AMEC Measurement Month

AMEC, the International Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (AMEC), is inviting the support of public relations and communications organisations to join a global initiative to eradicate fully the use of Advertising Value Equivalency (AVE) and all of its derivatives as metrics in public relations work.
AMEC is inviting support in a number of practical steps which form part of a long-term industry education project.

  • Adopting a “Say No to AVEs” campaign logo – Download here
  • Inviting all international trade associations to stop the use of AVEs in national PR Awards schemes. AMEC is asking its partners to use this wording in the Terms and Conditions of Entry in Award schemes and in briefing notes to judges: Entries must not use Advertising Value Equivalents (AVEs) as the sole means of showing measurement for a campaign. Entries that use AVEs will be disqualified.
  • To join together through training programmes and events, to continue to push the message that by using AVEs it demeans the credibility of the PR company or internal comms team involved.

PRCA and ICCO became the first industry partners to join AMEC’s ‘s educational programme.
We will be working with AMEC to raise awareness and understanding of the importance of effective valuation methods

Francis Ingham, PRCA Director General & Chief Executive – ‎International Communications Consultancy Organisation (ICCO), said: “Evaluation is at the heart of our industry’s future.
“But embedding meaningful evaluation methods in PR practice requires encouragement, praise, and education -not naming and shaming those who haven’t yet reached the high standards set by others. We are proud to be AMEC’s first partners in their education programme, and look forward to working together over the coming years to drive our industry forward.”
AMEC has already made improvements to its free to use Integrated Evaluation Framework to make it an easier to use replacement for AVEs. AMEC is now working to create a global online educational resource centre to show why the metric is invalid
Richard Bagnall, AMEC Chairman, said AMEC’s Global Summit on Measurement, held for the first time in Asia in May had ignited the need to take decisive action to eradicate AVEs.
Bagnall, Global Strategy Consultant with Prime Research UK, said: “It’s time AVEs stopped being a talking point in our industry. The way forward is to work with other friends and partners in the worldwide public relations industry to eradicate this derided metric.”
Bagnall said new industry research showed the client demand for AVEs had dropped from 80% in 2010 to just 18% this year. He added: “Now is the time to kill it off completely once and for all.”
He said: AMEC’s new and updated Integrated Evaluation Framework offered a new way for campaigns to be planned carefully and measured effectively.
“The Framework makes sense of the complexities of working across the PESO channels and shows how to shift the emphasis of evaluation from counting outputs to proving value via the critical outtakes, outcomes and organisational impact of our work,” added Bagnall.
The AMEC Framework is interactive allowing users to be guided through the process while also saving their work as they go and is already available in 15 languages including Chinese. The Framework is a free resource and hosted online at www.amecorg.com/amecframework .