My must read of the day is "There Are Cat GIFs on Whitehouse.Gov Right Now," in Time:
As TIME reported earlier today, the White House is seizing on March Madness to market the Affordable Care Act to young Americans and remind them about the looming March 31 deadline to sign up for health insurance. And if you’re trying to explain anything to a young person in 2014, then you obviously have to use GIFs (animated images).
So the latest PSA on WhiteHouse.gov is a bracket in the form of a BuzzFeed-style "listicle" called "The 16 Sweetest Reasons to Get Covered." Each argument for getting insured is illustrated by an appropriate GIF, whether it is an image of a cat, puppies chasing each other, a woman twerking on a bathroom sink, or First Lady Michelle Obama dancing with Jimmy Fallon, who is doing his best mom impersonation.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if your marketing tactic involves a funny or adorable cat your clientele is highly unlikely to purchase anything more than twenty dollars. This is basically a 90s marketing campaign from Claire’s or Limited Too—regrettably they forgot to incorporate something sparkly and purple.
I’m confident someone had fun making these, but the only group of people significantly swayed by them is under the age of 15, and they won’t be helping those enrollment numbers.
The administration has a problem on their hands when it comes to the enrollment of young invincibles. They need 40 percent of enrollees to be between the ages of 18-34. Even if there was a "weekend wave" of sign ups, right now they’re pretty far behind in that demographic. While the low enrollment probably won’t amount to a death spiral, it will likely cause higher premiums in 2015. The percentage of young people matters, and their ad campaign should be more efficient especially when there are fewer than two weeks to enroll.
One gimmick would have been adequate to potentially peak interest, but they aren’t using gimmicks just to garner attention—they’ve been the foundation of their ad campaign since the exchanges opened. For now, it seems that the White House thinks young adults have the intellectual capacity of a fly and are willing to hand over hundreds of dollars because "oh my gosh, that cat was a adorable."
That’s such an obnoxious presumption.