Do you see the boxes in your college halls? Did you receive a piece of mail with “required by law” for the 2010 census? Marketing for this once-a-decade government survey has been quite extensive; with ads on websites, commercials on televisions, and brochures/fliers on selective locations. The value of the Census is traditionally understood as a way for the government to allocate future funding for various investments; but overall interest has consistently been low for participation. Why would this be?
Well, if you look at governmental allocation of funds for the last twenty and thirty years, it has not always been the most equitable. Some states like New York do not even get a proportionately share of the funding; examples have popped up in the news where infrastructure money has gone to Midwest states from the U.S. Federal Government that would rival New York and California (when the formula for this allocation was on a per person basis). Likewise, embarrassing news have arisen where cities that have 0% chance of terrorism (don’t want to sound harsh, but
If people do not have confidence that a product will work; will all this advertising and marketing be of any value? And beyond this, the “required by law” is a really old gimmick. While you have to fill out the census as required by law, the last case for non-filling was like near half-a-century ago; maybe a poor way to threaten the uneducated.
http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/strategy/e3ie77b4ee401b87ca1ec53cd47a219e61b
The government should have opted to employ Twitter and Facebook to promote the Census. The television advertisements were catchy and appealing, but I think the youth count, particularly on Penn's campus, will be low because of its failure to create an innovative marketing mix.
ReplyDelete..though the legal "mandatory by law", was a creative ploy..about the only thing that caught my eye
ReplyDelete...something that will bring long-term value needs a reputation of success to be convincing...to get the average Joe to participate, you need solid evidence and results to back it up.