Dr. Robert Groves, the director of the U.S. Census and director formerly of michigan research center spoke at a morning general session of the Advertising Research Foundation conference with Guy
Garcia, author and CEO of Mentametrix about the award and what the new numbers reveal. He said the 2010 data represents both traditional and digital efforts backed by a $300 to $400 million media
spend to get younger Americans to send in the Census form. "It was a gigantic coalition of agencies and federal folks," he said, adding that besides hiring some 600,000 canvassers, efforts included
digital and social media outreach ("We Tweeted, believe it or not").
The ad spend, he said, was justified by the savings. "From a business viewpoint, if we could increase mail return rate by
1 percentage point we'd save $85 million dollars worth of knocking on doors."