Central Park Group’s Marketing Push a Sign of the Times

With its brand-conscious ads and mobile-phone applications, a new marketing campaign by the charity that manages Central Park is a sign of nonprofit groups’ growing effort to compete for consumers’ attention rather than rely solely on appeals to altruism to gain support, says The New York Times.

The campaign started this month by the Central Park Conservancy focuses heavily on a new motto (“Central to the park”) and logo (a green rectangle representing the park’s shape) and mixes traditional elements such as print advertisements and direct mail with online ads, social-media outreach, and apps for iPhone and Android phones.

The goal is to emphasize the conservancy’s unusual mission as a charity contracted by the city to maintain and raise money for the iconic public park. The organization supplies about 85 percent of Central Park’s annual $37-million operating budget.

Douglas Blonsky, the conservancy’s president, contrasted the campaign’s bright, sloganeering tone to past advertising efforts he said were “a little older, stodgy, dusty.”