According to the New York Times Census Bureau is using product placement to put a census employee character into a Telemundo telenovella:
In addition to the typical public service announcements and advertisements, the Census Bureau is helping to compose a remarkable story line featuring the Perla Beltrán character on the telenovela, amid the genre’s usual tales of sex scandals, unspeakable illnesses and implausible villains.
The goal is to get Latinos to let themselves be counted… which has quite an upshot for Telemundo, as the Nielsens rating calculations use the census figures in their models. More Latinos being counted automatically means higher ratings for Telemundo, and thus higher ad revenues.
We’ll see how much longer Fox News airs folks suggesting that you avoid being counted… and what argument they’ll make for answering the census being your way of sticking it to the insidious oligarchy socialistic communistic hedonistic government forces.
