<DOC>
[106th Congress House Hearings]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office via GPO Access]
[DOCID: f:61550.wais]
OVERSIGHT OF THE 2000 CENSUS: EXAMINING THE CENSUS BUREAU'S ADVERTISING
CAMPAIGN
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CENSUS
of the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JULY 27, 1999
__________
Serial No. 106-65
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.house.gov/reform
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
61-550 CC WASHINGTON : 2000
COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM
DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman
BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland TOM LANTOS, California
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut ROBERT E. WISE, Jr., West Virginia
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
STEPHEN HORN, California PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
JOHN L. MICA, Florida PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii
THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
DAVID M. McINTOSH, Indiana ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana DC
JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
MARSHALL ``MARK'' SANFORD, South DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
Carolina ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois
BOB BARR, Georgia DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
DAN MILLER, Florida JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts
ASA HUTCHINSON, Arkansas JIM TURNER, Texas
LEE TERRY, Nebraska THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine
JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois HAROLD E. FORD, Jr., Tennessee
GREG WALDEN, Oregon JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois
DOUG OSE, California ------
PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
HELEN CHENOWETH, Idaho (Independent)
DAVID VITTER, Louisiana
Kevin Binger, Staff Director
Daniel R. Moll, Deputy Staff Director
David A. Kass, Deputy Counsel and Parliamentarian
Carla J. Martin, Chief Clerk
Phil Schiliro, Minority Staff Director
------
Subcommittee on the Census
DAN MILLER, Florida, Chairman
THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana HAROLD E. FORD, Jr., Tennessee
------ ------
Ex Officio
DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
Thomas W. Brierton, Staff Director
Lara Chamberlain, Professional Staff Member
Esther Skelley, Professional Staff Member
David McMillen, Minority Professional Staff Member
Mark Stephenson, Minority Professional Staff Member
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on July 27, 1999.................................... 1
Statement of:
Dukes, Terry, EVP, account managing director, Young and
Rubicam, New York; and Samuel J. Chisholm, chairman and
CEO, the Chisholm-Mingo Group, Inc......................... 40
Prewitt, Kenneth J., Director, Bureau of the Census.......... 15
Zunigha, Curtis, Census Advisory Committee on the American
Indian and Alaska Native Populations....................... 68
Letters, statements, et cetera, submitted for the record by:
Chisholm, Samuel J., chairman and CEO, the Chisholm-Mingo
Group, Inc., prepared statement of......................... 52
Dukes, Terry, EVP, account managing director, Young and
Rubicam, New York, prepared statement of................... 45
Maloney, Hon. Carolyn B., a Representative in Congress from
the State of New York, prepared statement of............... 8
Miller, Hon. Dan, a Representative in Congress from the State
of Florida, prepared statement of.......................... 4
Prewitt, Kenneth J., Director, Bureau of the Census, prepared
statement of............................................... 22
Zunigha, Curtis, Census Advisory Committee on the American
Indian and Alaska Native Populations, prepared statement of 73
OVERSIGHT OF THE 2000 CENSUS: EXAMINING THE CENSUS BUREAU'S ADVERTISING
CAMPAIGN
----------
TUESDAY, JULY 27, 1999
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on the Census,
Committee on Government Reform,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:13 a.m., in
room 2247, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Dan Miller
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Miller, Ryan, Maloney, Davis of
Illinois, and Ford.
Staff present: Jennifer Safavian, chief counsel; Chip
Walker, communications director; Jo Powers, assistant press
secretary; Timothy Maney, chief investigator; Lara Chamberlain
and Esther Skelley, professional staff members; Erin Yeatman,
press secretary; David McMillen and Mark Stephenson, minority
professional staff members; and Jean Gosa, minority staff
assistant.
Mr. Miller. Good morning. The subcommittee will come to
order and we will proceed. Mrs. Maloney is on her way. We will
proceed with opening statements, and then we will proceed with
Dr. Prewitt.
I think today may be a first, the first time the
Subcommittee on the Census has had a hearing to focus solely on
advertising for the upcoming census, for this will be the first
census in which the Census Bureau will use paid advertising to
let America know the importance of being counted. I am excited
about this campaign and fully support it. In fact, I introduced
legislation which would have added $300 million to the
advertising and outreach budget. The Census Bureau has expanded
the advertising program but they have told me that the full
$300 million was not needed. Therefore, in fiscal 2000 the
Census Bureau received nearly $200 million for advertising
promotion and outreach.
Although I am a strong proponent of the advertising and
outreach campaigns, I am also a strong proponent of vigilant
oversight by Congress. Unfortunately, this subcommittee has
experienced some difficulty in getting some information about
the exact expenditures by the Bureau on their advertising and
outreach programs.
Dr. Prewitt, I am sure you are prepared to answer questions
related to the advertising budget. From reviewing your opening
statement, it looks like there is some confusion. I understand
the allocation for the Bureau to be used for marketing
communication and partnerships is $199.5 million. But in your
opening statement you listed $111 million.
Additionally, I would like to know, for example, how much
is being paid to Young and Rubicam and how much is being paid
to the subcontractors. These are tax dollars and the American
people have a right to know. As everyone on this subcommittee
agrees, we must do everything possible to promote awareness in
the census and the importance of being counted. I am a firm
believer in advertising. I have been told that in 1998 there
was an estimated $200 billion spent on advertising in the
United States. If you have a product and you want someone to
buy it, you advertise. Those products can be tangible like cars
or intangible like the political ideas the members of this
subcommittee sell through their own political ads.
Let me, for a minute, touch on the basic civic nature of
the census. I know Dr. Prewitt agrees, as I do, that ideally
people should participate in the census not for the Federal
dollars that it may or may not bring to their communities. We
now know from the General Accounting Office that is a small
amount, less than 1 percent of Federal dollars are actually
tied to the census figures. We hope most people would
participate because the Founding Fathers determined that the
distribution of political power among the States would be
determined by ``an actual enumeration shall be made within 3
years after the first meeting of the Congress of the United
States and within every subsequent term of 10 years in such
manner as they shall direct by law.'' This is what we know
today as the decennial census.
Unfortunately, it has now become necessary to convince
people not only to participate in the census but also to simply
vote on election day. As a public servant, this loss of civic
responsibility disturbs me greatly. Yet, as greatly as I bemoan
the loss of civic responsibility, being a politician I
understand political realities. I know that Young and Rubicam
have conducted focus groups to determine just how we can
motivate people to participate in the census and that the
Constitution and civic responsibility rate on the bottom of the
list in motivating many people to participate.
I would be curious to hear more about this disturbing trend
from our panelists and if there is anything we can do to
promote the civic importance of the census, rather than the
financial gain.
I am also particularly interested in how the ad campaign
will be targeted to the hardest to count in our Nation. After
all, we need to reach the hardest to count if we are to have a
more accurate census than 1990. I know, for example, that some
ads developed for the dress rehearsal on the Menominee
Reservation fell well short of their mark, so much so that the
ads were offensive to the very group they were intended to
motivate. I am interested in what was learned from these
mistakes and what other things you were able to learn from the
three dress rehearsal sites. I would think that had there been
more community involvement, these problems could have been
avoided. I hope today that we will hear how local communities
have been involved in the development of the advertising
strategy. Along these same lines, I understand that the Census
Bureau is paying media specialists in each of the regional
offices. How does the relationship between the media
specialists and Y&R work? I am also interested in the campaign
to reach those in rural areas of the Nation who provide their
own unique enumeration challenges.
Additionally, at today's hearing I would like to focus on
how Y&R intends to localize its ad campaign. We all know and
have discussed many times before the importance of localizing
the census. Whether it is hiring local residents to help count
their communities or community-based advertising, if the Bureau
is not successful in its local outreach, the census will not be
successful.
I look forward to hearing more from our guests today as we
explore the multimillion dollar ad campaign, ``Census 2000:
This is your future, don't leave it blank.'' And now I
recognize the ranking member, Mrs. Maloney.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Dan Miller follows:]
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Mrs. Maloney. I want to thank the chairman for calling this
hearing and tell him how much I have enjoyed working with him.
We have often disagreed on a lot of the merits but it has been
a pleasure working with him on this and many other issues. I
did want to share with him that the Census Monitoring Board had
a meeting in New York City at Young and Rubicam where they went
over the entire ad campaign, and I was fortunate to be there
and to see it. It was very, very encouraging. The
subcontractors also spoke and put forward their presentations.
I know that Young and Rubicam did an award-winning series on
making people aware of abused women that I remember to this
day. It was a magnificent work of talent and commitment. I hope
we will see the same and I believe we will in the ad campaign
that they have put together.
The ad campaign is a tremendous concern to many Members in
my party. They were concerned that it might not be sensitive in
a foreign language to the feelings of the people or to the
Indian reservations, but what I saw was just really inspiring
and I thought it was just terrific and I know we will hear more
about it today.
I have long remarks, as usual, but I am going to just put
them in the record. But I do want to say that we were concerned
when the mail response dropped. It fell from 75 percent in 1980
to 65 in 1990 and it is expected to drop to 60 percent in 2000.
So, we clearly have a problem, and this is one of the main
reasons that the decision was made to mount a very aggressive
paid advertising campaign for the 2000 census to increase this
projected response rate above the 61 percent level. And it is a
significant departure from the past and a very significant
dedication of resources. Well over $100 million will be spent
on advertising. That includes TV, radio, print, outdoor, and I
look forward to hearing more about it.
Let me say at this point, Mr. Chairman, that I am pleased
that you called today's hearing and there are a number of other
issues on which the subcommittee could have hearings and I hope
they also would be addressed. You and your staff had 20 private
briefings with Bureau personnel and made a total of 100--I have
them right here--125 separate requests for information that I
have in my hand, and I think the public has a right to know
about the status of the decennial census and an open hearing on
that issue should be held as another way to provide this
information to the public. Given the differing opinions on the
census operations from within the committee, it would be best
to have a full public hearing on all preparations for the
census so that the American public can hear the facts and
decide for itself how the census is coming.
For example, the results of conducted census dress
rehearsals have been in for some time, yet we have never held a
hearing on them. What was learned from these rehearsals and how
has the Bureau adjusted its plans from the findings of the
rehearsals? We should also have a broader hearing on how the
Census Bureau is progressing toward meeting the milestones for
the 2000 census. We should give the Bureau Director a public
opportunity to keep the Congress informed as we count down to
census day, which is only 249 days away.
I also want to really commend in all sincerity the chairman
and the House leadership on the markup last week of the
Commerce-Justice-State spending bill in the subcommittee. The
majority accepted the consequences for its lawsuit against the
abuse of modern scientific methods by providing the funding
needed to conduct the census with an outdated method. Although
I think it is rather strange or odd to call the entire census
an emergency that was, ``unanticipated spending,'' I am sure
the Director is happy as well as Members of Congress, all of us
who care about getting the money to conduct the census. We
don't care whether it is labeled emergency or not, most of us.
We really need to get the money so we can get the ad campaign
out there and get all the pieces in place to make the census
happen. But we really cannot celebrate. The House funding bill
has a very long way to go before it passes, and the Senate
version of the Commerce-Justice-State bill also passed last
week without the $1.7 billion required by the Republican
lawsuit. Because it has a long way to go, I am very concerned
about how the uncertainty in funding is impacting census
preparations and hope to ask the Director his feelings about
it. Nevertheless, the start in the House is very, very
encouraging and I thank the chairman for his leadership.
The error rate, as we all know, was over 10 percent; 26
million people were miscounted. There were 8.4 million people
missed, 4.4 million people counted twice, and 13 million people
were counted in the wrong place. To make matters worse, the
people missed and the people counted twice were very different.
The people missed were disproportionately minorities, American
Indians, Hispanics, African Americans, and Asians, as well as
the urban rural and poor.
I tell you the people counted twice tended to be fortunate
enough to have two homes, to be affluent, to live in the
suburbs. The majority won its apportionment case in the courts
and as a result, the census is going to cost an extra $1.7
billion. Yet even after spending an extra $1.7 billion and even
after increased efforts are made to count people using means
like this advertising campaign that we are discussing today,
there is one inescapable fact that there will still be a large
undercount if modern scientific methods are not used. Luckily,
we will be getting a much more accurate count for all purposes,
although an apportionment such as redistricting of
congressional seats and State legislative seats and the
distribution of Federal funds since the Supreme Court's
decision allowed the use of modern scientific methods for these
purposes.
Believe it or not, that was the abbreviated form of my
opening statement. I always have a lot to say about the census,
but I always like to hear from the Director and I feel that
this ad campaign is particularly challenging to motivate the
people to want to be counted, to be part of the census that is
coming to us.
Thank you for calling this, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Carolyn B. Maloney
follows:]
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Mr. Miller. Mr. Ryan.
Mr. Ryan. I, too, want to thank you for coming today, Dr.
Prewitt. We had a field hearing in my home district, Racine,
WI, on the census, in which the ranking member and the chairman
came to testify, and what we discussed among many other things
was the fact that in southeastern Wisconsin, I represent a
large, growing constituency of Hispanic Americans. I have been
meeting with a lot of leaders in the Hispanic community to talk
about the census and other things. There is a bit of a fear.
There is some trepidation out there about the participation in
the census. What we have learned from talking to a lot of
leaders in the community, from African-American communities as
well from my area, is that we have to find a good creative way
to address the concerns of the census that people will have
when asked to participate in the census.
So, I am very interested in hearing your remarks on Young
and Rubicam's strategy for addressing these concerns,
especially with Hispanic Americans, to make sure that we get
full participation as much as possible with that. That is
something that I think is vital to ensuring a successful
census, so I hope we can have some good discussion on that.
Also, I want to share my colleague's concerns or her
mention of the fact that this has now become an emergency.
Personally, I don't think we should have done the emergency
designation. I think that is wrong. It is bad budgeting in my
opinion. I serve on the Budget Committee and work on these
issues but I do know that we have to do this. I am a big
supporter of making sure we have the $1.7 billion from the
lawsuit, but I would be interested in your concerns and your
reaction to the fact that this last week was now designated as
emergency spending. That is something I would also like to hear
your reaction toward, and I look forward to hearing the further
panel testimony.
With that, I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Miller. Mr. Davis.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
And I want to thank you, first of all, for convening this
hearing today to examine issues regarding the Census Bureau's
advertising campaign. I think this is a timely hearing because
we are about to undertake an enormous challenge of getting the
most accurate census that we can.
I have always supported the goal of advertising as a way to
increase participation rates in the 2000 census, for we know
that advertising has proven to be an invaluable educational
tool to reach people when used properly and appropriately. The
examples by Philip Morris and Nike are all too familiar. Their
ability to flood markets and draw in potential customers
through advertising has been unmatched. In 1990, we relied
solely on pro bono public service advertising, which failed to
reach many people. One of the lessons learned from 1990 is that
we have to invest money into where we want to get the returns
from. I am pleased to work with all of my colleagues in making
that investment real. While the investment in advertising must
be significant, the overriding goal must be to count every
American citizen. Unfortunately, the approaches used by some
advertising firms, especially those that may not have the
expertise, the experience and the understanding of certain
cultural nuances of different communities and different
population groups, may not be sufficient for reaching
communities uptown.
For example, in the last census for the city of Chicago,
the undercount was 2.4 percent. The undercount, though, for
African Americans was estimated at between 5 and 6 percent. In
short, jingle bells may be effective uptown but may not reach a
soul on the West Side of Chicago. Therefore, our approach in
tactics becomes critical.
I am pleased that the Census Bureau has committed 28
percent of the total advertising budget for small disadvantaged
firms. However, the key remains to ensure that those small
disadvantaged firms have a history and a record of being able
to reach those hard to count, hard to reach populations. I
recount my own experiences of having worked in communities for
years. Oftentimes, people who were getting the money to come to
reach the people came to me to ask me how to reach the people
that they were being paid to reach. I mean, I have trained so
many people over the years who were getting fat until it
becomes humorous at times, when you think about it, because I
am from so and so and so and I am out to do a community
outreach program. Can you tell me how to do it? Well, I mean,
why are you getting paid to do it and not me if I am the one
who knows how to do it.
So, I simply want to make sure, Mr. Chairman, and Mr.
Director, that the firms that we employ in this advertising are
actually people who know something about the communities and
the people that they are trying to reach. And I don't want to
see it just glossed over. I don't want to see the same people
who don't really know what they are doing with these markets
end up with the resources that when the deal goes down, we
still end up with a big undercount.
With that said, I thank you, Mr. Chairman. I look forward
to what you have got to tell us, Mr. Director, and the rest of
those who will testify. Thank you very much.
Mr. Miller. If it is a single vote, let's go over and vote
real quick and come right back and proceed. We would all like
to hear. Sometimes in the hearing you can keep it going. If you
don't know, we will take 10, 15 minutes, whatever it takes to
go over and vote and come back. We will stand in recess till
then.
[Recess.]
Mr. Miller. Now I am sure there will be no more votes for
the rest of this hearing. We have got our one vote out of the
way and we can proceed without interruption. As other Members
are coming back, they said it would be OK to proceed. So, if
you would like to proceed with the opening statement.
[Witness sworn.]
STATEMENT OF KENNETH J. PREWITT, DIRECTOR, BUREAU OF THE CENSUS
Dr. Prewitt. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mrs.
Maloney, Mr. Ryan, Mr. Davis when he returns, we appreciate
this opportunity to appear before you today to discuss issues
related to the paid advertising campaign. I would also like to
sort of do something slightly unusual. As I look around the
room, this is the first time I appear before your committee,
Mr. Chairman, when Mr. Hofeller was not here. I miss him.
Mr. Miller. I will tell him.
Dr. Prewitt. Thank you very much. Since I last testified
before you on June 9, census operations have kicked into full
gear and they are progressing very well and on schedule. Over
180 million questionnaires have already been printed,
representing over half of the total volume. 130 local offices
are open, space has been leased for an additional 380 and the
remaining 10 will be leased later this summer. By the end of
this week, we will begin processing and formatting the address
tape for use in labelling questionnaires. We have issued 32
dress rehearsal evaluations, approximately 22,000 partnerships,
and have about 255 TV, print, radio billboard ads and so forth
now in production, as obviously will be discussed later today.
In your invitation letter, Mr. Chairman, you asked that I
address the process by which we awarded the advertising
contract to Young and Rubicam, the coordination between the
partnership groups and the advertising campaign and the
advertising budget breakdown, and I will address these topics
in that order. First, the process for awarding the contract.
Census 2000 is the first census for which the Bureau has used
paid advertising. From 1950 to 1990, we worked with the
Advertising Council of America to design and disseminate public
service announcements. Based on their own evaluation of the
1990 census advertising, the PSAs did not reach the hard to
count populations in a strategic or effective manner. Ads often
ran at offpeak hours because the decision, of course, rested
with the local television and radio stations. Based upon this
evaluation, the Census Bureau concluded that to reach the right
people with the right message at the right time, it would be
necessary to contract for a paid advertising campaign. Once
this decision was made, we studied the advertising contracts
issued by various other Federal agencies, including those to
the Armed Forces, the U.S. Postal Service, the Treasury
Department, and so forth, and we consulted widely with
professionals in the advertising industry and, of course,
within our own Bureau and with the Commerce Department. We
brought in experts from the U.S. Armed Forces Joint Recruitment
Advertising Program and the advertising firm of J. Walter
Thompson. We then established a source selection procedure,
including, of course, the designation of a source selection
official, who was the Bureau's principal Associate Director for
programs. And we went through the numerous steps to ensure a
fair and open competition.
Many of these steps went beyond the normal Federal contract
requirements. These included publishing the draft statement of
work and holding a presolicitation conference. We issued the
request for proposals using input from industry and response to
our draft statement of work. Proposals were due in late June
1997. We received 11 proposals and my written testimony details
the chronology of events that took place during this period. To
ensure that the best proposal was selected, we also consulted
with the Census Bureau's racial and ethnic advisory committee
and others to identify a diverse group of 11 advisors with
expertise in government contracting, advertising and outreach
to minority audiences. The advisors attended all oral
presentations and briefed the technical evaluation team. That
process reduced our candidates from 11 to 4. We then invited
the four candidates to make oral presentations, which they did
approximately 2 years ago late August 1997 in a quite extensive
process. Based upon those oral presentations, we scored the
performance based upon the criteria in the RFP and the
technical evaluation. Y&R, Young and Rubicam, received the
highest technical score, which was significantly above the
other competitors.
After that, there were additional impact, risk, legal and
administrative reviews, indeed one in particular that I'd like
to mention because it does go to the question that Congressman
Davis has put on the table, which is the special attention to
working with the Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business
Utilization. They found that Y&R had the most aggressive plan
for subcontracting to small, small and disadvantaged and women-
owned firms. We hoped that the creative work, advertising space
or time supplied by these firms will improve the mail response
in communities with historically low mail response rates. Y&R's
plan far exceeded the mandatory requirements for subcontracting
set in the RFP. Indeed, our own goal was higher than the
Federal obligation. Y&R's response to the RFP then set a yet
higher goal than we had set and I think you will hear later
today that they've now exceeded their own goal. So we're well,
well above the marker that we had established for ourselves
with respect to contract subcontracting to the small, small and
disadvantaged, and women's firms.
In late September 1997, the source selection officials
selected Y&R and the award was made on October 10, 1997. We
believe the award process was a great success. It employed
innovative methods, was completed ahead of schedule, and there
were no protests. Success can also be measured by the fact that
Y&R and its partners, the Bravo Group, G&G Advertising, Kang &
Lee, and the Chisholm-Mingo Group and Y&R Puerto Rico have, we
believe, developed an excellent campaign. You'll find in my
written testimony further chronology of these events.
The second question, Mr. Chairman, you addressed to me in
your letter of invitation to appear before you today has to do
with the coordination between the partnership groups and the
advertising campaign. This is an important issue because paid
advertising is just one piece of the Bureau's integrated
marketing strategy for census 2000. In addition to the paid
advertising campaign, the other pieces of the integrated
marketing strategy include partnerships, the direct mail
package, media services, promotions, and special events. Each
of these pieces has its own strengths and by working in concert
will reach, and we hope motivate, everyone to participate in
census 2000.
Partnership is the most important of these other pieces.
The Census Bureau is forming partnerships with other Federal
agencies, State, local, and tribal governments, community-based
organizations, religious organizations, and businesses to draw
on the unique knowledge, experience, and expertise of these
partners. Most of the partnerships are being coordinated out of
the regional offices. There we have 400 of our 642 partnership
positions, including specialists, partnership coordinators, and
support staff to manage these relationships. And of course
these partnership specialists will eventually be assigned to
our local offices. We plan to complete hiring by the end of the
summer. We have already formed approximately 22,000 partnership
agreements, as I have mentioned, with State, local, and tribal
governments, businesses, national and community-based
organizations. You specifically asked about coordination
between the advertising and partnership program.
First, we are retaining the contributions of the advice of
our regional office staff. Y&R has visited each of the 12
regions and met three times with regional directors, and one of
the regional directors has been part of the approval process
for creative materials from the very beginning. We maintain
active communication between the regional staff by informing
them of the goals, schedule and content of the advertising
campaign through briefings, newsletters, Internet, videos and
delivery of the advertising campaign materials. We have also
asked the regional offices to identify critical media in their
area by having them compile a list of all media outlets for
hard to enumerate populations and asking them to list, in
priority order, specific outlets that can be purchased.
Fourth, we will provide to all regions for use in the
partnership program a tool kit of creative materials, many of
which derive from the advertising program. These include logos,
tag lines, graphics, drop in articles, fax sheets, CD-roms
containing pictures of persons from all walks of life and races
and ethnic groups, hand bills, posters, television and radio
scripts, informational videos and so on.
I stress that this is quite important. I was in Oklahoma
last week meeting with a publisher of an Oklahoma Indian
newspaper that reached all 39 of the Oklahoma-based tribes. He
reported to me that his newspapers had a major article on the
census each month and I said, ``That's really very impressive.
Who's writing those for you?'' And I was somewhat embarrassed
to learn he said, ``Well, your own staff of course,'' which is
to say he is simply taking our drop-in media articles and
putting them into his news outlets. That's happening all over
the country. That's independent of the paid advertising, so we
have two separate media campaigns, the one that we're managing
ourselves with the regional and local offices and, of course,
the paid advertising campaign of Y&R.
Finally, I would like to say that Y&R, in negotiating media
buys, will obtain value, added value opportunities, some of
which will be used in our grass roots promotion and
partnerships. These may include promotional tie-ins with local
events and festivals, local news coverage, television, radio or
print interviews with census representatives, local concert
appearances and remote disc jockey appearances. All such
activities would be available to the regions and under their
control for the use in the partnership program.
You also asked me, Mr. Chairman, to address the advertising
budget breakdown. Let me say as I move into that part of this
testimony, I apologize if there's been some confusion, as your
opening comment referenced. I fail to see confusion because
your letter specifically asked me to address the advertising
budget breakdown. The advertising breakdown is the $111. The
$199 is the advertis- ing, plus promotion and partnership. So
I'd be happy to talk about anything you want me to--but at
least in your letter that I am now trying to respond to, you
ask only about the advertising budget. So, I don't see any
confusion at all between what I put into my written testimony
and your reference.
The overall paid advertising budget under our current
working plan is $166 million. Of this amount, $8.4 million was
spent in fiscal year 1998. $47.2 million is budgeted for this
fiscal year and the President is requesting $111 million for
fiscal year 2000. Of the $166.6, we expect that approximately
64 percent, or over $160 million, will be devoted to media
buys; that is, to pay for television, radio, and print slots.
Four-fifths of the media buys will occur in fiscal year 2000.
We must be in a position to begin making these buys on October
1.
Mr. Chairman, you're obviously a professor of marketing.
You know better than I that there are critical moments when you
can get into media markets. We hope to launch our fall
awareness campaign in November and in order to be in the
November market, we have to purchase on October 1. Major long-
term advertisers will have already bought a significant portion
of the fixed media inventory, so we're competing within what is
the residual, that is, what is left over from what the long-
term buys have already purchased. Short-term advertisers can
only begin buying the remaining inventory at the beginning of
each month. We will be competing against many other purchasers.
If we cannot begin buying on October 1, we will not be able to
purchase the slots we need to get the right message to the
right people at the right time. Any delay in fiscal year 2000
funding would have a serious negative impact on our advertising
campaign. Ironically, it could return us to the 1990 situation
when we could not control the timing of TV and radio spots. So,
we will have invested an enormous amount in a paid advertising
campaign, which then will end up in off hours because we could
not purchase on the schedule that we have set out for
ourselves.
As Y&R will testify later, we intend to spend $71 million
of our advertising budget in the single month of October and
day one and day two are very important in terms of those media
buys.
I have said that 64 percent of our advertising budget is
media buys. The rest breaks down as follows. Labor 16\1/2\
percent, production 14\1/2\ percent, research, creative, and
miscellaneous operating expenses just under 5 percent.
Mr. Chairman, I have tried to rush through my prepared
testimony in response to the three questions that you put to me
in your invitational letter of July 16. May I just add to that
that your opening statement addresses quite different kinds of
questions. I am very interested in those questions, as you
know, the issue of civic disengagement, decline in civic
participation, Mr. Ryan question's about the Hispanic
population, the problem of confidentiality, the problem of our
language program. These take us beyond the invitation letter
itself, but I leave it to you if you'd rather me take another 4
or 5 minutes to try to address some of the questions that your
opening comments put on the table.
Mr. Miller. If you want to address them now, fine.
Dr. Prewitt. I am taken with them and I would like to. I
would like to start, if I could, with the one that you
addressed on the basic civic nature of the census as follows.
As Congresswoman Maloney mentioned, we have experienced a
10 percent dropoff in the mail response rate each year since
1970; 1970 was an 85 percent response rate; 1980 was a 75
percent; 1990 was a 65 percent. That's awful that the American
people will not take 10 minutes, which is the average time for
the household to complete this questionnaire, and do it. When
we began doing our planning for 2000, our own research
suggested that response rate could drop as low as 55 percent.
Now, how do you reverse that kind of civic disengagement? We
have all kinds of analyses of why that is so, but at root it is
because a large number of the American population are
disengaged from all kinds of civic activities. Voter turnout is
down. Cooperation with INS is down. The purchase of U.S.
Savings Bonds are down. All of those have been dropping over
the last three or four decades.
I believe, as you do, that census 2000 is an opportunity to
try to create a civic ceremony in the American society that
pulls us all together. The way to do that, I think, is to focus
on the response rate decline. So, we intend later this summer,
and I mentioned this often to your staff and in other kinds of
public settings, we begin testing this idea. We would like to
launch a campaign that is focused on the response rate. Now,
the response rate, by the way, in 1990 was 65 percent in the
aggregate across the country. That varies widely. We have
communities where the response rate was 90 percent. Mr. Davis
was talking about Chicago. The mail response rate in Chicago, I
believe, was 52 percent in 1990.
So we have a wide variation. If every community in the
United States were to increase its response rate by 5 percent,
that is, from whatever it was in 90 to that plus 5 percent, our
aggregate response rate would be 70 percent. What that means,
from the point of view of patriotism and civic responsibility,
is we will have reversed one of the most critical declines in
civic engagement in the society.
Now, we can't budget for that. It would be very imprudent.
And in 1990, we budgeted for a 70 percent response rate, and by
April 23rd we had only gotten 62 percent. And we had to come
back to the U.S. Congress for an emergency supplemental just to
finish the census in 1990. So, all of our planning is based
upon the best research we have available, which is a lower
response rate. A 61 percent response is our targeted response
rate. I would like to run the census in such a way--I don't
mean just me personally--we would all like to collectively run
the census in such a way that the society does not respond to
that 61 percent response rate, but somehow gets up to the high
60's or the 70's.
We are hoping that the Y&R campaign will be a major part of
that. But it's not the only part. And Y&R itself has done its
own research on what it can do about the response rate.
And I will stop at this in a second. Just three or four
more sentences. The beauty of the response rate as a vehicle
for talking about civic participation is that it is measurable.
It's obvious. And it is obvious in and for every community. We
in real times, starting March 28th, will be able to tell every
jurisdiction in the United States what their mail response rate
is on a 24-hour basis at the end of every day. Your response
rate is now up to 47; it's now up to 52; it's now up to 58, and
use that as a mechanism to try to create as much excitement as
we can. Like think of a ticker tape, you know, every day
reporting the national response rate across the nightly news or
around the Times Square ticker tape or what have you. If we can
get the country to focus on the response rate, we might be able
to turn this into a civic event.
Now, I say that because that's not the problem that Y&R was
charged with. Y&R was charged with a different problem.
Y&R was charged with a task of: We have had a declining
response rate in particular population groups, and you go out
and do some research, which we will find out how to motivate.
They went out and did research and their research said the way
to motivate people is to say there's something in it for you.
So, the advertising campaign is based upon that premise. That's
what their research did, that's what the contract suggested and
so forth.
So, as we try to move this now into a different vocabulary,
a vocabulary of a civic responsibility, of a civic ceremony, it
will begin to slightly change the message, exactly as your
opening statement indicates. Let's not make the message only
about what is in it for you, but let's also make it about what
is your responsibility for the country.
I promise you, Mr. Chairman, there will be a lot of
attention to that message before this census is finished and
you will begin to see that in September, October. I've been
meeting with the mayors, meeting with city commissioners and so
forth exactly on that issue. I just want to protect Y&R. That
was not the task they were given 2 years ago. They were given a
different task, and they have to be measured against the task
that they were given.
So that would be my first comment in response to your
comments.
If I can turn quickly then to Mr. Ryan. Mr. Ryan, you asked
about the Hispanic issues, not just in Racine but in your own
area across the country. I think you will hear from Y&R that we
have a very, very active, of course, Hispanic advertising
campaign in language. About half of our advertising campaign is
what we call end language and end culture that's really focused
upon the hard to count, but this is specifically designed for
in culture sensitivities and in language advertising and print
media and so forth.
In addition, of course, as you know from other hearings, we
have quite an extensive language program, quite separate from
the advertising campaign and the questionnaire and the
telephone assistance guides and so forth, all of which are
designed. The entire program that we addressed for the
Hispanics, including Y&R, but also including partnerships,
promotion and so forth, hits the confidentiality issue straight
on.
We simply have to get that population group to believe in
the confidentiality of the data or we will not get high
response rates. We are very preoccupied with that question.
Indeed, if you have the entire Y&R creative in front of you,
you would see a very disproportionate attention to
confidentiality in the Hispanic compared to the African
American and so forth. It's also high in the Asian because they
are concerned, in some respects, as the Hispanic. So we are
trying to address these kinds of issues.
Let me then stop, Mr. Chairman, and ask you--you should
never have let me go on. There's a lot in my head.
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Mr. Miller. Being both former professors, it's a tendency
to talk as long as you have.
Dr. Prewitt. Exactly.
Mr. Miller. Let me clarify a couple of things. Is the $166
million for the advertising spread out? The current fiscal year
there's $47.2. What was the original plan, it was $100 million,
do you remember?
Dr. Prewitt. The $100 million number comes from the--now,
I've lost their name, I have it in my testimony. I've forgotten
it for a moment. We consulted with the firm way back in 1997 to
do the work on 1990. And that $100 million floated at that
time. This should be approximately in that area.
So you're right. We talked about $100 million, but never as
a budget number, at least not once we were into the real 2000
planning.
Mr. Miller. I am glad and I look forward to the next
panel--that good research will be coming up with the right
message, that politicians come up the message for civic
responsibility, but that may not be the one that sells to
accomplish what our common goals are on this common issue.
I was pleased about your discussion. I would like to talk
some more about the integrated marketing strategy. Now, Y&R,
they are just doing advertising prior to the April 1 date, is
that right, the $166 million or maybe through the month of
April?
Dr. Prewitt. No. We changed after the Supreme Court
decision which also then led to the increased advertising
budget. We did two things. One, we put more in consultation
with Y&R. We put more upfront money in the awareness campaign.
But we also added a motivation campaign for the nonresponse
followup period.
So, they will certainly still be running print and
advertising, a different kind of message, which is now a
message that said someone is going to be knocking on your door.
Don't forget, at 61 percent, a response rate, we're talking
about $46 million households who have to be tracked down and
gotten the cooperation of. So we want an advertising campaign
to focus on that. So that will run into April, May and June.
Mr. Miller. So they will be having a direct advertising
campaign for the nonresponse followup?
Dr. Prewitt. That's correct.
Mr. Miller. Do you know what the breakdown of that is or
maybe they can give that.
Dr. Prewitt. Ask them.
Mr. Miller. They will have it. OK. When you get into these
other issues of the logo and direct mail package, how much of
that is in-house versus Y&R? I mean, the fliers or the
brochures or posters and that type of thing, will that be done
in-house or will you be using Y&R, and how do you make sure you
coordinate the message and everything?
Dr. Prewitt. There are really three pieces to think of.
There is a paid advertising campaign to Y&R. There is our own
media, promotion work partnerships and so forth. Then there is
a lot of stuff that's just happening. I saw a marvelous video
the other day of buses in Orlando. They have taken three city
buses and completely enveloped them in census messages. Now,
that's something that came out of the Orlando Regional Transit
Authority, in cooperation with our partnership specialist.
That's advertising. They're beautiful, they're lovely,
they're striking. But that doesn't come out of Y&R. That
doesn't even directly come out of us. That's something that the
Orlando people want. So you've got to keep in mind that there's
going to be a huge outpouring of media materials that are
generated. I met the other day with Henry Cisneros and we were
talking about, you know, the campaign in Hispanic television,
and Mr. Cisneros is sitting there telling me about the pro bono
stuff he is going to put on. He cut his own TV ads for
Univision and is sharing those with Telemundo.
So, it's going to be messy at the edges. There's no way
that we can totally control all of the things. The Census
Bureau, itself, has media specialists in each one of the
offices. In each local office, they will be feeding local print
media, local videos and so forth all of the time to the local
outlets, which will be separate from Y&R.
Mr. Miller. Are these newly hired positions just for the
decennial or----
Dr. Prewitt. These are decennial positions.
Mr. Miller. So, these are just for the decennial?
Dr. Prewitt. Yes.
Mr. Miller. So, they will be developing marketing
materials?
Dr. Prewitt. It's also responding to press inquiries. We
get lots and lots of press inquiries about the census, of
course, which are not specifically marketing, it's like the
drop-in articles. I saw a beautiful video the other day that
our media people did on confidentiality. And we're shipping
that to thousands of outlets and hoping they will run a 20- or
30-second clip on it in their north coverage.
Mr. Miller. We're going to have more time. We're going to
go a couple rounds this way. We will just go to Mr. Davis.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Prewitt, I always enjoy your testimony for a number of
reasons. It's kind of like you're back in the classroom and
you've got a professor who's really seriously into what he's
doing. So, I know that you're seriously into your work.
But you've mentioned, not only today, but on other
occasions, the importance of having enough money to do the
work. But you've also talked about the timeliness of having the
money. How impactful would a delay be in terms of planning for
the work to be done? I mean, if the money is, say, a month off,
are you a month late in terms of operationalizing some of the
planning that you've got to do?
Dr. Prewitt. Mr. Davis, as a professor, I try not to engage
in hyperbole and use exaggerated language and so forth. But I
can tell you a month's delay in money at this stage would
simply be a disaster for census 2000.
One example, for the last year we have been on what we
internally call the road to July. The road to July was getting
our address label in place. If we don't have our preliminary
cut on the address label in the next 3 days, the entire
schedule of the census suffers. We have got to get that address
label completed to be on our schedule by the end of this week.
We're on schedule to make that. If you suddenly said to me,
``Oh, we will wait another month,'' that means we would not
mail in March of next year. In order to mail in March of next
year, we've got to do the particular cut of that label tape
today. The census is full of those kinds of things, where
everything is on a very, very tight schedule. Slip any one of
them by 3 or 4 days and the entire process slips 3 or 4 days.
The money cuts into this as follows: Starting fiscal year
2000 by October 1st, we then are staffing these 520 local
offices. You can't tell someone we're not sure when we're going
to start your payroll: ``We would like to start it on October
1st, but it may be October 10th, it may be October 21st, we
will let you know as soon as we can.''
When you're dealing with temporary employees, they're gone.
You put them on payroll and then you have to let them go,
they're gone. You won't get them back. So October is a critical
month for staffing these local offices. And as I said, it's a
critical month for the advertising campaign. We're on a ramp-up
process. You don't get 860,000 employees by next April unless
you're starting that process now. And we're on that process.
And we really will suffer if there are serious delays, that's
all I can say.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. So the money is critical?
Dr. Prewitt. The money and the timing, right, right.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. I've heard it suggested that in the
1990 undertaking, that PSAs may have had just the opposite
effect of what was desired. Could you shed a little bit of
light on that for me?
Dr. Prewitt. Surely. Surely. That's actually a fascinating
hypothesis. It was first addressed and mentioned in a National
Academy report. And the logic is sort of as follows, that if
you do a reasonably good advertising campaign, increased
awareness contributes to response rate. Then, if that awareness
campaign is lumpy in the population groups it hits, then it
helps some population groups more than other population groups.
We were at the mercy of the local markets. So, if we had a
very good advertising campaign, let us say in one city, but a
poor one in a different city, because the local TV and radio
people didn't want to use it, then the city where we did not
have one, if it happened to be a city with a large number of
African Americans or Hispanics by definition, their awareness
levels are lower. So, in that sense, an untargeted media
campaign could actually result in a higher response rate among
those population groups that already had response rates
reasonably high. That is a preaching to the choir problem.
So that's the logic of the 1990 PSAs--it's not that they
weren't good, they were good, and they created awareness. But
the awareness was uneven as best we were able to construct
afterwards.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. In negotiating the contract with
Young and Rubicam, how much emphasis was placed on this whole
question of the hard-to-count population groups at risk?
Dr. Prewitt. Exclusively; that is, we from the very
beginning expected the advertising campaign to address that
problem, which is to say we do not need a heavy advertising
campaign to get the standard suburban, over-50 homeowner to
sort of send in a questionnaire. They're going to do it. So why
waste taxpayer dollars trying to tell them to do something
they're going to do anyway? So, the entire advertising campaign
is focused upon the hard-to-count populations. And all of the
RFP criteria and the evaluation criteria stressed that.
If I can just add a sentence. Getting the response rate up
among the hard to count is as important as solving the final
differential undercount problem. We do not think that we can
advertise our way out of the differential undercount problem,
that's the last 3 or 4 percent. We do think we can advertise
our way into a better, across-the-board response rate, which
will by definition pull up the response rate of the hard to
count.
So, when we talk about hard to count, we include hard to
count in terms of getting an initial response back from them,
as well as the final differential undercount problem.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I
know that my time is up.
Mr. Miller. Let me make a comment about the money issue. As
you know, for the past few years, as far as the appropriation
process, Congress has been very responsive to getting the
money--if I'm not mistaken we had a problem last October 1 and
we made sure in the CR, I forget what it was, but we did
provide for it. And I think we need to make sure that we work
with the subcommittee on appropriations, on which I serve, to
make sure that we will have it. If we go with the CR, probably
in the past 20 years we've probably had a CR probably 90
percent of the time, so it will not be an unusual experience.
So we need to make sure that we provide provisions, because I
recognize that for the advertising, as discussed earlier, that
date is critical, so that should not be a problem. But let's
make sure we keep on top of that issue.
Mr. Ryan.
Mr. Ryan. Thank you, Dr. Prewitt. There are two things I
wanted to ask you. One, I was very intrigued when you mentioned
that you could do an immediate 24-hour turnaround on getting
back to a community to tell them how their response rate is
going. How far of a breakdown will you do? For instance, come
March 29th, will you be able to tell us how Racine County
responded or the city of Racine, which is a town of 84,000
people, responded to the census so we can get in the newspaper,
look, you know, we only had a--30 percent response, come on,
let's get going? Will you be able to break it down to
communities like that, rural areas like that?
Dr. Prewitt. No. Congressman Ryan, we're working to break
it down.
Mr. Ryan. You are?
Dr. Prewitt. Yes. It's also for the sake of this campaign.
We're not sure what to call this campaign yet, we're thinking
about calling it 1990 plus 5, but we're not certain. We're
still working on it. But we need it as a Census Bureau, because
we have to target our nonresponse followup enumerators to those
areas, so that's why we're trying to break it down to them.
From a public relations point of view, it's enormously
important to tell a mayor, run that bus in this area, get your
volunteer workers out to knock on doors. I will give you one
example. I have appeared on lots of talk shows lately. And I've
asked every talk show host that I've met with, and we're now
trying to create this as a national campaign, everyone who
calls in to your talk show from March 25th to April 5th, the
very first question you should ask them is, did you mail your
form in? Just imagine if every talk show host starts saying
that. Then they can start saying, ``Well; if you're from such-
and-such an area, we know only 82 percent of you or 28 percent
of you or whatever mailed it back in.'' So, we're really
working to target in a way to mobilize.
Mr. Ryan. Now, on to your media buy. You mentioned that the
media buy will be commensurate with those historical areas that
have lower response rates. Are you using just 1990 figures for
that, or are you going back a couple of decades to look at
areas that are historically unresponsive? Then, are you
matching your Young and Rubicam media buy with that?
Dr. Prewitt. Oh, no, the Census Bureau has, as you well
appreciate, decades of nonresponse kinds of analyses. And we
incorporate all of that into our research, including even
projections about where population groups have moved. So you
can't just rest on 1990 data because, after all, there are
whole neighborhoods who have been completely transformed since
1990.
Mr. Ryan. Right. What I'm trying to get at, I think it's
very valid and important to target your media buy to those
areas that based on the available information you have, you
think will be fairly unresponsive, but also my concern is for
those towns and cities, you know, below 100,000 people. In
Wisconsin there are only two cities above 100,000. It's my
concern that the media buy may miss some of those areas, some
of those more rural areas that may not with your data show as
high of an unresponsive rate but still, nonetheless, have a
fairly significant unresponsive rate. If the media campaign
misses those areas, we may see a tilting going the other way.
So, how will this address that?
Dr. Prewitt. Certainly. That's an appropriate question,
Congressman. The targeting is based upon two sort of
interactive models. One is demographics, population groups who
are nonresponsive. The other is geographic areas where we have
low levels of response. And we now have to intersect the kind
of demographic analysis with the geographic analysis. If in a
place like Wisconsin there are certain geographic areas that
have been disproportionately nonresponsive, let us say, then we
would use that as our model rather than just kind of a
demographic model.
They obviously are working within a limited budget. They
have to take that model and map it against how successful they
think advertising will be, and what the reach will be of this
particular local newspaper versus that local newspaper or this
radio outlet versus that radio outlet. They are doing that and
they will obviously explain that to you when they're here.
It's not a full answer to your question, because finally
you are making tradeoffs, and if we have to tradeoff an area
where we think the response rate is going to be 40 percent to
one where we think it's going to be 65 percent anyway, then
we're going to go after the 40 percent, because that's the only
way to intelligently use the resources.
Mr. Ryan. Given the fact that this is brand new, this
advertising is brand new, we haven't done this before,
hopefully the goal is to raise all areas, as you said,
everywhere plus 5, so it's not plus 10 over here and still, you
know, plus 2 over here?
Dr. Prewitt. Right.
Mr. Ryan. So, hopefully it will do that. I was wondering if
you could furnish us with your media buy when you have your
flight schedules, you know, planned out.
Dr. Prewitt. Yes, sir.
Mr. Ryan. Also just as a local flavor, I noticed you said
Wisconsin. When you're doing your advertising up there, you've
got to throw more nasal into it. It's Wisconsin. So please
don't do that when you're doing your advertising; Wisconsin.
One more thing, I noticed from the letter there was a
little bit of a misunderstanding. The letter that was sent to
you for the testimony was to ask you for your advertising
budget breakdown. I know that there was concern as to whether
that addressed the marketing, the communications, the
partnership budget.
Just to settle all of this misunderstanding that seems to
be around here, could you provide us with a specific budget
justification and breakdown for your advertising market, your
marketing budget, your partnership budget, all of those things
and the subcategories in your budget with the money that we're
appropriating? You may not be able to do this right now at this
time.
You know, that's what we do. We appropriate money. So if
you could provide us with the specific category breakdown on
that budget, I would very much appreciate that.
Dr. Prewitt. Well, certainly. Let me give you the rough
cuts now and then if you want more detail.
Mr. Ryan. OK.
Dr. Prewitt. The total--the 2000 budget is $199 million as
was mentioned; $111 of that is advertising, the remaining $88
then is in partnership and promotion. Approximately $70 million
is partnership, and the remaining $18 million is promotion. I
ran through that too quickly, $18 promotion, $70 partnership,
$111 advertising, totaling to the $199.
Mr. Ryan. How do you break down the $111, off the top of
your head, radio, TV?
Dr. Prewitt. Yes; 65 percent of that is in media buys. And
I will let Y&R distribute the media buy part of that budget
across the different outlets.
Mr. Ryan. Has Y&R given you a rough draft of what their
flight schedule is going to look like?
Dr. Prewitt. Yes.
Mr. Ryan. They have. Could you provide us with that as
well?
Dr. Prewitt. Surely.
Mr. Ryan. Thank you, that's all.
Mr. Miller. Mr. Ford.
Mr. Ford. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and to my good friend,
Mr. Ryan. One thing you can do, Mr. Director, is to make sure
you count them when there's a doggone Green Bay Packers home
football game. You will probably get everyone there in
Wisconsin or however you're supposed to say it.
Mr. Ryan. The problem is if you go, Harold, and knock on
somebody's door during a Sunday when the Packers are on and
it's in the middle of the game, no one is going to answer the
door. You're going to get shot. You can't interrupt the Packers
game.
Mr. Ford. I hear you. I'm with you. We don't have a
football team. We have UT football and we do the same thing up
in Knoxville. But, Dr. Prewitt, you were kind enough to come to
Memphis not long ago and people are still talking about that
visit. You were able to fire up a lot of the community
organizations and neighborhood associations and really explain
to us all the importance of the census. We heard a lot about
it. There's been a lot of politicization of the issue, as you
well know, a lot of partisanship on both sides.
I think you have done a splendid job in trying to manage
some of the politics. We may have differences of opinion, those
of us here on this panel about how you're going about
conducting the business and whether it's the most effective
way, but I think one thing that can be said with safety and
certainty is that your interest is ensuring that we get a fair
and accurate count in the year 2000.
You recognize the importance for all communities and all
States throughout the Nation. I did not get a chance to catch
your opening statement, but I would imagine it was probably
something along the lines with what you shared with us in
Memphis some few months ago.
I guess, if I could, I would really like to sort of give
you an opportunity to maybe elaborate on your thoughts on the
status of census 2000. Are we on track? Are we meeting some of
the milestones that you all have set? How well do you think Y&R
is working with different communities in promoting? How have
the outreach activities been conducted and are they meeting
your satisfaction or, more importantly, the goals that the
census 2000 staff has set out to meet? So, if you wouldn't mind
elaborating on that to sort of give us an overview again of how
things are going.
Dr. Prewitt. Certainly, Congressman Ford. And I might start
by saying that was really, for me, a very, very useful visit to
Memphis. Many of my visits are useful, but that was
particularly useful, because I sort of saw for the first time
what kind of eclectic, if you will, community organization it
takes. You simply need people from all kinds of different
avenues and backgrounds. I mean, I still remember the first
question that was put to me when we opened up for audience
participation, and it had to do with counting the prison
population, and I suddenly realized, there's a whole group out
there that is particularly courageous. It was a very nice
little technical question, what if someone is only in for the
weekend?
Mr. Ford. I don't want you to give the impression there are
a lot of people in prison in my district.
Dr. Prewitt. Sorry, but you're right. My point is there are
thousands and thousands of highly specific issues that have to
be addressed in order to do this--in order to do this well.
To your larger question, remarkably, the Census Bureau is
absolutely where it would like to be for this month.
If they're in part because of congressional support, it's
there because we got a Supreme Court decision early enough to
create a single design that we think is responsive to what the
U.S. Congress and the courts want us to do. And on all of the
big issues, opening up the offices, getting our address label
work done, finishing our local review of addresses with our
jurisdictions, getting the advertising campaign underway,
having our partnership specialist, on lots of the key
operational things which have to be in place by this day in
order for everything else to follow. We're on schedule.
I think it's a remarkable tribute to the Census Bureau.
Certainly not to me, but to the quality of the people who are
there. I can tell you in response, Mr. Chairman, since you've
been concerned about some of these responses, our budget people
have worked all day Saturday and all day Sunday for the last 5
weeks in trying to be as responsive as they can to two separate
sets of questions, some of which came from Chairman Miller
through the GAO and some of which came from Chairman Rogers,
and quite different sets of questions. The only way we can try
to get the answers to those out was to work all day long, not 5
days, but 7 days.
That's what we did. I worry a little bit, quite honestly,
about the stresses and strains we're putting on our staff at
this time to deal with things that are not directly
operational, because I'm going to need those people working
every weekend in November, December, January, and February. We
will all be working every weekend in those key months.
So, I am hoping that there will be some kind of space that
we can kind of gather up or regather our energies as we go into
the tough operations. On the big operations, we are on
schedule. That's the good news; well, there are footnotes to
that I should say, for example, a particular thing we're
working on right now is getting our telephone lines into our
local offices. That's dealing with contractors and service
providers.
Right now, that's a bottleneck. We will solve that in 2 or
3 weeks but every week there's a different bottleneck. That's
the one we're working on right now. I don't mean to say there's
nothing that's problematic, but it's bits of pieces at this
stage.
Mr. Ford. I realize we will hear from them later, but how
would you, at this point, grade Y&R's performance and have they
met the expectations articulated by you early on?
Dr. Prewitt. Right. You will hear, Congressman Ford, I have
now sat through, I guess, a total of, oh, I would say probably
somewhere between 35 and 40 hours of presentation of their
early creative based upon the research. I went to focus groups.
I watched their interaction with the focus groups. I have now
seen their early creative. They had about 189 major ideas,
that's now down to 111. I watched that screening process.
I would say that this is very high-quality professional
work. It is targeted to groups we want to reach. It's in 17
different languages. About half of it is either in language or
in cultural sensitivity. It's focused very directly. They have
a very elaborate kind of marketing model in mind. So, the
Census Bureau has been very pleased with that contract.
I'm happy to say that on the record. And if we weren't, I
would be sharing that with you, because we're as responsible
for the quality of this work as, of course, they are, because
it's our contract. But, no, the work is high quality.
Mr. Ford. Thank you again. Whatever time I have left, I
yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Miller. Thank you. We will do another quick round, if
you want to, fine; if you don't, we will move on to the next
panel.
But I have a couple of questions. First of all, with
respect to Y&R, you said their task is really targeted to the
hard-to-count populations. As we talked about the integrated
marketing strategy, there's a lot of things that are going to
affect the response rate.
Comment specifically on what the goals and objectives are,
so when we get ready to talk to them, we will know. How do you
plan to evaluate their effectiveness? I remember back in
marketing days, 50 percent of your advertising was a waste,
which 50 percent was it?
Dr. Prewitt. Right.
Mr. Miller. And we look forward to talking with them about
that issue. But how will you, because a part of partnerships
and everything else will contribute to it? Is there a way to
measure it? Do you have any plans for the way to measure the
effectiveness?
Dr. Prewitt. We obviously have plans. That doesn't actually
mean it's the most effective way to measure this as conceivably
thought up. We have led a contract to a major private
contractor to evaluate the impact of the advertising campaign.
They will be in the field collecting survey data in November.
That is just prior to the arrival, we hope in public, of the
media campaign. They will be asking awareness campaigns, where
did you hear about the census and so forth and so on.
As you know, once you're in the middle of something like
this, it's very, very difficult to parse out. ``Where did I
hear about it? Did I see an ad? Did my mayor make a speech? Was
there a town meeting? Did a neighbor tell me?'' At a certain
point, the messages all feed into this. This is not, from the
point of view of the Census Bureau, a problem. We think
saturation and repetition is going to be key to response rate.
So we want someone--and this is going to happen--a given
respondent, to see an ad on the television that comes from Y&R.
Then, they're going to see a bus driving around with census on
it, and that's going to come from the local count committee.
They're going to get in the utility bill a reminder to fill in
the census form that's going to come from the partnership
effort. And then, they're going to hear a sermon on census
Sunday. We are now planning something called census Sunday,
where we're going to get every church in the country to stress
the importance of the census.
Now, all of those things are going to create, we hope, a
saturation environment with respect to the census. And we will,
at the final analysis, have a very difficult time saying Y&R
contributed this much. When we let the contract, we certainly
put to them, did they have any models which would specifically
say what increase in response rate did they think their
advertising campaign would create, and they came back with a
model.
Now, I can't go to the bank on that model. It would be an
imprudent act of the Director to say I'm confident that that
will happen. That's the mark that we're going to hold them to.
If the overall mail response rate in 2000 is lower than 1990,
then we will have to say the advertising campaign did not do
what we expected it do to.
If it's 4 or 5 percent higher, we will say it did do what
we expected of it, but we can't know for certain that was the
only thing that did it. And we will be in that bind. We are
letting out a special contract to try to evaluate.
Mr. Miller. Let me ask one question about partnerships,
and, that is, you've got, what, $70 million for the partnership
program basically, and you've got $20-some thousand already,
and you expect 1,000 more. I think each congressional office
may become a part. But you have 500 people working in it. I
mean how effective is it going to be? Is it just a marketing
gimmick? I mean you have 500 people working on these tens of
thousands of partnerships. Is that enough resources we're
putting into it and with the limited number of staff you have
for it?
Dr. Prewitt. Yeah, each local office will have a
partnership specialist, and they will be doing all day long
nothing but partnership kind of work. We will have as, you
know, a local office in each of the congressional districts.
Much of the partnership work is local. Now there's also a kind
of national partnership. We've got people out in Suitland who
do partnership work, and they're signing partnership agreements
with NAACP, Urban League, MALDEF, the Chamber of Commerce, and
so forth. It's very hard, Congressman Miller, for me to tell
you what percentage of those are going to turn into something.
A lot of them will only be a signed paper. I know that. The
question is, if some reasonable proportion of them actually go
out and do something, if the Catholic church carries the
confidentiality message to the Hispanic population, that's a
very major consequence. If Good Will Industries--and we have a
major partnership agreement with them--reaches into its
constituency, that's important, because that's a hard to count
constituency. So what percentage of those 22,000 will actually
do something important and big? All of them will do something.
They will put notices in their newsletters, and so forth, and
that's fine.
Some will do a lot more, and we only have to hope that the
proportion of them that do a lot more will boost that response
rate.
Could we do with more partnership specialists? Well, if you
ask that question to 12 regional directors, every one of them
will say, yes, they really feel they're under stress and
strain. We had to, of course, at the headquarters make a
decision about what the budgetary restrictions would be.
There's also a management task. We care deeply about the
partnership program, the media outreach, but we also have a
whole set of operations that have to be managed, which is mail
out, mail back operation, the update leave operation, the
coverage improvement operations and so forth. So, we have to
worry a little bit about what is the effective use of our
management strategy and structure to maximize the overall
consequence.
I will put it this way; 642 partnership specialists is not
an inappropriate number. It could be larger, it could be
slightly smaller, but it's not a bad number to go into the
census with. I'm not discomforted about them being too low a
number.
Mr. Miller. So you have 435 congressional districts each
having one?
Dr. Prewitt. Correct.
Mr. Miller. The rest are going to be targeted to the
hardest areas?
Dr. Prewitt. Of course.
Mr. Miller. So, an area like Mr. Davis' district is a hard
to count, he may have two or three?
Dr. Prewitt. Two or three. And they're all in language,
every one who needs it has a language skill, they're almost
exclusively--they're all exclusively, by the way, African
American, Hispanic, Asian American, American Indian. I mean, a
very high percentage of them come out of the difficult to count
demographic groups.
Mr. Miller. So, again they're targeted hard to count?
Dr. Prewitt. Extremely targeted.
Mr. Miller. Mr. Ford, do you have any more questions?
Mr. Ford. Just one last one to followup really on what the
chairman has asked. Some folks have suggested that we triple
this census 2000 budget. In listening to you talk about some of
the stresses and strains imposed upon your staff right now, I
know it's difficult for you to talk about that in this setting,
but to the extent that the chairman would allow you to expound
on that point, just in general, if you would just maybe magnify
the stresses and strains and what we could do, if indeed we
reach a point where you feel your staff is burned out. We're in
practice right now. When the game really starts, I want the
legs to be as fresh as you do.
So, as we talk about increasing this budget, is that
something we ought to take seriously, more seriously than
perhaps we are, because right now it seems to be more political
than based on facts. And listening to you today leads me to
believe that perhaps this conversation or this dialog ought to
take on a new level of seriousness.
Dr. Prewitt. Well, I appreciate the question, Congressman
Ford, because it is serious. We would have to talk about the
particular way in which the budget might be increased. Take
just the advertising budget. As I think the Y&R people will
testify, there is a point that it is redundant, it's saturated.
As you know, based upon the creative that you've done, you can
only do so much media buy. And if you don't now have time to
increase the creative, then doing additional media buy doesn't
buy you anything. So there is a saturation point on that.
That's different from the stress and strain, but I think when
we've talked in the past about whether the advertising budget
should be $300 instead of $100 million, that was kind of the
conversation we were having. And I think the chairman has
acknowledged in his own opening remarks that it seems to be
that we're not at a bad place. I believe I can attribute that
from your comment.
The larger question you ask about the strains on the staff,
I'm concerned about it. I don't want to leave the impression
that I think we're at the edge of burnout, because I don't
think we are, there's enormous energy and commitment to the
census among the professional staff. We have been pushed very,
very hard. We were on two separate tracks, as we well know, up
until January 15th and the Supreme Court decision. It is
extremely difficult to maintain two separate tracks, and then
we had to very quickly fix on a particular track that satisfied
as many of the purposes of the census as possible, get that
budgeting process done and so forth.
And, quite honestly, Congressman Ford, we've not been cut
any slack by any of these processes; that is, I would hope that
the U.S. Congress and other agencies that have to exercise
their oversight responsibilities--not for a minute do I deny
that we are spending a lot of public money. We have a real
responsibility to tell the public how we are spending those
dollars, but nevertheless we have to actually do it and we're
now doing it, and it would be extremely useful if there could
be a bit of an understanding about what we're trying to do as
we're trying to explain.
We spend a lot of time trying to explain it, rather than
actually managing it and moving the operations forward. To put
additional tasks on our design at this stage, as I've testified
in front of this committee before, is, I think, not prudent. I
would now not add any additional tasks.
We had a hearing before this committee not too long ago
about counting overseas Americans. That would have been a
serious additional task to put on census 2000 at this stage of
the game. For that reason, I had to recommend against it. I
actually met since then with the coalition, the Overseas
American Coalition at great length, talking to them about this,
in trying to talk through their problems and our response and
so forth. I think we made headway with that particular group.
But at this stage, to say go out and do that task would
really strain our operations, as I tried to explain to them.
So, whatever it is that adds a whole new operation to the
census would be, I think, really imprudent at this stage.
Mr. Ford. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Miller. Let me clarify something, Mr. Ford. Are you
saying we shouldn't be providing oversight, having been
concerned about the $4\1/2\ billion they were going to spend
this year? We really have a responsibility. I'm on the
Appropriations Committee subcommittee too, but we need to know
as we go through this appropriation process to justify this
very large sum of money, as do any of the committees.
Mr. Ford. No, I don't have any problem with it. I was only
asking as it related to the Director's comment concerning the
stresses and strains on the staff and whether he went in a
direction that he wanted to go, but I would have no problem
with us demanding accountability. I would join you in that.
But I would also hope you would join me if the Director
comes back to the committee and says more resources are needed
to complete this task. I would hope all of us would have a
willing ear and perhaps are willing to vote that way as well
and hold them accountable for every dollar he spends.
Mr. Miller. As you know, we provided about $200 million
more than the President has asked in past appropriation
requests.
Mr. Ford. The President isn't always right. I agree with
you on that, too. If he comes back and says more money is
needed, I'm going to trust him more than I trust the President.
He's on the front line. That was my only point, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Miller. All right. We do have a serious responsibility
for oversight of Federal taxpayers dollars. I hope no one is
inferring that we shouldn't, you know, have an oversight
responsibility.
Dr. Prewitt. Certainly I'm not, sir, as you know.
Mr. Miller. OK. I think we need to move on. Thank you.
Thank you, Dr. Prewitt. We will probably see you in September
on a hearing. So, we will proceed to the next panel. Thank you
very much.
Dr. Prewitt. Thank you.
Mr. Miller. If Ms. Dukes and Mr. Chisholm will come
forward, please. This is an oversight hearing, so we get sworn
in under the rules of this committee.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Miller. Let the record note that you answered in the
affirmative. Welcome, and thank you very much. We've been
looking forward to this hearing for some time and we haven't
had it until now because we wanted to make sure everything was
a little better organized as we move along. I know there was a
meeting earlier in July with the ranking member, who
participated, and some of my staff were there, and they were
very pleased.
I'm sorry you don't have any things you could show us
today, but I understand some legal restrictions on that, and we
will see that at a later date. But I know you each have opening
statements. If you would like to proceed, who would like to
proceed? Ms. Dukes could go first.
Ms. Dukes. Yes, please.
Mr. Miller. Ms. Dukes.
STATEMENTS OF TERRY DUKES, EVP, ACCOUNT MANAGING DIRECTOR,
YOUNG AND RUBICAM, NEW YORK; AND SAMUEL J. CHISHOLM, CHAIRMAN
AND CEO, THE CHISHOLM-MINGO GROUP, INC.
Ms. Dukes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Ford, thank you
very much for inviting me here today. You asked me to address
five issues and I will. First, the overall coordination with
subsidiary firms representing minority groups, the development
of the campaign message, lessons learned from dress rehearsal,
learnings from our focus groups and finally the difference
between diverse America and in-language and in-culture
programs.
First, on the coordination with the subsidiary firms, we're
actually functioning as one team. As Dr. Prewitt mentioned, the
team consists of Y&R as prime contractor; the Bravo Group,
which is an independently managed Y&R agency dedicated to
reaching Hispanics; Kang & Lee, which is also an independently
managed Y&R agency but dedicated to the Asia communities and
the single largest buyer of Asian media in the United States;
G&G Advertising, focusing on the American Indians and the
Alaskan Natives; and Chisholm-Mingo Group--Sam is with me
today--dedicated to the African American market.
And this team operates under the management umbrella of
Y&R, but all focusing on a common goal of increasing
participation in the census. Our operating structure is built
around cross agency functional teams. For example, we will have
a media team that consists of representations from all of the
agencies. It's led by Y&R, but all of the agencies have their
media people on the team, and the way they work is together
they will determine the media objectives, they will then go off
and independently develop ideal programs for their audiences
against those objectives, cost out those programs, come back,
look at what those programs are costing relative to the finite
budget we've been given and then begin the process of
determining where it makes the most sense for the overall
success of the program to start making adjustments.
So, in this sense, we are operating against results and not
allocating buckets of money toward specific tasks, if you will.
So, we're operating as one team against a common goal.
Second, development of the campaign message. Well, in
everything we are doing as a collective team, we're taking a
very disciplined approach, which means that basically we have
check points and course correction all along the way. We begin
with the segmentation model, which informs the media strategy,
which then informs the creative that we will produce. Now, what
creative says has to be relevant to the audience we're talking
to. So, we began to develop that message by looking at history,
looking at the historical response rates of the census, what
were some of the challenges to participation that were
encountered.
We used existing research from the Census Bureau. We went
to their library and we used other outside forces, of which one
was certainly Roper talking about the mood of the Nation, and
one of the things we learned in the Roper research is this
disengagement in specific responsibility, so we saw that as a
serious issue.
Certainly there are numerous barriers to individuals
completing the census form, but the primary is that the census
has become irrelevant. It's negatively tied to government, its
intentions are misunderstood and its benefits are unknown. This
is what our respondents told us as we were trying to understand
what kind of messaging would motivate them.
So we concluded that our task needed to dispel the notion
that the census was Uncle Sam's head count. We needed to
position the census as a personal empowerment tool, and we had
to importantly make census personally relevant. Thus we came up
with the creative strategy that answers the question, ``What's
in it for me?'' We call that the benefit strategy.
We tested this strategy. We tested it against
reapportionment. We tested it against it's your civic duty,
patriotic responsibility, and we tested it against a
confidentiality message as well. This benefits message was
found to be most universally appealing across all the target
audiences, much more so than the other messages I mentioned.
And one of the interesting outcomes as we tested this is
that we learned that there was a hierarchy of benefits that
were important to or relevant to specific target audiences. So,
the advertising will reflect the benefits that were fed back to
us as important to these audiences; for example, education,
health care, roads and highways.
So, taking that strategy, we went into the dress rehearsal,
and what did we learn? Remember I indicated that the messaging
and the media strategy were informed by segmentation model, and
Dr. Prewitt referenced it in his earlier remarks. The most
important finding from the dress rehearsal was the validation
of the segmentation model that we call and have trademarked the
likelihood spectrum.
Now this model is based on a sliding scale of community and
civic involvement factors used as a means of predicting the
likelihood of participating in the census. It ties back to the
earlier discussion about civic engagement. The more engaged you
are, the more likely you are to complete the census form.
The less engaged, the less likely. Dress rehearsal proved
that this model was a significant predictor of response of
participation in census and, in fact, it was a better predictor
than previously used demographics. In Sacramento, for example,
for every one unit increase in civic activity, there was a 30
percent increase in the predicted odds of mail back. In South
Carolina, that percentage went up to 48 percent.
Now, one thing we did not learn in the dress rehearsal,
because we did not test, was the effectiveness of media
selection. Now, the reason we did not test this is because we
weren't able to develop what we will call a statistically
significant test environment where we would have control, as
well as various levels of media. We were able to test the
message. And I will talk about that in a moment.
The reason I bring this up about the media is because I
believe there was some concern over the fact that Sacramento
did not utilize all media available. This is true. The reason
for that is that when we developed the dress rehearsal media
buy, it was based on a translation of the equivalency of the
national media that would be utilized in that particular market
during the main event.
We will be dedicating 49 percent of our total budget to
local media as an overlay to the national media, but not every
market will get every local medium because the budget is
finite. And so we used in Sacramento the same local media that
we will be getting in the main event; therefore, we did not buy
media to saturate Sacramento, we bought media to replicate, as
best as possible, what would be happening in the main event.
Now, what we did learn about message effectiveness was very
encouraging. This was an independent study commissioned by the
Census Bureau and conducted by Westat. And what Westat told us
is that overall our messaging raised awareness, increased
knowledge, and increased positive attitudes toward the census.
Now, this is important because we were able to find an indirect
link between increases in awareness and participation and
increases in knowledge and acceptability of nonresponse
followup.
So, Dr. Prewitt mentioned earlier we have this hard task of
really linking results to what element of the marketing program
and specifically to the advertising. In fact, advertisers for
centuries have been trying to find a direct correlation between
advertising and sales. It's virtually impossible but we did
find an indirect correlation. So, we're very encouraged that by
raising awareness, we will raise the anticipation of receiving
the form, and the Census Bureau tells us that their research
shows anticipation of receiving the form increases
participation.
So, we feel pretty good about suggesting that the
advertising will increase participation and, in fact, that ties
into the model that Dr. Prewitt mentioned. We came to him with
suggesting that indeed we will be able to do that.
Now, within the context of the dress rehearsal, we tried to
get at the hard to reach. Now, the hard to reach also happened
to be hard to research. So, in addition to the Westat study,
Y&R commissioned its own study to do focus groups before the
advertising ran, to do focus groups after the advertising ran,
and to quantitatively test the advertising that we used. And,
what we learned was some of the work worked and some of the
work didn't.
We learned that as we did the focus groups, quantitatively,
and we looked at the individual messaging. The work that worked
was the television commercial created for diverse America. The
TV and radio spots created for American Indians and for the
Hispanics is the work from the dress rehearsal that is going
forward into the main event. All other work for the main event
is newly created.
And that newly created work has been tested also in focus
groups, and here's what we learned. Actually, in March and
April, this was a mammoth undertaking. There's never been
anything like it. We did in those 2 months 1,700 interviews
with all target audiences in all census regions, exposing over
100 ad concepts, not different ads, but ad ideas.
And I think the purpose of the testing was to gain cultural
insights and learning that would optimize the power of the
advertising, not do you prefer this ad over this ad, is this a
good idea, is this a bad idea, but tell me more about this idea
so I can make it more powerful, so I can make it stronger; or
tell me what's really not working about this.
The net result is that we eliminated some advertising, we
modified some advertising and we developed some new advertising
from ideas that came out of the focus groups. But overall we
were very encouraged. The whole campaign approach does what we
want it to do. It dispels the head count myth. We learned that
there needs to be a credible connection. While benefits are
believable, there needs to be a very careful and credible
connection between the benefits that we're promoting and the
census because overpromise will actually challenge credibility.
We learned that the combination of suggesting broad-based
benefits like your share of the $185 billion in Federal funding
for your community, combined with specific benefits like the
need for improved schools, was a very powerful combination and
that is reflected in the advertising. And we learned that the
tagline reinforces the benefit strategy and because of its
future orientation and call to action is universally appealing.
Another encouraging aspect is that these findings were
credible or they were valid across all the target audiences,
which sort of reconfirmed our notion of working off a single
strategy. Now, though, we are working off a single strategy.
There are some distinctions between the messaging for diverse
America and the messaging for the in-language, in-cultural
programs. I'll address that now.
The Diverse America Campaign will reach every adult who
consumes English language media regardless of their ethnicity
or their likelihood to complete the census form. In fact, our
media strategy, our media plan right now will reach 99 percent
of all adults 18 and older who consume English language media.
In addition to that, there will be overlays of media,
approximately half of the total media budget toward in-
language, in-culture vehicles, media buys if you will. These
media buys are targeting specifically to the least likely to
respond. This happens to skew more toward the minority groups
and will specifically be targeted to almost one-half the total
black population, which includes African Americans, Caribbean,
sub-Saharans and Haitians; to Hispanics who are both United
States born as well as immigrants from Mexico, Central America,
South America and the Caribbean; in-language to Asians, two
dialects of Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Filipino, Asian
Indians, Japanese, Cambodian, Thai, Hmong and Laotian; and the
emerging markets of Russian, Polish, and Arabic speaking
peoples. These were targeted because of the immigration
figures. We know there are other populations but the recent
immigrants, the total recent immigrants, are high enough to
require in-language programs: the majority of American Indians,
Alaska natives, and Puerto Rico and the island areas.
Now, these groups that I just described will get almost as
much of the media that is going to diverse America, so it's an
overlay program. And the messaging will be targeted to be more
relevant to these audiences as well. For example, to the
African-American population, it's very important to create a
strong sense of group identity. Therefore, the tagline will
actually be altered to this is your future, don't leave it
blank. It's African-American talking to African-American. As
Dr. Prewitt mentioned for the Hispanics and even the Asians and
the emerging Polish, Russian and Arabic speaking, there will be
more information in the advertising actually explaining what
census is all about and there will be a lot of messaging
regarding confidentiality because to these groups this is a
very serious issue. And my final example to the American
Indian-Alaska native populations, this group holds their elders
and children in very high esteem, so their tagline is being
altered to explain generations are counting on this, don't
leave it blank.
Those are just a few examples of how the program is being
targeted to each of the distinct populations. The media mix
will also vary because we know from syndicated research that
the media habits of each of the target audiences varies. So,
for example, we know that radio is a primary vehicle for
African Americans, whereas print is the primary vehicle for
Asians and when you're talking to diverse America, you'll be
using primarily television.
Now, I'm not suggesting that not all media will be used for
all populations or for all target audiences. In fact, all media
will be used for all populations. However, the skew, the mix,
the relative weights will vary based on media preferences for
those groups.
So in summary, the difference between the diverse America
program and the in-language, in-culture programs is really
executional, to be more culturally relevant to each of those
target audiences. The strategy is the same. The media approach
is the same. And the weight that is reaching as many of those
individuals as we possibly can remains the same goal.
Thank you. That concludes my prepared testimony. I would be
glad to take any questions.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Dukes follows:]
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Mr. Miller. We'll let Mr. Chisholm make an opening
statement. Mr. Chisholm, welcome.
Mr. Chisholm. Mr. Chairman, Congresswoman Maloney, members
of the subcommittee, I thank you for giving us this opportunity
to participate in this hearing to talk about something that we
are very passionate about and that's census 2000. We're
passionate about it because of what it represents to the
African-American community specifically. You asked us to
address the in-language, in-culture campaign, how we are
coordinating with Young and Rubicam and the potential for the
campaign's effectiveness in the hard to reach communities. One
of the philosophies that we believe in is that you have to
affect attitude and therefore you will affect behavior. This is
truly key in all of the things that we have done as it relates
to census 2000.
Mr. Chairman, I also want to address a comment that you had
made earlier when you said that 50 percent of advertising is a
waste. I know that you were a former professor of marketing and
I must tell you that that was some very bad advertising. It
clearly did not have a solid and significant strategy of which
we are about today.
The Chisholm-Mingo Group is a full-service advertising
public relations agency located in New York City. I am proud to
say that the Chisholm-Mingo Group is an independent African-
American advertising agency. Our interest in the census dates
back to our involvement in the 1990 census. Now, having said
that and having listened to the comments and the criticisms of
the 1990 census, I'm not so sure if a lot of my testimony is
going to be valid because of the large numbers of criticisms
that were given to the 1990 census and our efforts, but
clearly, there's a significant amount of learning that we
realized from the 1990 census. It was an extreme pleasure to be
contacted by Y&R in December 1998 in which they asked us to
pitch the subcontract portion of their contract. The Chisholm-
Mingo Group participated with five African-American agencies at
that time and we were awarded the subcontract on January 3,
1999.
We believe that our selection was based primarily on our
true understanding of the African-American or black American
community, our commitment to the census, our experiences with
the 1990 program as well as our understanding and our ability
to galvanize a kind of a world class marketing communications
team to work on the project. Now, between Y&R, the Chisholm-
Mingo Group, Bravo for Hispanic, G&G for American Indian, and
Kang & Lee for Asians, there's a clear understanding that we
all work toward the same goal with the same strategic intent
and intensity. The difference is that we leverage our attitudes
and our attributes that are most important to our specific
target market. The Chisholm-Mingo Group's responsibility to the
census 2000 happens to be the African-American community.
Now, it requires us to begin by laying a real sound and
significant strategic foundation that will work pretty much as
follows. The census 2000 diverse America strategy which Y&R has
created is expressed in the tagline, ``This is your future,
don't leave it blank.'' In understanding the mindset of the
African-American community, the Chisholm-Mingo Group has
modified the strategy for the African-American market. The
African-American communications kind of reexpression of that
tagline is: ``Census 2000: This is our future, don't leave it
blank.''
Now, in preparing the communications programs for the
African-American market, we were cognizant of the changing face
of black America. As a vital part of our communications
efforts, we have a separate targeted effort focused on the sub-
Saharan African communities and specifically, but not limited
to, Ghanains, Nigerians and Ethiopians as well as the Caribbean
community, including, but not limited to, Jamaicans as well as
Haitians. Now, within these emerging black markets, we
understand that there are cultural similarities but we also
understand that there are cultural differences, particularly as
it relates to African Americans. And in developing our
strategies and in developing our tactics, we clearly recognize
that and it is clearly reflected in the work that we have done.
Now, all that I have kind of broad stroked in these general
remarks have been examined and tested both quantitatively and
qualitatively through research. Research among other least
likely and undecided market segments have been done and in
pretty much every region of the country and among the hard to
reach and the least likely urban, as well as rural communities.
We have validated the appropriateness and the effectiveness
that the images and the words that we have developed, their
impact on the minds and the mindsets and the hearts of the
African-American, Jamaican, Haitian, Nigerian, and the Ghanain
people. ``Census 2000: This is our future, don't leave it
blank'' has the potential to open the mind of every most hard-
core, least likely of all patrons to the possibility that
census 2000 participation can mean a difference, particularly
as it relates to better education, better schools, health care,
job training and various opportunities in the communities.
The Chisholm-Mingo Group, in closing, is committed to
identifying and evaluating minority owned media vehicles and
properties that will leverage our messages and that will ignite
the word-of-mouth communications that is so very, very
important to the black communities both on a national as well
as a grass roots level. Beginning in November 1999 and through
May 2000, the most recognized tagline, at least we believe, in
the black American community will be, ``Census 2000: This is
our future, don't leave it blank.''
Mr. Chairman, that concludes my testimony.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Chisholm follows:]
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Mr. Miller. Thank you both for being here today. I very
much appreciate your testimony. Let me start off with a couple
of questions. Let me clarify what your goal is, Ms. Dukes. Is
your task the undercounted populations? You said you reached 99
percent of the English speaking population. But your real goal
is the undercounted populations targeted, right? Is it
secondary that you're reaching your neighbors?
Ms. Dukes. The overall goal is to increase participation in
the census and when we parsed out the audience according to our
likelihood spectrum, 40 percent of the audience is most likely
to participate; 43 percent are undecided, passive; and 17
percent are least likely to participate. So, the media is being
built to put the heaviest amount of weight against the least
likely to participate. The least amount of media weight against
the most likely to participate. So, we know, for example, that
our best prospects are probably in the middle. They're probably
going to be the ones who are easiest to persuade via a message.
Mr. Miller. The 43 percent.
Ms. Dukes. The 43 percent to complete the census form.
Because the 17 percent is the hardest to reach, the hardest to
count, we're putting the most media weight against them. We're
not naive enough to expect that advertising alone is going to
motivate them to action but we do believe very strongly that
the advertising program will play a huge part in paving the way
for the partnership programs, the complete count committees,
all of the grass roots efforts that will take place down at
that level. So, to answer your question, yes and yes.
Mr. Miller. We had a hearing in Miami last December that
Congresswoman Maloney and I attended both with Carrie Meek, and
I remember, for example, talking with the Haitian community
down there. Using that as an illustration, how do you target
advertising? Who develops the ads and the media buys? We'll
just use that Miami market alone for the Haitian community and
my area, Sarasota, FL, and there's some Haitian population
there but not a large number. Do you ever even try to reach the
Haitian population in Sarasota? I don't know the numbers but
it's not large, whereas in the Miami we're talking a couple
hundred thousand, I think. Who makes those decisions, how is it
decided what buys to make, what the media message is and is it
the same with the Haitian community in New York?
Mr. Chisholm. We make that decision. We have staff members
who happen to be Haitian and we've done a significant amount of
research against the Haitian population. In reaching the
Haitian population, we will be using both Creole, French, as
well as English, to reach them in terms of the language. We'll
also make the decision in terms of the media buy. We will
concentrate on the larger pockets of the Haitian community. New
York has a significant pocket of Haitians. Connecticut has a
significant pocket of the Haitian population. Going beyond the
Haitian population, we've looked at this emerging black market
just pretty much in those terms in attempting to look at the
larger pockets of these particular groups of people.
Mr. Miller. A Haitian radio station or Haitian newspaper--
I'm using Haitian as an illustration.
Mr. Chisholm. We have researched that both through the
individuals that are on staff, as well as our advisors. We have
looked into all of the Haitian media outlets that are available
to us.
Mr. Miller. You're not involved in the census in schools,
are you?
Ms. Dukes. Only in that the scholastic organization is a
subcontractor to our contract, but it's really their program.
Mr. Miller. Explain to me the head count myth again, Ms.
Dukes, as you used it.
Ms. Dukes. There's a belief that the census is really just
counting people. Nobody really understands, or not a large
number of people truly understand, what the census is used for.
So, when I talk about dispelling the head count myth, it's the
idea that it's just a count and trying to communicate that
benefits come your way when people like you know how many
people there are in various places.
Mr. Miller. In the total budget for advertising, it's $111
million total. That's what your contract is dealing with, $111.
I know we're not talking about anything illegal. But out of
$166 million total, $111 will actually be used for purchasing
media? $106 million will be used for purchasing media of $166
million. It would be $166 million in media buys. Out of $166.6
million. That's 64 percent.
Ms. Dukes. Is that a good number?
Mr. Miller. The 36 percent for the research and for
everything, does that go to you or does that include money
within the Census Bureau? And Dr. Prewitt may have to respond
to that. What happens to that difference between $106 million
and $166 million? There's $50 million, $60 million we're
talking about here.
Ms. Dukes. I can tell you where it's going.
Mr. Miller. You gave me a percentage breakdown. I
understand that but it seems like a lot.
Ms. Dukes. A lot that goes to media or a lot that goes
elsewhere?
Mr. Miller. It seems we could have more going directly to
media rather than the overhead type of costs.
Ms. Dukes. Sixteen percent of it is going to labor and that
includes all the agencies. Another 16 percent of it goes to
production and creative development. There was a certain
percentage of it that went to dress rehearsal and then there's
a small percentage that's going to what we call operating
expenses, things like travel and shipping and stuff like that,
as well as talent payments, when you pay union scale, when you
contract with talent for the advertising and so we have to set
money aside for that.
When we began the process, we looked at what other
advertisers spent in terms of their ratios between taking their
total budget, looking at the ratio between media and all else.
Anywhere between 60 and 70 percent is pretty typical. That's
like standard practice, best practice kind of thing when you
look at the Procter & Gambles of the world and some of the
bigger advertisers, which you are. You are a very big
advertiser. The other thing you look at is the ratio between
production and labor. Those should be about the same. It should
take as much labor as it does outside production costs to make
the advertising. So in terms of standard practice, best
practice, you should feel good about the ratios.
Mr. Miller. Who came up with the $106 million and $166
million? Is that what you requested? I know that's what Dr.
Prewitt decided we could afford.
Ms. Dukes. We began the process of looking at how the
budget would break between media and labor and production at
$100 million. That was the number that had been used and we
were given. After the Supreme Court ruling, we talked about
increasing the advertising effort to include an educational
program and an educational module, as well as a nonresponse
followup module, and we again applied our models. We did some
research and we came up with some numbers, which is how we got
to the total $166. What additional we would need in media, what
additional we would need in production in order to have
messaging that was relevant to those phases and that didn't
wear out, how many messages did we need.
So, it's a complicated parallel process of determining what
are the media available, how much do we need to be effective in
reaching our audience, how many messages do we need in order to
get the right messaging out there in a way that doesn't wear
out. So, from the $100 we built up to the total $167 to include
the media and the production and the labor that we're required
to add on that educational phase, as well as the nonresponse
followup phase.
Mr. Miller. Thank you. Mrs. Maloney.
Mrs. Maloney. Can you give us an idea about how big this
campaign is compared to ones that we're familiar with like say,
a Coke campaign or a Nike campaign, in terms of people you
relate to?
Ms. Dukes. Well, in terms of the dollar amount, it's a very
big campaign. You would be one of the largest advertisers.
However, the fact that you are trying to reach as many people
as you are puts a real strain on the number. What is good,
however, is that it's in a very condensed period of time so
there's really very little we can compare that's an apples to
apples comparison. If you think about Coca-Cola, yes, they
might spend $100 million on advertising over the course of a
year but it's over the course of a year and it's targeting a
very finite best prospect group. We're in a short period of
time, which is good, which makes our money more effective but
the fact that we are targeting so many people, so many
different audiences is a challenge. I think, however, we've
risen to the challenge and the amount is a good amount.
Mrs. Maloney. Could you use more money for the paid ad
campaign and if so how much? And likewise, is there a danger of
backlash? Sometimes people become saturated from exposure and
do you have any type of mechanism to monitor for such a
backlash and modify a campaign if necessary?
Ms. Dukes. The first part of your question, we have given a
lot of thought: Do we need any more money and how much more, et
cetera. So, we've run the models, the saturation models and we
find that with the messaging that is in production right now,
we would not reach a saturation point until we spent another
$54 million. Do we need that additional $54 million? What about
the backlash? We think we're in a good place because our media
plan tells us that we're going to reach 99 percent of diverse
America, 97 percent of Hispanics, 99 percent of African
Americans, 97 percent of Asians and 92 percent of American
Indian-Alaska natives.
So, I think we're at the point where we might run into
diminishing returns if we spent much more money, that people
would turn off, that the messaging would become wallpaper and
really wouldn't be accomplishing what we need for it to
accomplish. If you go even further than that you begin to
create annoyance and then people are just going to walk away
from it. I'm sick of hearing about it. I don't want anything to
do with it.
So, it is delicate. Like I said, because of our reach
numbers we think we're in a pretty good place.
Mrs. Maloney. I understand that a great deal of the media
buys for the census campaign need to be made during the first
week of October. Can you explain why is that and how many of
the buys need to be made at that time and what is the effect of
the uncertainty of the funding? As I mentioned earlier, we have
a $1.7 billion shortfall in the Senate package.
Ms. Dukes. We need to buy just about all of our media for
the educational phase come October 1 and we need to start
buying for the motivational phase which begins January-February
and the reason for this is our inventory, media inventory, is
very, very tight, extremely tight. It's a big buying time
because it's around the holidays. We're also entering campaigns
and we know that the networks are changing their programming
and so because of our media analyses, we know exactly what kind
of programming we need to buy to reach specific target
audiences.
That programming is becoming more limited. More and more
people are going to want to buy it. If we're not able to buy it
come October, then as Dr. Prewitt mentioned earlier, we may
find ourselves in the same situation we were in in 1990, where
we have the messaging but we don't have the media available to
run in the right place in order to reach the right people at
the right time. And so, we might be wasting money if we can't
buy the right media.
Mrs. Maloney. Why October for the education phase?
Ms. Dukes. I'm sorry. The education phase begins in
November and we need to buy the media at least a month in
advance, preferably 2 to 3 months in advance, so we can get the
inventory we really, really want that we know is really, really
perfect to talk to our audience.
Mrs. Maloney. You go education stage, the motivation stage.
Ms. Dukes. Correct, then nonresponse followup.
Mrs. Maloney. You were talking about the critical buy list
and you say part of your advertising campaign will include
these stations and add, Mr. Chisholm, on any of these
questions. How do stations get on that list and what is the
purpose of those buys, the critical buy list?
Ms. Dukes. These stations get on the list directly from the
regional offices. In order to ensure that the regional offices
are going to have the grass roots support that they need from
media in addition to the air cover we're providing from the
national program, we've asked them to tell us what media in
their particular regions are especially important or
appropriate to their particular cities. They submit that list
to us and after we analyze and make sure it's not a bankrupt
station, for example, we'll add them to the list.
Mrs. Maloney. My time is up. I know there are other people
who want to question.
Mr. Miller. Mr. Davis.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Dukes, what is an independently managed Young and Rubicam
company?
Ms. Dukes. It's a company that is owned by Young and
Rubicam but makes all of their own management decisions,
hiring, strategy.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. In the instances where these are the
subcontractors in a sense, were there no existing companies
made up of the groups for which these companies now have
primary responsibilities?
Ms. Dukes. Were there no other potential subcontractors?
Mr. Davis of Illinois. Yes. Were there, for example, Latino
owned and managed companies that were not a part of Young and
Rubicam that were looked at in the process of deciding who the
subcontractors would become?
Ms. Dukes. Because our approach from the very beginning was
to create an integrated program based on a universally
appealing strategy and because of our past experience in
working with the subsidiary firms that belonged to Young and
Rubicam, we went into the pitch responding to the RFP with
these agencies and so we did not consider agencies outside the
network who had the expertise inside the network.
Mr. Chisholm. Congressman, I would like to add something to
that. The Bravo Group, which is an independently owned
organization of Young and Rubicam, is the foremost Hispanic
advertising agencies in the country, as well as Kang and Lee.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. I appreciate that. I just have some
concerns about bonding. I have some concerns about broadly
based opportunities. I have those kind of concerns, especially
from a small business perspective. But let me just ask you, you
indicated that there were five other agencies associated with
your company in terms of the work that you're going to be
doing?
Mr. Chisholm. No, what I mentioned was that there were five
agencies who were asked to pitch the African-American portion
of the census contract through Y&R.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. OK. So there were five who applied
and your agency was the one that was chosen.
Mr. Chisholm. Yes.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. I know that when we start talking
about media buys, oftentimes we're looking at where do we get
the most bang for our buck in terms of the numbers of people
that we reach. Are there other considerations in terms of the
kind of programming that is going on, as well as the number of
people that we reach?
Mr. Chisholm. Are you referring to different types of media
forms?
Mr. Davis of Illinois. Some people may listen to a radio
station that plays music all day. They reach a certain number
of people. There may be another station that has a talk format
and they may not reach as many people but maybe people are
paying more attention to what's going on. And so maybe the
impact might be greater on one population group in terms of----
Mr. Chisholm. You're absolutely right. That particularly is
true in the African-American community, where you may have
small pockets of listeners or readers to a publication, in this
case black newspapers. The impact that it has on the greater is
much more significant than just the sheer numbers.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. You mentioned the black newspapers.
Every time I'm in contact with the National Publishers
Association, the black newspaper group, they're always of the
opinion that they are passed over, that somehow or another
they're not viewed as having the impact on the community that
they feel that they actually have, and therefore, they feel
that they're neglected and overlooked when there are
advertising opportunities.
Mr. Chisholm. We are fully aware of that and we, as an
organization, tend to agree with them that they are not looked
upon as having impact in the marketplace. As it relates to the
census, as it relates to census 2000, we believe that they are
a critical part of delivering the message because of who they
are and also because of what they represent. I'll even take
that a step further. And that media will do one thing and what
we are trying to do through the media is to create the word of
mouth within the marketplace. We think that that is going to
be--that is critical to the success of this program and we
think that media, and in this case black newspapers
particularly, as well as black radio, will be significant in
igniting that word of mouth communications within the
marketplace.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. Thank you very much. I'll be back.
Mrs. Maloney. Can I ask a followup to Mr. Chisholm on that.
You mentioned the word of mouth over and over again and why is
the word of mouth such an important component and if it is an
important component as you're saying, how can we leverage that
more to work better for us, the word of mouth? Is this
different from the other communities we're trying to reach, the
word of mouth? Could you elaborate a little bit?
Mr. Chisholm. I think word of mouth is extremely important.
We think word of mouth is extremely important as it relates to
the African community. Often messages are filtered and often
thought of as possibly a top-down kind of communications. It
may come from any aspect of the community. Often those that are
not considered to be opinion leaders in the marketplace or
thought of as being opinion formers in the marketplace are
often those individuals who ignite a particular opinion or
provide a confirmation of interests or fact. So we think, and
again I think that this is more endemic to the African-American
marketplace than it is the general market or even the Asian, as
well as Hispanic marketplace, we think this is extremely
important as it relates to the African-American marketplace.
Mrs. Maloney. How do we leverage that?
Mr. Chisholm. You ignite it through the media. You ignite
it through involvement and participation and support from the
Congressional Black Caucus. You ignite it and leverage it
through United Negro College Fund or the National Urban League,
organizations like that, but you also ignite it through Billy
Myers, who lives on 48th Street and is the guy to know in the
marketplace. So, it's our understanding as to how you do ignite
those kinds of things that creates this positive word of mouth,
and that's exactly what we want to do for the census.
Mrs. Maloney. Thank you.
Mr. Miller. I think we have time for one quick round of
questions. First of all, explain to me again the educational
component which starts in November and how much is going to be
spent on that and why would we want to do that in November or
December because of the holiday season and so much other
competition, rather just jumping full speed into it in January?
Ms. Dukes. The Census Bureau has research that shows the
greater awareness and the greater the knowledge, the higher the
likelihood for participation, and so we are using the
advertising time from November into January as an opportunity
to begin to seed information, an educational aspect to what is
the census all about and why should it be important to me. It's
really paving the way. It's setting the stage for the
motivational message which will begin in January. So, the
advertising will continue and it's building up and it's again
using best practices.
Mr. Miller. Isn't it difficult in November and December to
get your message out with the----
Ms. Dukes. Which is why we need the money October 1 so we
can buy the inventory that we need.
Mr. Miller. We're going to work in the money by October 1.
The question is that there is so much competition for messages
in the media during the holiday season.
Ms. Dukes. The option would be not to do any at all and
that would be worse.
Mr. Miller. Could you concentrate it more in January?
Ms. Dukes. Then I think you're looking at the saturation
level, where you've got too much messaging going on and people
turn it off. So, it was our best professional judgment that we
needed to do an education program in spite of the heavy traffic
that will be carried on in terms of messaging. There is a
finite amount of media and so we will be part of that finite
amount of media and we think, again, the professional judgment
says that that is a stronger way to go than if we were to try
and do too much messaging, confusing the issues, in a shorter
period of time.
Mr. Miller. Are you going to use celebrities in any way?
Ms. Dukes. We are not planning to use celebrities in the
paid advertising. We are looking at opportunities for using
appropriate celebrity spokespeople in what we call the added
value opportunities or in some PSAs that we know we're going to
be able to get.
Mr. Miller. How about Mr. Chisholm? It's that word of mouth
question again.
Mr. Chisholm. Our intention is not to use and to identify a
paid celebrity. In other words, we may consider a voiceover of
a well known but he will not necessarily be identified. That
was one of the things that we found in research, that there's a
kind of a weakening of credibility when the message is coming
from a celebrity or a specific type of celebrity.
Mr. Miller. The 1,700 people you interviewed, these were
focus groups or did you do more of a random sample?
Ms. Dukes. It was a combination of quantitative and
qualitative. We had about 30 respondents in a room and they
were exposed to advertising with like a television clicker and
after they were exposed to the advertising, they went through a
series of questions.
Mr. Miller. The 1,700 people were all focus group people?
Ms. Dukes. No, because the 1,700 participated in the
clicking and quantitative. About half that we then probed in a
qualitative session.
Mr. Miller. And then you would have a separate one, say for
the Haitian community focus group?
Ms. Dukes. Yes.
Mr. Miller. Mrs. Maloney.
Mrs. Maloney. In the forum that I went to, they did focus
groups and guess what group did the worst? Elected officials.
No one wanted to listen to them on the census. Anyway, you said
in your testimony that for every one unit increase in civic
community activity, there was a 30 percent increase in the
predicted odds of mailing back a form. I mean, I find that
really interesting and could you elaborate on that?
Ms. Dukes. It goes back to the conversation that Dr.
Prewitt was having regarding civic engagement. When we were
first facing this challenge, we knew that it would be easy to
target audiences by demographics and by ethnicity but the real
issue is how likely is a person to fill out that census form?
There was no actual research that answered that question and so
we set about to build a model that would help us segment the
audience on how likely they are to complete the form. We used
civic engagement or civic participation as the basis of our
model. We believed in it because when we looked at the response
rate from the 1990 census, 60 percent, it correlated--we
initially broke the likelihood spectrum into five segments and
that 65 percent response rate correlated with about 63 percent
that were on the right-hand side, the most likely side of the
spectrum. The other validation or encouragement, if you will,
is that the demographics of the populations or the audiences on
the least likely end of the spectrum happened to match
precisely the demographics of those who were hardest to reach,
hardest to count and part of the undercount from the 1990
census. So, we felt like we had a pretty good thing going here.
Then, when we went into the dress rehearsal, that model was
validated. It's not statistical. I'm not a statistician so I
really can't speak to it in depth but Nancy Bates from the
Census Bureau actually worked on research testing the
effectiveness of the dress rehearsal program and she has a full
report and she can speak to this in detail about the
correlation between civic engagement and likelihood to
participate.
Mrs. Maloney. I understand that Young and Rubicam retains
the rights to any intellectual property developed in connection
with the ad campaign and I gather from your testimony that
you've already copyrighted the likelihood spectrum? Is that
right?
Ms. Dukes. That's right. We trademarked it.
Mrs. Maloney. Is this usual for your contracts and do you
have any idea how much revenue you may generate from these
rights?
Ms. Dukes. To be honest, we don't expect to generate any
revenue. We don't expect to sell the likelihood spectrum. It
was really a competitive issue and just to clarify, not all the
intellectual property belongs to us. The Census Bureau is
paying for our services and so they have ownership of some
intellectual property. It happened that the likelihood spectrum
was developed on our time as we went into the request for
proposal.
Mrs. Maloney. Well, I would like to know when we can see--I
understand you're still working--when are the ads going to be
finalized. I thought a lot of your ads were just sensational. I
think other Members of Congress would like to see them.
But I'd really like to ask Mr. Chisholm, in your testimony
you said that you got many valuable experiences from your work
in the 1990 census and you said it was a very valuable tool and
I'd like to know in what way. What specific lessons have you
learned that will be helpful to us in 2000, and how would you
compare 1990 to 2000 overall, the advantages of paid
advertising versus what you were working on then, which was a
public service announcement type of campaign?
Mr. Chisholm. I think there were two key things that came
out of this. One was that a solid strategy across all groups,
be it African-American, Hispanic, Asian, and diverse America,
was essential. Unfortunately, though, in the 1990 census, each
group pretty much did whatever they wanted to do in terms of
the strategy. I believe that a single-minded strategy, as in
the case of what we're doing here, is clearly essential.
That was one key thing. The other key thing was the nonpaid
media. I think it had a significant impact on the success of
the census. The reason for that is in the case of the African-
American marketplace, they pretty much did not participate to
the extent in which they will be participating now, obviously
because they're being paid. But that was really critical in
igniting communications within the African-American marketplace
and you saw that pretty much through all ethnic groups. The
other thing is that from a donated perspective, we were at the
liberty of the media. They ran the activity when they had the
time available to run the activity, as opposed to the time
where we had large numbers of audiences and/or the right
audiences listening and/or watching a particular show or
reading a particular publication.
Mrs. Maloney. My time is up. I find this fascinating. I
could ask questions all day.
Mr. Miller. Me too. Mr. Davis.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
During Dr. Prewitt's testimony, he talked about the concept of
civic responsibility that I find intriguing partly because it
mirrors feelings of my own in terms of the whole business of
rights and responsibilities, and we often talk about rights and
not enough, I don't think, about responsibilities. Will this
sail with the real hard to count population group as much as
the other side? What is it that you can expect to get from
participation?
Mr. Chisholm. I think so because of two reasons. One
because of the message that we're delivering. The message is
being delivered from me, African-American male talking to
African-American female. We've personalized the message. So,
it's the message itself and it's also the messenger. Our
ability to galvanize African-American newspapers, galvanize
African-American radio stations to deliver that message also
adds to the truth and the value.
In addition to that, in looking at this likelihood
spectrum, and we did this likelihood spectrum, for the African-
American component as well, one of the things that we realized
was that participation in church was one of the key indicators
here and so our goal will also be to utilize the church and
their forms of communications to the extent which we can to
help deliver the message.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. I'm looking because I don't regard,
for example, all African Americans as being hard to count. I
don't regard all Latinos as being hard to count. I think this
business of being hard to count, much of it is as much a part
of the socioeconomic status of people as it is their ethnic
background and all of that. As a matter of fact, I think it's
more of that. And I guess I'm really trying to see how we
separate out. I would expect the mainstream message, though, to
touch certain percentages of these population groups.
Ms. Dukes. It absolutely will. That's why we call it the
message to diverse America. It is reaching everyone who
consumes English media, English speaking media, and you're
right. Not all African Americans, not all Hispanics, not all
Asians are in that least likely category. In fact, we ran the
likelihood spectrum against each target audience and say, for
example, we believed that about 80 percent of American Indians
fall into the least likely, whereas only, I think, 46 percent
of African Americans fall into the least likely. What you will
say, though, is that the least likely does skew to minorities.
It also skews to lower educated, renters, lower income, blue
collar, so you're right about the socioeconomic aspect of it as
well, which goes to the point of how appropriate it is to look
at the audience based on their likelihood to participate, as
opposed to their demographics only.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. Does that mean that I can expect the
targeted subcontractors to spend more of their time with the
group within their populations that really are the most
difficult to reach, the untouchables, the unreachables, the
uneducated, the whatevers?
Ms. Dukes. Yes.
Mr. Chisholm. Yes. That's how the message is going to be
driven but the message may be delivered through the----
Mr. Davis of Illinois. Traditional.
Mr. Chisholm. Yes.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. Let me ask one other question and
I'm really done. And maybe it should have gone to Dr. Prewitt
but you've mentioned this word of mouth business. It seems to
me that much of word of mouth comes from what I call community
organizations, community groups, community activism,
neighborhood associations that really generate the momentum and
enthusiasm in a community for something to work. Is there a way
to make use of those as part of the advertising campaign, I
guess is my question?
Mr. Chisholm. The answer is yes, it is our intention to
continue to have conversations on a local market basis. That is
not our responsibility. That is our commitment to ensure that
there is an understanding of how this mechanism works and to
the extent which we can facilitate igniting the word of mouth,
we will do that.
Ms. Dukes. I might add that the same is true for the Bravo
Group and for G&G and for Kang and Lee. All of them have
ongoing dialog with important organizations within their ethnic
communities.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. Thank you both very much. I thank
you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Miller. Let me ask two very quick questions and get two
very quick answers. When will ads be available for public
review? I know the hearing staff and Mrs. Maloney were able to
see them recently. The other question is, are you involved in
trying to get any of the free advertising, pro bono type ads,
any effort in that way?
Ms. Dukes. We will be showing rough cuts and some print ad
layouts as early as next week to the Census Bureau and to the
Department of Commerce. We will be showing finals. We should
have final work in the middle of September so that will be when
it will be available for public consumption. And in terms of
pro bono, free advertising, we're negotiating with all of our
media to get free space or additional activities from them,
whether it's network, radio, print, billboards, whatever. So,
we are trying to extend, in fact it's our goal, to make the $65
million media budget really work like $100 million being spent
in media alone.
Mr. Miller. $65 million? I thought we were spending $106
million.
Ms. Dukes. I'm sorry. I was just thinking of this fiscal
2000.
Mr. Miller. Thank you. Thank you both for being here. It
was very interesting. I wish we had more time. I look forward
to seeing the finished result here in a few months. Thank you.
If Mr. Zunigha would come forward and remain standing.
[Witness sworn.]
Mr. Miller. Thank you very much. Have a seat. I appreciate
very much your joining us here today.
STATEMENT OF CURTIS ZUNIGHA, CENSUS ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON THE
AMERICAN INDIAN AND ALASKA NATIVE POPULATIONS
Mr. Zunigha. If I may, first of all, in a traditional way
here, I want to stand before you.
[Speaks in Lenape.]
Mr. Zunigha. I've just spoken words in the language of the
Lenape or the Delaware Indians. They're words of greeting, well
wishes to all of you here and I stand before you as a former
chief of the Delaware Tribe of Indians, a lawyer for our tribal
sovereignty. When I speak to you today, all of you here, I do
so in a way that brings forward our relationship that goes back
to the year 1778, when the United States of America and the
Congress approved and entered into a treaty, the first Indian
treaty in the history of this country with the Delaware Tribe
of Indians.
So, we're America's first federally recognized tribe. So,
if you'll forgive a breach of protocol, I'm going to approach
you, Mr. Chairman, and extend my hand in friendship and when I
do so, I renew and refresh the relations that go all the way
back before this was the Nation's Capital, before this city was
the Nation's Capital. Before there was ever a first census,
there were the Delawares of the United States of America
through the Congress. I just want to say thank you very much
for having this hearing and inviting me here.
Now, do you want me to go ahead and just read my statement
into the record? Is that appropriate?
Mr. Miller. If you'd like to. Summarize and we will include
the entire statement in the official record. If you'd like to
summarize and then we'll proceed to some questions and more
general discussion. That might be a more productive way.
Mr. Zunigha. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's Zunigha, Curtis
Zunigha. I am a Delaware/Isleta Pueblo Indian from Oklahoma and
I'm serving on the Advisory Committee for American Indian and
Alaska Native Populations. I was appointed in November 1977. I
bring with me not only a background in service and tribal
government and an awareness of tribal government issues, but
also I have an extensive background in media and public
relations. So that was kind of the specialty area I guess that
I had a lot of interest in. And then, when I came on board, I
was encouraged by my fellow committee members to kind of take
on the publicity promotions, advertising, as a special area of
focus group in our endeavor to offer advice to the Census
Bureau.
Now, you asked me to comment on three different areas and
my written comments go into some detail. I'll try to again
summarize them, first of all, the ad campaign and dress
rehearsal.
In the beginning when the committee was first hit with the
proposed plan, it seemed inadequate to meet, I guess, the
diversity of cultures and geography in Indian country. I think
one of the problems, however, was the committee members not
being completely savvy in advertising and marketing approaches
and realizing that this was just the dress rehearsal. But, I
think there was some very valid comments about some of the
imagery and how it was going to be presented and used, and as I
looked at the report on the dress rehearsal effectiveness of
advertising, I saw some numbers there and I wasn't particularly
impressed with them, but then again, I suppose that's what
dress rehearsals are for, to identify the wrinkles and get them
ironed out.
So, I went to Menominee and I observed some of the
discussions with focus groups and even talked to a few people,
including the chairman of the Menominee reservation,
Apesahnequat, my Indian brother, and we talked about some of
these things and ways of bringing forward improvements. And,
it's trying to target advertising--see, everyone wants to have
their own special advertising approach, you know, featuring
their tribe or their region of the country. You've got Indian
Country broken into Northern Plains, Eastern Woodlands,
Southwest, Pacific Northwest, Alaska Natives, so they were kind
of wanting some imagery that spoke more to them. And when I
looked at the numbers of dress rehearsal advertising, again, I
was not that impressed with the numbers but I think from all of
that came some comments from our committee then that they were
not completely impressed with and had even kind of a marginal
rating of satisfaction with the initial campaign that was
presented. But it was because, you know, you've got to do
things differently in Indian Country and the outreach is not a
textbook Madison Avenue approach to advertising.
And I think when our committee had an opportunity to offer
our own ideas, one of the problems that we found was not
necessarily in the receptiveness of G&G, the Indian contractor
and Y&R and the Census Bureau, it was the mechanism in which we
communicated. When I talked to Michael Gray with the
subcontracting firm G&G in Albuquerque, I said Michael, how
come we haven't been talking more and he's saying well our
contractual arrangement is such that I work for Y&R. Y&R works
for Census Bureau and there's a certain communications
hierarchy and dynamic and management structure in everything,
and I thought well, the chairman of our committee is two blocks
down the road. He's a professor at the University of New Mexico
and yet you guys haven't gotten together just for lunch to
chat. He can't give you orders there at lunch but at least we
can sort of circumvent this lengthy and what I call vertically
oriented chain of command and chain of communication. And so I
brought that forward at a meeting, kind of surprised the Census
Bureau people when I told them, you know, that the way of
communicating wasn't working fast and efficient to address our
particular needs.
So, those were some of the things I think that we had some
problems with. We wanted to see more diverse imagery rather
than a one-size-fits-all ad and we wanted greater coverage in
the ad buys out in the market and then, of course, consistent
use of phrasing or nomenclature. A lot of people get confused.
Do I call you a native American, do I call you Indian? What's
the right term. Well, obviously the right term is, if you
really want to get it right, I'm a Lenape. In our language it's
Lenape. Our English name is Delaware. Nonetheless, it was
approved that it would be American Indian and Alaska Native.
A couple of other things. As far as this marginal level of
satisfaction with the ad campaign, it had to do with did these
ads speak to the urban Indian population, which is a
significant part of Indian Country, even though we've only got
about 2 million Indians in this country. A lot of them live in
the cities. How are you going to do this outreach to Indian
Country when you have images of an elder out here on the
reservation? How is it going to speak to them? A lot of things
that I bring up, I'm speaking on behalf of our entire
committee, which has a diversity of opinion themselves.
Now, I want to say that regarding the receptiveness of
Census Bureau and Young and Rubicam to our committee's
involvement and the advertising plan, that is an area where I
think I can really give my highest remarks in this testimony
today because they listened and I think Michael Gray with his
company was saying well, yeah, you know in many ways they're
right about this communications dynamic. How can we find a way
of having our advice and our input get to them in a more timely
fashion and save a lot of time talking about these things and
trying to circumvent problems before you spend a lot of time
and creative and production and have something out there that
the committee is going to be very critical of? I think we have
changed the communication dynamic such that it has brought some
rather remarkable improvements in the last 6 to 8 months
certainly. I think since the Census Bureau has really kicked us
into gear, both from the partnership side and advertising side,
there's been a lot more product out there.
On the advertising side, I have been able to be aware of
production meetings and discussions on now a more diverse
imagery, where they're going to be going to different parts of
Indian Country and selecting certain reservations and picking
someone, an elder or a child from that reservation, shooting it
on that background or in this pocket of Indian Country, in
different regions, to show this diversity because in Indian
Country it's kind of like saying Europe, but Spain is so
decidedly different from Italy, which is so decidedly different
from Scotland. That's what Indian Country was looking for, was
something that spoke a little bit more at least to their region
of who they are.
So, I'm seeing these things come out in the ad campaign and
I think, because the Census Bureau and Y&R was open to changing
the communication dynamic and developing a mechanism to improve
our input, that it has eased any apprehension that some of my
fellow committee members may have had. The rating level for G&G
has been upgraded. I think it will continue to be upgraded the
more we see what goes on, but I want to stress, however, that
based on the numbers that we saw, Indian people are really high
as far as percentage of those not likely to respond to the mail
out of a form and mail it back to us kind of approach. And
therefore, no matter how perfect the ad campaign is, you've
still got to educate the people and give them the power to
understand and fulfill their partnership responsibilities,
where they're telling their own people through tribal
government and community leaders that the census is important
for Indian Country and if you can change the numbers of those
who are more likely to respond to the census form, you can
elevate those numbers, then the money you're already spending
over here on advertising is going to affect more people. I
mean, the advertising campaign, that's locked down. That's a
go. I'm all for that but we want to improve things on the
partnership and education side. I think that's going to be the
real key.
I've noticed some improvements with the Census Bureau. I
support that all the way and I've been encouraging and
challenging tribal governments to fulfill their part of the
partnership responsibility.
My comments, Mr. Chairman, in here I will also say that
quite honestly, based on the government to government
relationship, some of the smaller tribes that I've talked to
have said, hey, this is almost like an unfunded mandate. You
want to develop a partnership and yet we don't have the savvy
in many cases, we don't have the staff, we don't even have the
computer to look at their CD-roms or to communicate or do
things like this. We need help. We need some funding and no
matter which pocket of the Federal Government it may come from,
Mr. Chairman, I still am a proponent of finding some ways of
empowering tribal governments to fulfill their partnership
responsibilities.
So very briefly, if you consider that brief, that is the
net effect of my comments on this testimony. I'd be glad to
answer any questions and I really wish you would allow me to
make a comment on the civic duty or civic responsibility and
patriotic duty issue, but at your discretion, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Miller. You want to make a brief comment about that? I
think we all agree.
Mr. Zunigha. Thank you. Unlike other pockets of this
population, Mr. Chairman, I don't think the civic duty and
patriotic responsibility, all that kind of thing, is going to
work in Indian Country. And I say that, sir, because I'll think
back just one century ago, 100 years ago, in preparation for
the 1900 census. That was a period, Mr. Chairman, of what we
call the allotment era. Many Federal acts were passed to
ostensibly help out the poor red man but what it did is it
broke up tribal governments, abolished tribal courts and took
the community or the tribe of the people as a whole and made
individual Indians out of them and took the tribal shares of
land and broke them up into 160-acre plots, allotments, and
gave them out to each individual Indian. In order to do that,
the government had to bring them forward. They had to conduct
the so-called censuses or enrollments. Whatever you call it,
it's lining up a bunch of Indians and doing a head count,
getting their name, who are you, where do you live, who's your
family, ostensibly to help them out but what it did is it gives
them land but then there was a whole bunch of surplus land
which they decided to open up to anybody else. Well, that was
land that was supposed to have been given by treaty. After all
of that period of all of these different head counts, in 1907,
there was Statehood for Oklahoma. Hey, that was supposed to be
the Indian State by treaty. So it's not that long ago that we
have these lessons of what happened to us. It wasn't until the
Roosevelt administration in the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act
that sought to make up for quite clearly, Mr. Chairman, the
wrongs that were done to Indians and in my opinion, a violation
of certain treaties which are certainly a high law of the land.
So Indian Country, you know, is suspect about this whole
thing anyway and so, while I'm challenging the tribes and I'm
going to these tribal government conferences and I'm
encouraging and challenging tribes to become involved in the
census, to become partners and to work hard and make the census
work for them to empower themselves, which is certainly some of
the message that comes out in advertising, I ask, I dare say I
demand of the Census Bureau, of the Congress, U.S. Government
that all of the politics that surround the census is once again
not designed to do a head count of Indians and figure out some
way of getting to their resources. I'm saying this because
that's what a lot of the old-timers still remind me about with
these so-called head counts and what was the story then, and
they're suspicious. There's sometimes anti-Indian legislation
that is developing in today's Congress regarding taxation,
jurisdiction, these kinds of things.
So, we want to know that the Federal Government's message
and that of all branches of the Federal Government is in good
faith and that this whole effort is not to in some way to get
to our resources or to infringe in any way on our tribal
government and our status as Indian people, our legal and
political status. They worry about that kind of thing. That's
the spin on civic duty that I wanted to express here.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Zunigha follows:]
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Mr. Miller. Thank you. Let me begin with some questions and
first of all, let me say thank you very much for coming all the
way from Oklahoma and also for your service on the advisory
committee. The advisory committee has been very crucial. I'm
sure Dr. Prewitt thanks you but we in Congress thank you for
your participation. You don't get paid for that, but it's very
important that we have all areas represented.
As you may be aware, this subcommittee is very interested
in Indian population counts and we had a hearing specifically
on this issue in Phoenix in January and we had four Indian
tribal leaders who testified before us then. Just as Dr.
Prewitt said he found out a lot going to Memphis, we learn a
lot when we visit, whether it's Miami, Wisconsin, or Arizona.
You mentioned this issue of distrust because of historic
wrongs. How much of that can we overcome in this census? You
are the most undercounted population, I believe, within the
census. How do we overcome it if advertising is not going to do
it?
Mr. Zunigha. Again, I think advertising is only going to
prompt those who are pretty much most likely to respond to the
forms anyway. The answer comes from the tribal government
itself. We're hardest on our own kind, but I'll tell you, if it
comes from the tribal government in a partnership with the U.S.
Government, and the educational process explains why the census
is important to the tribe and how they derive much of their
Federal funding through formulas based on socioeconomic
demographic statistics and that their tribal jurisdiction and
other kinds of things are tied to declarations that are made
during the census, I think that's how we're going to overcome
that. The message has to come from within the tribal leaders
themselves so they're the first wave that you have to get on
board and I don't think you're going to get every tribe. You've
got some of those six nations' people up in New York who are
just refusing Federal funds anyway. They don't want to get too
tied in. I don't know that you're going to completely get over
it, but I think because the government-to-government
relationship of tribes and that legal and political status is
directly tied to their relationship through Bureau of Indian
Affairs, the tribal shares they get, that's what's going to
work is when it comes from the tribe.
Mr. Miller. How have you personally had an impact, do you
think, to the advisory committee? You said there's been these
changes over the past year, couple of years or so. You speak
positively and I'm very glad to hear that. Do you feel your
input really has been listened to by both the Bureau and by Y&R
and whoever and can you give me specific illustrations of
things you point out and you've seen a response to?
Mr. Zunigha. Well, I'm apparently known as being a somewhat
outspoken individual and so when I say things that are
sometimes brutally honest. I do so in order to put the issue on
the table. We know in any great social change, it's the voice
of the conscious of the people, perhaps that rebel or maverick
or rabble rouser out there that's raising their voice and
putting that issue right in their face, but I've also found out
it's working in partnership. It's then every time you offer a
problem, offering a solution, a proposed solution, and if the
other side will sit there and listen and engage in a way of
maybe trying another approach to solving it, well, that's what
I'm doing here with these folks. Even though, at times, they
kind of stop for a minute and they kind of give me this look
like I can't believe you said that about us, at the same time I
come forward with some ideas and they are responding, yes, sir,
particularly in regards to such things as the multiple images,
the change in the communication dynamic between Y&R, Census
Bureau, advisory committee, and Indian population. I dare say I
expect more of that to happen. It's important. Again, I think
Y&R and I've talked with Terry several times, I've heard her
say maybe we should rethink our approach and it apparently is
paying off because they are responding.
Mr. Miller. Thank you very much for your contribution,
making this a successful census. Mrs. Maloney.
Mrs. Maloney. Thank you. Thank you for the tribal greeting
and for your very sensitive testimony and really a history
lesson in why there is such distrust from the nations of our
government and justifiably so.
I would like to ask a question about the dress rehearsal
and I understand that one of the biggest criticisms that came
out of that advertising campaign was that they didn't have the
ads in the right places? Specifically the tribal members and
the Menominee had wanted to suggest the places where the
advertising should take place, and would you elaborate on that
and are you confident that it will not happen in the 2000
census, that this type of issue will be addressed and that
tribes will be listened to where they think the advertising
should take place?
Mr. Zunigha. I think that the learning curve changes
dramatically when you go in with a good faith effort to try to
do something for a target market and something comes back to
you that says you're way off target and you want to know why
and you want to know what to do about it. I think that was the
case in Menominee. Again, I did talk with Apesahnequat, the
chairman of the Menominees. He's like a professional actor too.
He's got this incredible presence and, you know, I know that he
felt like, hey, listen to what we have to say. We know our
community and why don't you guys, you know, why don't you guys
use me to help reach out to talk to my own people. I think that
was something once they instituted a plan, they were going to
go ahead and go through with it.
With regards to the ad buys, I'm not that familiar enough
with that market in Menominee to judge the ad buys that they
did. Any comments that may have come from some of the community
leaders, I think, only tells G&G and Y&R that that kind of
collaboration is important and I see it happening. I see it
opening up more and more, especially in all of the other
regions too. G&G has increased its staff to do more of this
work out in each of the regions to get more research done on
every little possible way of reaching out to Indian Country
because classic or traditional methods in the non-Indian world
are just not the right approach in Indian Country. So, you
communicate with your Indian folks. G&G is from Albuquerque. As
a matter of fact, Michael and his family, they are Blackfeet
from Montana. So you still have to go over here to Menominee or
you have to go down to Cherokee, NC and understand that dynamic
and talk with the local people first before you really take
off. I see that now changing in that direction.
Mrs. Maloney. As a member of the advisory committee have
you found this structure to be an effective one? Is it meeting
its goals?
Mr. Zunigha. Well, now that they've changed things around,
yes. It's helped. I spent 7 years in the United States Air
Force and I ran a tribal government for 4 years. I know about
communications and management hierarchy and you know, when I
first came to the Census Bureau, I thought, oh, my God, we're
in trouble. But I've seen a lot of changes and it takes
standing up and being kind of vocal about it but explaining why
it works and offering not just to give criticism but to roll up
your sleeves and join in and make the change or transition
happen and so it's happening now. It hasn't hurt the Census
Bureau at all, I think. I'm pleased that they've made some
efforts in that direction. Yes, ma'am, it's improved.
Mrs. Maloney. Have you seen any of the ads for the Indian
nations, any of the print and media?
Mr. Zunigha. Yes. Not only that but I've been privileged
with being able to speak with some of the producers and take a
look at some of the proposed creative material and you know,
just offer some of my own comments in support.
Mrs. Maloney. What do you think of it?
Mr. Zunigha. I think it's dramatically improved, especially
in the sense that they're going out to these different parts of
Indian Country now and using the local people as models and I
mean, my goodness, this week or even as we speak, they're up in
Montana right now.
Mrs. Maloney. In other words, they're using Indian leaders
from Montana, New York, Oklahoma in their ads to regionalize
their approach?
Mr. Zunigha. No, ma'am, not leaders. They're using elders
and children as the focal images.
Mrs. Maloney. Targeted for the specific tribes?
Mr. Zunigha. Well, ma'am, for the Northern Plains, they are
using the Blackfeet reservation and using some Blackfeet people
up there and that look will kind of cover that whole Northern
Plains region. That's something more identifiable but then
they'll change it when they go down to Albuquerque or Cherokee,
NC, or Seattle. Or up in Alaska. The Alaska native is a little
bit different breed of native folks there and they need their
own imagery and their own push, but that is a separate part of
it and I'm glad of that.
Mrs. Maloney. There were 1 in 12 Indians, American Indians,
that were counted in the last census. What do you think we'll
be at in this next one? After this ad campaign?
Mr. Zunigha. According to the census statistics, it was
like 12.2 percent undercount, which is the largest out of them
all.
Mrs. Maloney. Largest of all. Do you think these ads will
overcome this resistance to government interference in
counting?
Mr. Zunigha. No, ma'am. I think it's going to be the
partnership effort. The ads are good. The ads are important and
the ad campaign is important and it should not be dismissed out
of Indian Country, but again I think it's going to be the
education and the partnership efforts, not just the partnership
specialists coming into Indian Country and saying here's the
material, let me see what I can do to help out in your area.
But it's the tribes coming forward and having their people and
their leaders doing local community meetings and putting
everything in the tribal paper and doing those kinds of things
with partnership supporting. If you can increase that least
likely to respond percentage or decrease it rather, and
increase the likely to respond, that's when your ad campaign,
which is already hanging out there, is going to come in and
just remind and prompt those people as we get closer to census
date. But the actual imagery and the look of the Indian ads and
the things that I see happening in production now are a vast
improvement.
Mrs. Maloney. Thank you for your testimony.
Mr. Miller. Mr. Davis.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. I really don't have any questions
but let me just state I appreciate your testimony. It's been
very interesting listening to you and the things that you have
to say. I agree, I think, with your premise that while the
advertising is going to be helpful, the most helpful process
will more than likely, especially with the community that
you're talking about and that you represent, will be the
partnerships. The interaction with people will probably be the
determinant factors as to whether or not significant
improvement is made.
So, I agree with your wisdom, as well as the fact that
you're here, and I thank you very much.
Mr. Miller. Thank you very much for today. We appreciate
your coming and it's very productive to have these hearings.
I'm sorry we don't have more time. I thank you for sitting
through the first two panels.
I ask unanimous consent that all Members' and witnesses'
written opening statements be included in the record. Without
objection, so ordered. In case there are additional questions
that Members may have for our witnesses, I ask unanimous
consent for the record to remain open for 2 weeks for Members
to submit questions for the record and for the witnesses to
submit written answers as soon as practicable. Without
objection, so ordered. The hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 1:25 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned,
subject to the call of the Chair.]
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follows:]
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