AT&T used a local meteorologist/social influencer to help inform and people prepare for the hurricane, while providing journalists with free WiFi data cards afterward and using satellite television programming time to inform children sidelined by school shutdowns. P&G provided free mobile laundry services so that people had clean clothes to wear. Telemundo took to using a live Facebook feed to communicate news developments while hosting gatherings of friends and competitors alike in the industry.

Beet.TV’s efforts to galvanize support for Puerto Rico relief efforts continue on February 5 at Xandr/AT&T in Manhattan. Accompanied by advertising and media executives, the program will explore fund-raising and other charitable initiatives to further support the Boys & Girls Clubs of Puerto Rico.

“The media landscape was basically starting over again,” Andres Claudio, MD of Hearts & Science/Omnicom, Puerto Rico, said during a Beet Retreat session titled Puerto Rico Media Transformed by Hurricane Maria and moderated by former GroupM executive Phil Cowdell. “Imagine in New York City if you have no power, no signals, no cell phones, nothing. At least you have another state around you.”

While brands have a responsibility to understand consumer needs, “we have a social responsibility” as well, said Melissa Burgos, Marketing Director, USVI/Puerto Rico, AT&T Mobility. In the case of Maria, that responsibility started with the mobile service company helping people prepare for what lay ahead. AT&T leveraged the effort by using a local meteorologist who had a substantial social media following.

“What we did not expect, besides the fact of what happened after the hurricane, was that influencer became the top trending person within all possible influencers,” said Burgos.

“Basically we were in the dark ages” in terms of the ability to communicate through everyday media, with the exception of AM radio, said Freddie Hernandez, Site Leader, P&G Puerto Rico. When the company saw images of people washing their clothes in rivers and other waterways, P&G knew it had to do something.

“There’s a lot of health issues related to using non-purified water to clean your clothes,” said Hernandez. And while P&G had learned from such U.S. natural disasters as hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, it had no logistical way to bring its Tide Loads of Hope community service from the mainland. “We decided to create our own asset” in the form of a Coach bus transformed into a laundromat with 12 combo units of washing and drying machines that assisted more than 2,000 families.

“It’s incredible the reaction of the people,” said Hernandez. “You take for granted what you have. People were just crying when they would see the bus getting to a town and people would be wearing clean clothes for the first time in about three weeks.”

Telemundo had been broadcasting “all the way up to the storm” but was forced to shut down early on the first morning that Maria made landfall, according to Jose Cancela, President of Telemundo/NBCU Puerto Rico. “When we cranked back up we were really broadcasting to the States because there was no power here. Whatever cell phone probably you had you probably used it up,” said Cancela. Reporting news live via Facebook was “for four days how we were broadcasting. Radio became the media of the day for a number of months.”

From the onset of Maria, advertising and media competitors pulled together, initially using Telemundo as a base for meetings. Meanwhile, Cancela credited Nielsen for doing “a great job in bringing their panel back on track. Without that measurement, our currency was zero and it wasn’t until May of this year that they were finally able to bring it on track. But during the whole process, they really kept the broadcast community and the agency community very much informed in getting their panel back up.”

One exception to media outages was satellite TV for those fortunate to have a source of electricity, said Burgos. Since all schools were either shut down, destroyed or being used for community services, “we had children at home doing nothing, so there was a need to educate or entertain those children.”

So AT&T organized a tour of education professionals under the auspices of DirecTV and used programming time to provide useful content to kids in 10 different towns. “They were dying for information,” Burgos said.

This video was produced in San Juan, Puerto Rico at the Beet.TV executive retreat. Please find more videos from the series on this page. The Beet Retreat was presented by NCC along with Amobee, Dish Media, Oath and Google.

After Maria struck, “there was no electricity, there was no phone, there was no cable,” says Freddie Hernandez. “So we undusted the radio book and started using radio and outdoor as the main vehicles to really communicate with our consumers.”

At Beet Retreat 2018 in San Juan from Nov. 28-30, there will be a special session titled Lessons Learned: Hurricane Maria’s Impact on the Media Industry of Puerto Rico. Among other topics, Hernandez and other executives will discuss how in the absence of broadband advertisers turned to over-the-air broadcasting along with traditional media like outdoor, radio and print.

In this interview with Beet.TV conducted on the island, Hernandez explains how many Puerto Ricans have been cutting their cable cords and migrating to digital services like online shopping after their experiences in dealing with the devastation wrought by Maria.

“We were on the verge of re-launching our media investment, trying to look into digital and how things are changing with Millennials and how media is being consumed on the island,” Hernandez recalls. “It doesn’t necessarily follow how it is consumed in the States and other developed areas as we’re lagging a little bit behind. But we know that we need to get into the digital arena.”

Having to rely on traditional media “was a great exercise to really acknowledge that radio is still there. And we sometimes take it for granted and focus so much in digital, in mobile and other platforms that we forget about radio. It was very helpful for us,” Hernandez explains. “After that we have seen a quantum leap in terms of the media consumption by the consumers here in Puerto Rico.”

Lacking cable television and electricity, many residents migrated to phones and wireless communications where possible.

“So we’re seeing a lot of movement in that direction and you can see in the trends of people not renewing their cable system and looking at other options to consume media. So we are really on the verge of understanding what are the different venues that people are using to really change,” Hernandez says.

Before Maria there was one online grocery provider. “We have three now and they are expanding aggressively because consumers are ready to embrace what digital can bring to their lives and how they can do better by using this technology advances that we have available.”

P&G has customers who are doing 10% of their business “with online selling that was nonexistent a year ago. It’s a movement that is moving very fast and it’s here to stay. So we need to make sure that we get ahead of the curve and start looking at what are the options we can tackle…try to be the number one investing in technology, investing in venues that are going to help us continue leading the market in the categories that we compete in.”

Joining Hernandez to discuss media in Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Maria will be Melissa Burgos, Marketing Director USVI/Puerto Rico, AT&T Mobility; Jose Cancela, President, Telemundo/NBCUniversal Puerto Rico; and Andres Claudio, General Manager, Hearts & Science, Puerto Rico. The session will be moderated by Phil Cowdell, President of Client Services at GroupM, who has been deeply involved with Puerto Rico relief and recovery.

The session will conclude with a briefing by Olga Ramos, President of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Puerto Rico, who will present data on the impact of the storm on the island’s youth and her organizations’ efforts to improve their future.