SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico\u2014There was no playbook for the advertising and media community in Puerto Rico to help itself\u2014much less consumers\u2014deal with Hurricane Maria in 2017. But until such a template exists, the lessons related by AT&T, Hearts & Science, Procter & Gamble and Telemundo at Beet Retreat 2018 provide more than an ample starting place for the future.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Beet.TV\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe media landscape was basically starting over again,\u201d Andres Claudio, MD of Hearts & Science\/Omnicom, Puerto Rico, said during a Beet Retreat session<\/a> titled Puerto Rico Media Transformed by Hurricane Maria and moderated by former GroupM executive Phil Cowdell<\/a>. \u201cImagine in New York City if you have no power, no signals, no cell phones, nothing. At least you have another state around you.\u201d<\/p>\n While brands have a responsibility to understand consumer needs, \u201cwe have a social responsibility\u201d as well, said Melissa Burgos<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat 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,\u201d said Burgos.<\/p>\n \u201cBasically we were in the dark ages\u201d 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.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of health issues related to using non-purified water to clean your clothes,\u201d 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<\/a> community service from the mainland. \u201cWe decided to create our own asset\u201d 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.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s incredible the reaction of the people,\u201d said Hernandez<\/a>. \u201cYou 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Telemundo had been broadcasting \u201call the way up to the storm\u201d 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. \u201cWhen 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,\u201d said Cancela<\/a>. Reporting news live via Facebook was \u201cfor four days how we were broadcasting. Radio became the media of the day for a number of months.\u201d<\/p>\n 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 \u201ca great job in bringing their panel back on track. Without that measurement, our currency was zero and it wasn\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n 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, \u201cwe had children at home doing nothing, so there was a need to educate or entertain those children.\u201d<\/p>\n 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. \u201cThey were dying for information,\u201d Burgos said.<\/p>\n