Speaking at the AMEC Summit in Barcelona, Francis Ingham MPRCA, Director General, PRCA, challenged the PR and communication industry not to become complacent about evaluation.
He warned that while progress over the past decade has been phenomenal, with the creation of a fully-fledged evaluation profession, we are beginning to see a two speed market within PR and communications.
Quoting numbers from the PRCA PR and Communications Census 2018 and the ICCO World Report 2017, he cautioned that for many within the industry, evaluation is still unsophisticated.
Ingham said:
“The work of AMEC, and the commitment of Barry Leggetter has been phenomenal. But now is no time for complacency.
“AVEs are almost extinguished in the UK and North America – the latest PRCA Census told us that a mere 12% of practitioners used them in the preceding twelve months.
“But in many other parts of the world, they are alive and kicking. In the Middle East for example, 83% of practitioners use them according to ICCO data.
“Equally, while half of UK practitioners are aware of the Barcelona principles, that number is much lower in other regions of the world.
“So here’s my challenge. We need to keep taking this issue seriously. In particular, we need to convince the big holding groups to take a lead – their companies in every region of the world should be adopting sophisticated evaluation techniques – not just, as sometimes is the case, just their companies in the most well established markets. And we need to continue the decade long collaboration between ICCO, PRCA, and AMEC. And then together we can achieve our common goal.”
