For something that occurs just once every ten years, the U.S. Census is remarkably…not cared about.  By pretty much anyone.  What’s worse, it is treated with skepticism and intentionally thwarted by people for a variety of reasons—from actual fears of deportation to a good old-fashioned “it’s none of their damn business” attitude toward gov. 

That’s why the Census Bureau is forking out roughly $133 million for TV, print, and radio advertisements (in addition to their snazzy new website and other outreach efforts) in order that the 2010 Census, which officially kicked off March 1, achieves the highest mail-back rate ever.

The more specific reason for the ads was noted by Census chairman Robert Groves when the campaign was first announced: each percentage point increase in the mail-back rate saves taxpayers $80 to $90 million. This is mostly owing to non-spending on the temporary workers that go door-to-door asking after the folks who did not return the census form in the mail as instructed. Citing the successful across-the-board increases in mail-back rate in 2000—the first census for which advertising was implemented—Groves and the bureau figure they can raise the stakes with more advertising, and see greater net savings.

But the efforts have not been without some blowback. Perhaps the most puzzling move was the Census Bureau’s Super Bowl ad, which prompted criticism from several angles as an instance of wasteful government spending.  The census answered its critics with a post on its website (in the more informal of the two frequently asked question sections, this one called “The Whole Story,” instead of “FAQ,” fyi) that details why the airtime was, in fact, a pretty sweet deal, considering how many people it reaches. But officials did not explain why they chose an offbeat Christopher Guest bit instead of a more universally appealing message—say, cuddly pets, babies talking to a webcam, etc.

Indeed the most scathing criticisms of the campaign as a whole center on the content itself, being that the main focus of the census advertising efforts is to reach minority and immigrant groups that are typically least likely to mail-back. Democrats and Republicans alike slammed the initial Super Bowl ads; “Not a very effective ad in our opinion. Ed Begley Jr. and a cast that has a unique following, which—we are going out on a limb and saying the following—is not in the hard-to-reach category," a spokesman for Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) told the Wall Street Journal. 

Even though ads were created in 28 different languages and targeted very specific ethnic groups with different culturally appropriate settings and props (such as different brands of rice makers—we kid you not), critics believe the effort is falling short because the messages are not direct enough.

“A March to the Mailbox,” another Census ad hitting the airwaves, might fare better. An average if strangely enthusiastic slob in a bathrobe explains why the census is important, en route to mailing his own form, assisted a barrage of visual leitmotifs illustrating his reasoning. It is direct, visually stimulating, and hits all the important points. Shorter fifteen-second sports are similarly pithy.

But ads like “Believe: A Census Benefit Message,” which looks exactly like the kind of pharmaceutical commercial that you’d mute, or “Musical Take,” a particularly awful hip-hop song that will probably fail at getting through to its audience by nature of its cheesiness, are as mistaken as the Super Bowl spot.

The 2010 website itself, too, has changed for the better since we last reported on it.  The front page is less cluttered now, and some features have been embellished as promised, including the translation of the page into over fifty different languages. And just in time: the Wall Street Journal reports that it garnered 1.6 million hits in one week following the Super Bowl, and currently is number three in traffic among gov sites. 

How is the Census doing in its social media outreach? Numbers wise, it’s doing all right. The Census Bureau has Facebook page that as of March 5 boasted 13,033 fans. (The Army has 186,000 fans, and the Library of Congress has 12,289 fans, by comparison.)

Census fans have been rising by 2% or more a day, and are growing at a faster pace this week than last.

The main Census Twitter feed (@uscensusbureau) has 2848 followers, and they’ve issued 145 tweets so far, including a few today, the first day that advance letters are being mailed to 120 million addresses.

The 2010 Census also maintains a presence on MySpace, Flickr and YouTube. The YouTube channel, which is not the most appealing setup we’ve seen from government, has had 81,000 visits so far, and 66,666 upload views. The Census YouTube videos don't appear to be embeddable, or we would have shared them with you here. This is a mighty strange restriction that limits the ability for the campaign to spread virally.

Still, the advertising and outreach effort, while imperfect, has been decent enough to inspire a little optimism.  While it's an open question whether the public service messages will actually reach the most vulnerable Americans, if there is by our sophomoric math even a 2% increase in mail-back rate, the advertising will have paid for itself and led to a few million in savings for the taxpayer. Just like the Census, we’ll be here counting.