INC NEWS - $400k for PR campaign on water

[bragin at nc.rr.com]

if anything, $400K strikes me as a bit on the low side for developing a citywide campaign and putting the message out for a period of, say, 6 months or so. It's probably enough to do a half-assed job. Don't underestimate the difficulty of buying the right media exposure and measuring the impact of your media buys. There's plenty of research out there showing how many times someone has to be exposed to a message before it even starts to register, let alone to affect their behavior. But if we can get people to stop stuffing rags down the toilet . . . 

That said, there's plenty of other things the city should be doing with our money in addition to PR. Routine maintenance, not only of the water and sewer infrastructure, comes to mind. (Major upgrades to water and sewer are, of course, funded via bonds. But routine maintenance of all the city infrastructure shouldn't be paid for with borrowed money. It should be part of the budget process on an annual basis.) Don't know much about the sustainability director position. I'd never heard of it before today.

which may in itself be part of the problem.

Barry Ragin
---- Melissa Rooney <mmr121570 at yahoo.com> wrote: 

=============
I was just told that, at today's City Council work
session, no council member raised any concern about a
$400,000 contract to ICF for a public relations
program on conserving water. The contract proposes
that the first task of ICF is to develop a plan. The
goal is to create advertising that is simple and
focuses on one simple message per ad. About half of
the money would go to buy media placements of the ads
developed by ICF.

A friend and concerned citizen offered this
perspective: "...there are few service contracts for
this much money. Contracts in this price range are
usually for construction or to buy equipment. For even
more perspective, there is one Joint City/County
Sustainability Manager, just hired, and to just keep
the $50k each from City and County government for this
was a major struggle last year. The Sustainability
Manager has no budget, no staff, no money for capital
improvements." 

I am interested in what INC and PA folks think about
all this. Would this money be better spent on true
ACTION to help save water -- not sure what that action
will be, but having money on hand to quickly repair
and maintain current water pipes would be a start (the
one feeding Creekside Elementary burst today). 

At first thought, it seems to me that we don't need to
hire a contractor to market ads asking people to save
water. Couldn't this money be given to the
sustainability coordinator and a position be created
through that department for marketing our need to
conserve water? Heck, there are enough citizens to
come up with an ad...and how hard is it to arrange
posting on billboards, bus boards, in
hospitals/doctor's offices, hotels and shopping
centers?

Very interested in your replies,
Melissa

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 
_______________________________________________
INC-list mailing list
INC-list at rtpnet.org
http://lists.deltaforce.net/mailman/listinfo/inc-list