Individually they each have their own community-based pages tying back to Puerto Rico, but together in solidarity, they are using their social media influence to promote and encourage other Latin creators with their newest project, La Formula Media Group. In our interview this past week, I spoke with William Rivera, David Pagan, and David Aviles about the purpose of La Formula Media Group. We also discussed how they’ve used their passion and the power of social media to give back to their Puerto Rican communities.
After Puerto Rico faced the crippling destruction of Hurricane Maria in 2017, William Rivera knew that he needed to do something to help the people suffering on his island.
Rivera explained how after Hurricane Maria, there was so much confusion and misinformation being spread about the state of Puerto Rico and its inhabitants. “After the hurricane,” said Rivera, “there was a lack of communication. We were all desperate just to be able to do something. I’m sitting in Florida, looking at the little images we were able to get from the news, and I was desperate to help.
“I had never done anything on social media prior to that,” Rivera continued, “and I saw that a lot of the information was coming from social media, from people on the ground. So, I decided to do the same. I started my first page, PR Strong Wepa @prstrongwepa. I was totally motivated by the need at the time to get more information out there.”
Though the goals of @prstrongwepa have changed based on Puerto Rico’s most current needs, starting this social media brand gave Rivera a platform to spread verified information and cultural awareness. In addition to @prstrongwepa, Rivera also started another social media page called Boricua Shabby Chic @boricuashabbychic to promote Boricua artists.
After the series of earthquakes that hit Puerto Rico in 2020, Rivera knew he could reach more people and spread more information by partnering with other influencers and Puerto Rican pages. What started out as a couple of DMs, ended up being a huge group of Puerto Rican influencers coming together to help their community.
One of the first people to respond to Rivera’s DM was David Aviles of Puerto Rican Flags Up @puertoricanflagsup. Aviles has been spreading information and awareness about Puerto Rican culture with his community-based organization and page, @puertoricanflagsup, for over a decade now.
What started as a fun project gradually grew into an avenue for fundraisers and community outreach where he lives in the Bronx. In 2017 when Hurricane Maria hit, Puerto Rican Flags Up had grown a following and a community of other organizations wanting to send relief to the island during that difficult time. They were able to send multiple supply containers to the island after Hurricane Maria and after the earthquakes in 2020.
Aviles recalled being thrilled when Rivera reached out to him. He said, “I am a true believer in unity. We have more power united than we do divided. I’m an advocate for inclusion, and so that was the beginning of PRSMaRT (Puerto Rico Social Media and Relief Team).”
Aviles and Rivera’s initial collaboration on PRSMaRT was partnering with Helping Hands for Puerto Rico. Through this partnership, they were able to do fundraisers and PSA videos with different celebrities and industry personalities. More recently, PRSMaRT did a fundraiser to raise over $70,000 for The Helping Hands for Puerto Rico and other non-profits after Hurricane Fiona in 2022.
When William Rivera was discussing their mission for PRSMart, he said this: “We’re all about giving back, promoting, doing what we can to help our people rise. So, if you’re a small business owner, if you’re a non-profit, if there’s anything we can do to help you grow, then we’re going to do that.”
While Rivera and Aviles continued growing their social media presence, they stumbled upon someone who would help expand their outreach even more, David Pagan.
Pagan started Latin Night Live, the only live Latin show in downtown Orlando. On Latin Nights at the Night Shade Lounge, Pagan would host several benefit concerts and community events for different non-profits. While he was searching for other Latin pages on Instagram one day, he came across Rivera and Aviles’s organizations.
“I started following a lot of Latin pages and found @prstrongwepa and @puertoricanflagsup,” Pagan said. “I could tell by their pages what they believed in, and they were the ones that resonated with me. Then, when it became known that I attached a non-profit to each of my events and we were doing a turkey drive in November, Aviles found out about the shortage of turkeys we were having down here. He immediately jumped on board and started promoting it.
“He said we couldn’t have that happening and asked me how much we needed,” Pagan continued. “I had never met this man face-to-face at that point, but he started supporting it, and some of his followers even started to share it and support it on their own networks. So, we were able to supply more than the 200 turkeys that were needed. We gave people turkeys and a whole bunch of other stuff, and it all came together because of the power of social media and being able to find your own tribe.”
Shortly after Pagan connected with Aviles, Rivera came to Latin Night and got to meet Pagan face-to-face. There they discussed their mutual goals of helping Puerto Rico and their communities. In our interview, Pagan explained that it didn’t take long for them to realize, that with David Aviles’s help, the three of them could get a lot done if they stuck together.
Once they got together, they were always looking for more ways to help Puerto Rico. Through their joint efforts, they’ve been able to help and contribute to several non-profits including Mi Patria, Helping Hands for Puerto Rico, and the Roberto Clemente Foundation, to name a few.
Across their different pages and outreaches, they’ve been able to partner with several organizations, celebrities, athletes, and influencers. Some of their favorites include,
Luiz Guzman, the New York Jets, FIFA, Dean Huertas, Frankie Negron, Crazy Legs, John Leguizamo, Fat Joe, Team Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico Nation, and many others.
When Hurricane Fiona hit Puerto Rico in September of 2022, William Rivera, David Aviles, and David Pagan, along with many other influencers, were able to come together and donate to Mi Patria, a non-profit based in Puerto Rico.
They were grateful to be able to send essential relief and make a difference with their platforms. One of their united goals is to educate and spread verified information from reputable sources, so they chose a non-profit they knew their followers could trust. David Pagan commented, “For Mi Patria, we were really able to move mountains. Because of social media and technology, we were able to raise funds and get it to them immediately.”
In our interview, David Aviles mentioned that there has been so much more unity between Puerto Ricans on the island and Puerto Ricans here in America since they’ve been fighting so hard to send relief and support when Puerto Rico has needed it.
“Through social media, Puerto Ricans got together and fought to send stuff to Puerto Rico— fought to send water, send food, send any type of relief,” Aviles said. “In Puerto Rico, they started seeing that the relief wasn’t coming from their government, it was coming from their own people, and social media played a big part in that.”
After seeing the success they’ve seen in community outreach and various fundraisers, they wanted to take their mission to the next level, and with their combined and very large social media following, they became interested in helping Latin creators and influencers. Pagan explained, “We started looking at these social media influencers. They’re bigger than some of these athletes. They’re bigger than some of these movie stars. They’re celebrities in their own right, but why are some of them struggling?
“We just started thinking that we receive so much from them, and the world certainly takes a lot from them, yet they are still struggling,” he continued. “That’s kind of the story of Puerto Rico as a whole, right? It’s beautiful. It has so much to offer, so why in the world does it have the issues that it has? So, we kind of took it personally, and we kicked around the idea of what it would look like if we joined forces, because all the community really needs is to be connected to each other and to the island again. They can accomplish a lot just through that connection, but there’s no real outlet or platform for the culture.”
Without a highly effective outlet for Puerto Rican and other Latino creatives, Rivera, Aviles, and Pagan became passionate about creating opportunities for those who didn’t have them. Their desire to build Latin creators and artists is what inspired their collaboration on La Formula Media Group @laformulamediagroup.
Their vision for La Formula Media Group really started taking shape after they completed one of their biggest accomplishments of 2022: participating in the National Puerto Rican Day Parade in New York City where they had the first-ever Puerto Rican Flags Up Social Media Influencer Float rolling down 5th Avenue. The entire mission of the float was to get together as many Puerto Rican influencers as possible to join in on the festivities and celebrate being Puerto Rican, and with over 1.5 million Puerto Ricans in attendance, the parade was a success.
Some creators that joined them on the Puerto Rican Flags Up Social Media Influencer float were
Dean Huertas, “BeatrizCookingnVibez,” BabyKEL, Cooking con Omi, IvelissaRiendoyComiendo, and Rebecca Huffman, to name a few.
Rivera, Aviles, and Pagan all excitedly recalled the experience, grateful for their culture and community. Aviles was explaining how the parade is amazing every year, decked out in Puerto Rican pride.
“Even in Puerto Rico they’ll party,” Aviles explained, “but you won’t see the flag the way you see it on Fifth Avenue marching down in a float. Flags are everywhere: it’s painted on our windows; it’s on our cars; it’s on our animals; it’s on all of us. And that’s our statement, that we haven’t lost our culture. We’re going to keep our culture alive. It doesn’t matter where we are.”
One of the biggest takeaways for Rivera, Aviles, and Pagon was meeting all these Latino creatives from around the world, all coming together to celebrate their heritage. All three of these men have such a strong desire to give back to their community.
“We see it. We see the talent,” said William Rivera. “We see people that may be sitting on the edge of incredible success, but just don’t have that team behind them. It’s all social media since
it’s the biggest avenue for promotions. So based on our experiences and what major successes we’ve seen with the non-profits and our own personal pages, we just want to be able to grow it and continue to give back.”
With Pagan’s background in social media and marketing and their collective connections, they made La Formula Media Group to represent and support Puerto Rican influencers and creatives, and they have been successfully doing just that.
In addition to their work with La Formula Media, Rivera, Aviles, and Pagan are planning big things for 2023. While they continue to work on growing their own individual platforms, David Pagan will continue hosting Latin Night Live in downtown Orlando to continue campaigning and working towards the next steps toward the future. One of their projects, Formula Plus, is launching soon and is sure to be a game-changer for anyone looking for more influence and exposure.
