Census Public Awareness and Engagement Campaign - AWARD

The Census is a nationally significant event, capturing key population and social data. The insight generated underpins decisions and policies, and census data underpins almost every population statistic that is used by government, charities, the private sector and the media. The census, and ONS statistics in general, have a long history of highlighting key trends and issues that often form the basis of societal development and change, for example the Care Act (2014) was primarily as a result of the 2011 Census which highlighted the plight of unpaid carers. From a marketing perspective, this is one of the most unique, challenging and exciting campaigns to be involved in; it is one of the biggest public campaigns in the UK, targeting and engaging with everyone to drive a 94% response rate across nearly 27m households in England and Wales.

In 2021 the Census will be predominantly digital, with an aspiration for 75% of the Public to complete their census online (which, if successful, will set a new international benchmark for online completion). This will necessitate a significant change of behaviour from 2011, when only around 11% completed their census questionnaire online. The challenge is to generate a marketing program that changes attitudes, then captures the Public's attention and motivates them to complete their Census and advocate to friends and family. At the same time, the Client is on a mission to make statistics interesting and relevant, contextualizing them in everyday peoples' lives, bringing out the human side. There is only one chance to get the Census right, so it has to be right first time.

The Marketing Task

The challenge is to create a campaign that can simultaneously create mass appeal and translate down to (umbrella) niche groups and communities, starting now and building at key points where it is necessary to drive response (ie 2019 rehearsal and 2021 census events). The Client needs to establish a strategic and practical approach that will enables it to create as much clarity and certainty for the Programme as possible, enabling our colleagues in operations and public support to refine their models and activities to support the public/ people effectively throughout their census journey.