MarCom Group Wins Share of 2010 Census Communications Contract

MarCom Group, Inc. has won a share of the U.S. Census Bureau's Census 2010
communications contract. On September 6, the Census Bureau announced award of the contract, worth an estimated $200 million, to Draftfcb of New York and a team of partner agencies that includes MarCom Group. Draftfcb is part of the Interpublic Group of communications companies, and MarCom Group is a woman-owned, full-service marketing communications and event manage-ment small business headquartered in Fairfax, Virginia.

"It's absolutely vital that everyone participate in the census, and as our nation becomes more diverse, the challenge of reaching everyone becomes greater," Census Bureau Director Louis Kincannon said in announcing the award. This requires a large, complex, behavior-change campaign, especially one that reaches historically hard-to-count populations. MarCom Group will help develop communications strategy and branding to recruit thousands of local census office personnel and several hundred thousand enumerators to reach all U.S. communities, including hard-to-reach populations, such as travelers, college students and overseas military personnel, and minority populations who are sometimes wary of participating in the census. In that connection, MarCom Group will craft recruitment messages tailored with appeals for each identified organization and community. MarCom Group will also provide advertising placement services for print, radio, TV, and Web advertising to reach the identified audiences in overseas communities as well as throughout the United States and its territories.

MarCom Group's services will include strategic planning and consultation in support of the Census 2010 communications plan, including creative elements for the multilingual recruitment of personnel to staff hundreds of regional, local and temporary Census 2010 offices, as well as the recruitment of hundreds of thousands of enumerators. The campaign will target cultural- and language-specific candidates who can meet the needs of the Census 2010 project. The media buying plan will include specific publications, online services, social networking organizations, and broadcast sources that can attract the diversity and skill sets needed for enumeration success.

MarCom Group brings to the Census 2010 project a track record in recruitment communications that has enabled more than 40 Federal agencies to attract qualified and diverse applicants to jobs at all levels.

Major goals of the communications campaign will be to increase mail response, enhance cooperation with enumerators, improve overall accuracy and reduce the differential undercount of the decennial census. "It is an honor to be selected for such a substantive role in a project that is so vital to our nation's future well-being," said MarCom Group Executive Vice President Robert Rainford. "We are looking forward to working with the Census Bureau and the Draftfcb team to make this the most successful and accurate
census ever."

Working with MarCom Group and Draftfcb will be a team of partner agencies that specialize in reaching minority audiences. These include Global Hue (black and Hispanic audiences), IW Group (Asian and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander audiences), G&G (American Indian and Alaska Native audiences) and Allied Media (other emerging audiences).

MarCom Group's first assignment will be to work with the other Draftfcb team members and with the Census Bureau and its stakeholders to develop a plan for an integrated communications campaign encompassing advertising, partnerships and media relations. The U.S. Constitution requires a population and housing census every 10 years. The massive undertaking has been referred to as the largest peacetime mobilization in U.S. history. The effort employs some of the most sophisticated technical and operational knowledge and tools available, as well as a work force of more than 500,000 enumerators to count every man, woman and child once, and only once, and in the right place. Census results are the basis for congressional representation as well as the distribution of federal, state and local funds totaling more than $300 billion annually. Census Day is April 1, 2010. The one-year contract has up to three option years, ending Sep-tember 30, 2011. Work on the contract begins immediately.