The advertising question

For about a century, advertising in radio, and later on television and in recent times in the Internet has become a powerful tool through which public and private entities convey information either to attract customers or to achieve their goals. In just 30 seconds – and on social media, even less time – advertisers strive to increase public awareness of a particular idea or opportunity.

In our bi-national region, it has been customary for companies from either side of the border to promote in the opposite country’s media outlets. In this way, newspapers, radio and television stations, websites, and billboards are flooded with advertising purchased with an eye toward extending marketing reach beyond the international boundary.

In the case of private companies, business owners have vast latitude in how they appropriate their advertising dollars. After all, it’s their money. But in the case of public entities, these decision carry more accountability, because they involve public funds.

For some time now, local public agencies such as the Imperial County Health Department, El Centro Regional Medical Center, Pioneers Memorial District and more recently the Imperial Irrigation District have purchased ads on radio stations and some other spots on media outlets from the Baja California capital city. A few days ago, while in my car, I was extremely surprised to hear an announcement from IID on a Mexicali radio station. For some time now, various health agencies in Imperial County have hired a billboard located on the Mexican side of the east port of entry.

I honestly do not know the reason why these agencies have bought advertising on the other side of the border since the target market is not precisely in Mexicali, but from where the neighboring country ends all the way to the north.

Certainly, seems to be getting lost in the translation. I’m thinking of an ad from the Pioneers Memorial Healthcare District in which an announcer mispronounces the clinic located in Calexico. Every time he talks about the “health center,” I’d swear he was calling it a “hell center.”

Here in the Imperial Valley there are several media outlets –radio and television stations, newspapers, and websites – that serve the Latino market in Imperial County.

Perhaps being benevolent and thinking as positively as possible, local hospitals advertise across the border to attract Mexican patients. Since foreign citizens are theoretically prevented from obtaining free health services through government programs, they required to pay for these services either in full in a single installment or through monthly charges.

Mexicali media outlets do not have an obligation to broadcast public service announcements from Imperial Valley government agencies, which is why this possibility is ruled out.

Surely I’m not the only one who has raised an eyebrow over what strikes me as a superfluous use of funds promoting services out of market instead of investing that money in making those services better.

Here, too, Imperial County should be called into question for paying $950 to the public relations platform Business Wire for a worldwide press release on the local government’ adoption of the Lithium Valley community improvement plan. But that is another story.