Down with the Count

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DupeÈ, whose previous clients include Wal-Mart, McDonald's, and Motown, says the music industry has used this tactic for years: 'We travel to the hot parties,' DupeÈ explains. 'When the parties close down, we're waiting outside in a van, and as the doors open, we hand stuff to the people. They go home, they listen to the music, they like it, they buy it, and records go gold or even platinum without any radio play.'

Underground marketing has been so successful that it's been adopted by other industries, including athletic-shoe manufacturers (Nike), clothing companies (FUBU), and soft-drink makers (Coca-Cola). Because the census isn't a product, DupeÈ had to adjust his strategy; he compares his assignment to the voting-rights campaigns of the '50s and '60s.

'This is a pretty transient population,' he says. 'They don't read the paper. You've got to hit them where they play, not where they live.'

But where they live is where they'll get the forms-maybe. Jeryl Levin, director of the Illinois Ethnic Coalition's Countdown 2000 project, says that many of her constituents never got forms in 1990, because no real effort was made to reach them. The official 1990 census count for the area's Ethiopian population (now estimated at about 3,500) was 515-in the whole county.

'People from the community told me that hardly anyone filled out a form. Nobody came to their houses,' Levin says. 'I realize that getting a truly complete count is an impossible task-it's hardly an exact science.' Yet resulting numbers are considered scientifically precise, which makes participation critical.

Levin feels ambivalent about coaching the disenfranchised to toe the government line. But she's learned a hard truth: 'To be a contributing part of a community today means willingly giving up at least part of your privacy,' she says. 'We're not about making the Census Bureau look good. It's about helping our own city and county, and helping ourselves. Frankly, in one way or another, I'm stuck paying for someone who doesn't fill out the form. So it's in my interest to get them to do it.'

Andy Steiner is a senior editor of Utne Reader.

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