U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

61–550 CC WASHINGTON : 2000

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

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman

BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York

CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

STEPHEN HORN, California

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia

DAVID M. MCINTOSH, Indiana

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

MARSHALL ‘‘MARK’’ SANFORD, South

Carolina

BOB BARR, Georgia

DAN MILLER, Florida

ASA HUTCHINSON, Arkansas

LEE TERRY, Nebraska

JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois

GREG WALDEN, Oregon

DOUG OSE, California

PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin

HELEN CHENOWETH, Idaho

DAVID VITTER, Louisiana

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

ROBERT E. WISE, JR., West Virginia

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,

DC

CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

JIM TURNER, Texas

THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine

HAROLD E. FORD, JR., Tennessee

JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

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

PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

——— ———

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

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

(III)

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 ChisholmMingo 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

(1)

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

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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?

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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 CommerceJustice-State spending bill in the subcommittee. The majority acVerDate 11-MAY-2000 14:59 Mar 08, 2001 Jkt 066434 PO 00000 Frm 00010 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HEARINGS\61550 pfrm13 PsN: 61550 
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cepted 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

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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

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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

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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 manVerDate 11-MAY-2000 14:59 Mar 08, 2001 Jkt 066434 PO 00000 Frm 00021 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HEARINGS\61550 pfrm13 PsN: 61550 
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age 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 advertising, 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,

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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 161⁄2 percent, production 141⁄2 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;

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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

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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.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Prewitt follows:]

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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

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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.

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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 quesVerDate 11-MAY-2000 14:59 Mar 08, 2001 Jkt 066434 PO 00000 Frm 00034 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HEARINGS\61550 pfrm13 PsN: 61550 
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tionnaire. 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

32

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

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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

34

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 adverVerDate 11-MAY-2000 14:59 Mar 08, 2001 Jkt 066434 PO 00000 Frm 00038 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HEARINGS\61550 pfrm13 PsN: 61550 
35

tising 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.

36

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

37

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?

38

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.

39

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 $41⁄2 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.

40

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

41

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 likeliVerDate 11-MAY-2000 14:59 Mar 08, 2001 Jkt 066434 PO 00000 Frm 00045 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HEARINGS\61550 pfrm13 PsN: 61550 
42

hood 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,

43

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 bene- fits 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,

44

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 IndianAlaska 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 ChisholmMingo 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

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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 AfricanAmerican 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-ofmouth 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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

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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.

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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?

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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

70

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.]

[Additional information submitted for the hearing record follows:]

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