AMEC CONGRATULATES PRWEEK ON AVE DECISION

AMEC CONGRATULATES PRWEEK ON AVE DECISION

The International Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (AMEC) today congratulates PRWeek on its decision to ban AVEs as a method of programme measurement in its 2011 PRWeek UK Awards.

In its advice to PR professionals, PRWeek stated: “IMPORTANT: starting from this edition of the Awards, PRWeek will not be accepting the use of AVEs (advertising value equivalents) as a way of evaluating the success of any campaign, because we believe such a measurement is outdated and insufficient. We also suggest that you put more emphasis on measuring the tangible business outcomes of a campaign (i.e. uplift in sales, proven change in audience behaviour, post-campaign attitudinal research).”  

Barry Leggetter, Executive Director of AMEC said: “We congratulate PRWeek on this new initiative to help educate the PR industry to move away from AVEs once and for all. The PRWeek Awards is an immensely important awards event for PR professionals and the decision will help educate PR professionals to finally move away from AVEs as a programme measure.”

AMEC has been campaigning against the use of AVE measurement since the adoption of its Barcelona Principles framework in Spain last summer.

David Rockland, Partner/CEO Ketchum Pleon Change and Global Research and the architect of the Barcelona Principles, said: “This is a HUGE step to truly abolishing the use of AVEs as every one of the hundreds of award entries submitted to PRWeek will have been confronted with this message and challenged to think differently and better when it comes to PR measurement.”

In a follow up to its achievement in Barcelona, AMEC will explore “Analytics and the Measurement Agenda 2015” at its 3rd European Summit in Lisbon on the 9th and 10th of June, encouraging the industry to push the boundaries as part of a leadership bid to finally embed programme research and measurement at the heart of every PR programme. “Most every other industry has embraced analytics, PR needs to start using it, too,” said Rockland.