Berlin: springboard for an industry?

Historically meetings have been held in Berlin before which dictated the shape of the future. My own view is that many communications professionals will look back on the 1^st Summit on Measurement with the realization it was the moment the evaluation industry came of age!

These were my take-outs of the three day event attended by nearly 200 people from 28 countries:

·         The frightening speed of media change means that AMEC members need to have a deeper understanding of what the growth of newspaper content licensing means to their business.

·         Ironically it is a recession that could be the biggest boost to raising the awareness of evaluation, because when budgets get cut, client programme owners have a bigger need to prove the value of programme effectiveness. See the results of the International Business Monitor released to coincide with the Summit. http://www.amecorg.com/amec-news/news.asp?id=48

·         One senior client speaker, Neil Martinson, challenged the evaluation industry to a consultation process (accepted!), to determine whether the best measures to track ROI and are the right standards are in place. Neil is Director of Press & PR for the COI, the UK Government’s centre of excellence for marketing and communications which runs 150 PR campaigns annually.

·         There is a level of highly sophisticated work taking place by AMEC members to measure digital communications, helping to kill the often repeated myth that social and online communications cannot be measured.

·         My own sense of disbelief after 25 years in senior level consultancy was that the PR industry was not in the room! In Berlin we had fine speakers from Ketchum and Edelman and had the involvement of Jay O’Connor, President-Elect of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations. We also had the German Public Relations Association as our partner. But why is the PR consultancy world so apparently apathetic? When we run the Summit again in 2010 I’d like to hope that our Workshop Day in particular is crammed full of PR professionals wanting to learn from top international speakers – which was the opportunity largely missed by the PR industry in Berlin.

 

Comments

[KDPaine]

I can't remember who it was whosuggested that PR people either needed to be doing measurement right, or else the management consultancies would take over their role. I think the absence of PR professionals from the Summmit says that they are perfectly willing to abdicate their roles. The fact that everyone in that room delivers AVEs because that's what the client demands, says to me that if the PR people they work for are doomed. They're still demanding AVEs, and their marketing and management counterparts are delivering solid business results. Who do YOU think will win out in a recession?

[Richard Houghton]

I'm not sure if it is as simple as the PR sector abdicating responsibility. The recession that is throwing a light into the darkest corners of the evaluation sector is also impacting agencies. Budgets have been cut and pitch lists are getting longer. Non-attendance is probably more a reflection of commercial pressures than lack of interest. On a more positive note, I would welcome the opportunity of representing the 150+ members of the PRCA in any consultation that results from the COI's challenge to AMEC.