Corpus Christi city officials have allocated about $123,000 for marketing and education campaigns on water topics, including desalination — decisions that divided the City Council in a lengthy discussion May 13.
A local marketing and education campaign specific to Inner Harbor desalination — consisting primarily of digital and radio ads — rang in at about $50,000, while about $30,000 was spent on a statewide campaign showcasing advertising and sponsored content on the website of the Texas Tribune, according to a presentation made before the council by Elisa Olsen, communications director.
An additional $43,000, meanwhile, has been allocated to a local campaign that is intended, in part, to highlight the city’s “four-tiered” efforts for water security and its current and future water sourcing, the presentation showed.
Although several council members expressed support for some version of water-related education and marketing campaigns, funding for desalination-focused content split elected leaders.
Responding to criticism of the campaigns, City Manager Peter Zanoni noted that a prior slate of council members had directed the staff to do so.
The current council was seated in January.
Statewide campaign
The intended audience of the statewide campaign — which focuses solely on Inner Harbor desalination — consists of “elected officials and statewide business community leaders,” according to the presentation.
The statewide campaign platformed on the Texas Tribune has included digital advertising, a URL on the Tribune’s newsletter blasts and sponsored content.
Sponsored content is content that the author pays to be posted on a website in a format similar to a news story, although it is not a journalistic publication.
It was a “strategic decision,” Olsen said, noting that the campaign launched in January and will wrap at the end of the month.
“It is exactly the length of the Texas legislative session,” she said. “What we wanted to do with this campaign was complement and amplify all of the good work that our mayor and council members and business leaders and city staff are doing when they go to Austin, by making sure that people who are reading this publication are seeing the message that we’re delivering in person over and over and over.”
Desalination
Although the campaign on the Texas Tribune was not solely dedicated to desalination, it played a role in the content.
The local campaign on Inner Harbor desalination, tagged as “What Fills Your Cup?”, began in April, according to the presentation.
City Councilwoman Sylvia Campos, who has been vocally opposed to desalination development, described Inner Harbor campaigns as a “terrible waste of money,” pointing out that the council doesn’t at this point know an overall estimate for the project.
A vote on the final maximum guaranteed price is expected toward the end of the year, officials have said.
While there hasn’t been a final vote on the final maximum guaranteed price, “the decision has been made,” said Mayor Paulette Guajardo.
“This is the single largest and most important decision that any council (has made since 1852) and it deals with water,” Guajardo said. “So do we need a campaign? Yeah, let’s go and do one, because we’re talking about educating the very people who are paying for this.”
City Councilwoman Carolyn Vaughn requested additional focus in the local campaigns on conservation and the ongoing water situation, while pushing back on contentions that the city’s campaigns amounted to propaganda.
There is a lot of distrust of the government, and whether it is “propaganda or not, it’s probably going to be perceived that way,” said City Councilman Gil Hernandez, adding that he didn’t “think we’ve ever done any kind of campaign to this extent for anything.”
“Because this is a government entity promoting a specific issue — with only positives, no negatives; no pros and cons — this is very much well perceived as propaganda,” he said, “whether you intended that to be or not.”
This article originally appeared on Corpus Christi Caller Times: Here’s how much city of Corpus Christi has spent on marketing, education for desalination
Reporting by Kirsten Crow, Corpus Christi Caller Times / Corpus Christi Caller Times
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