the process of rebuilding. Contributing: Brian Bonilla

How Florida ad agencies kept business going during Hurricane Milton

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