About the Campaign | Become a Supporter | What People Say

Say NO to AVEs

AMEC invites the support of public relations and communications organisations to join a global initiative to eradicate fully the use of Advertising Equivalency Value (AVE) and all of its derivatives as metrics in public relations work.

Find out what the Say No campaign is about

22 Reasons Not to Use AVEs: English / Spanish / French / Chinese / Indonesian

See the AMEC Academic Advisory Group Statement

Sign to show your support

At no time will AMEC publish a list or register identifying members who have signed up to the “Say No to AVEs” campaign. We believe this should be a voluntary decision which forms part of our Global Education campaign. However, knowing which members have committed their support is helpful to the AMEC Secretariat leadership to know the status of member support at any time.

OFFICAL SUPPORTER BANNER

Download the official supporter banner

HOW YOU CAN GET INVOLVED

Using the “Say No to AVEs” banner on your website. Download it here.
Use the “Say No to AVEs” logo in presentations and even pitches to show prospective clients where you stand.
Use information from the AMEC press release but adapt it to be able to promote your company or organisation name with the campaign messages.
Blog or tweet about the “Say No” campaign.
If you are a client organisation – we would love you to get involved!
Confirm your support on the member commitment page.

SEE WHAT PEOPLE HAVE TO SAY

“If I had a $ for every potential customer that asked us to include automated AVEs in our platform…..

Well, I think we’d certainly have more customers at CoverageBook. But here is the thing. We refuse to include it in the tool. And I’m super happy about that. It’s time to change. It was time to change 20 years ago. In our own small way by cutting the supply of the discredited AVE metric to our customer base of 1000s of brands we’re doing our bit. This plus the amazing education from AMEC will help people break the addiction.

Gary Preston, CEO, CoverageBook.

“IABC Asia-Pacific gives AMEC our full support for your organization’s “Say No to AVEs” campaign. At IABC Asia-Pacific we remain fully committed to the progression of the communications industry. As a Board, we believe your campaign is an excellent initiative for bringing new focus to how we, as an industry, measure and interpret our work. ”

Ben Shaw, Chair, IABC Asia-Pacific

“Isentia fully supports AMEC’s ‘say to no AVEs’ campaign. We would like to congratulate AMEC for leading the conversation on best practice and for developing comprehensive resources such as the integrated evaluation framework as a positive way to lift industry standards globally”

John Croll, CEO Isentia

“AVEs are a great metric if you are lazy or careless at PR! They are not scientifically accurate and have no way of identifying the nature of relationships created between PRs and their audiences. A variety of simple and effective metrics exist that enable all communications professionals to undertake meaningful research that helps drive better PR performance and genuine relationships.”

Mazen Nahawi, CEO, CARMA

“PROI Worldwide has since its formation in 1970 stressed the importance to clients and agency professionals of measuring the outcomes of communications programs. We recognize that the ongoing addition and integration of multiple communication channels and tools calls for both our agencies and clients to continually evaluate how best to measure the success of their integrated communications campaigns. Our PROI Worldwide agencies use comprehensive forms of measurement that go well beyond the use of Advertising Value Equivalents (AVEs) which are limited to measuring only certain components of a communications campaign. Measurement will continue to evolve and we will continue to promote the continued advancement of evaluation methods and systems within our industry.”

Richard Tsang, Chairman, PROI Worldwide

“All the Agencies part of PR Hub are joining with great enthusiasm the SAY NO TO AVE campaign launched by Amec. PR today means high-level advice, with the ability to be a step ahead of market demands. It means creating a strong partnership with our customers, creating strategic contents for them. All this must be measured using shared and up-to-date methodologies, finally forgetting AVE”.

Andrea Cornelli, President of PR Hub network for Public Relations and Communication firms, Italy.

“AVEs are not an accurate reflection of the true value or impact of public relations whatsoever. It’s hard work, but we need to continue to push for the best way to demonstrate and measure the value of PR on our business. The Barcelona Principles are the path forward.”.

Eileen M. Sheil, Executive Director, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, Ohio (USA).

“In today’s integrated communications world there is no question that AVEs don’t provide any value or insight into campaign performance. Simply put, our job as communicators is to tell authentic stories to inspire people to think differently, engage with our clients, and, most importantly, build lasting and trusting relationships. As a cost metric disguised as a value metric, AVEs could never tell you if you achieved those fundamental imperatives. Ketchum fully supports AMEC’s ‘Say No’ campaign and encourages others in the industry to take part, and advocate for better measurement and evaluation practices and approaches across the board.”

Ben Levine, Vice President, Ketchum Global Research and Analytics.

Newton Media Supports the Say No to AVEs

“AVE has held back a generation of PR practitioners by obscuring the true worth of communication. It’s time to change – SAY NO TO AVE. Newton Media Group is committed to measurement that allows our clients to perform better and to demonstrate the value of their achievements.”

Phil Lynch, Managing Director, Newton Insight

Datascouting Supports the Say No to AVEs

“The debate around AVEs goes on, even though the measurement of PR value has longed moved on since the days of measuring “column inches”. Some are still trying to justify AVEs and we cannot ignore the fact that many companies still use this metric. DataScouting fully supports AMEC’s Say No to AVEs campaign and encourages PR specialists to use the integrated evaluation framework to demonstrate the value of their work.”

Sophia Karakeva, Marketing and Communications Executive, DataScouting

PRCA and ICCO Supports the Say No to AVEs

“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 were proud to become AMEC first partners in their education programme, and look forward to working together over the coming years to drive our industry forward.”

Francis Ingham, PRCA Director General & ICCO Chief Executive – ‎International Communications Consultancy Organisation

“Assorel will work with AMEC to promote the “Say No to AVEs” campaign and encourage the use of new measurement methods and evaluation systems. Assorel has been working with a specific project within the ‘Assorel Academy’ for several years on measurements topics and to identify new and more significant metrics for public relations campaigns.”

Filomena Rosato, President, Assorel

“There is a clear industry consensus that AVEs should not be used to measure the value of communications. AVEs are an outdated and flawed metric that do not work in today’s multi-channel media environment. Instead comms professionals should follow the best practice approach as demonstrated by the Barcelona Principles and Integrated Evaluation Framework. I am happy to lend my support to AMEC’s ‘Say No to AVEs’ campaign.”

Paul Hender, Head of Insight EMEA, Cision

“At Talkwalker, we help companies protect, measure and optimize the impact of their brand communication. One of our central objectives is helping communications professionals to stop relying on flawed vanity metrics and moving them towards reporting on actionable business metrics. We work with a lot of clients who are frustrated with the lack of consistency, clarity and transparency in PR measurement. We see AVEs as one of the worst offenders, and are actively promoting metrics that deliver more impactful insights to our clients. That’s why we fully support AMEC’s “say no to AVEs” campaign.”

Christophe Folschette, Partner and Founder, Talkwalker

“We, at Impact Research & Measurement, India, do not support AVEs. We will continue to advise all our clients, to not use AVEs, as a measure of success. AVE is a flawed metric.”

Aseem Sood, CEO, Impact Research & Measurement

Kantar Media Supports the Say No to AVEs

“We at Kantar Media help our clients optimise their communications and give Corporate Communications and PR a voice at Board level. AVE’s play no part in helping our clients in achieving these objectives and we wholeheartedly support AMEC’s campaign to remove AVE’s from measurement practices”

Marcus Gault, Managing Director, Kantar Media Reputation Intelligence