How I Got My AMEC College Certification and Learned About Flow or Continuous Evaluation

13 DEC 2023

Justin Peyton - a strong figure in emerging channels - I recommend you follow him on Linkedin - said that it's not AI tools that will take our jobs, but those who know how to use them. I would go a little further and say that communicators who know how to handle data will do a better job. And Seth Stephens-Davidowitz goes the furthest in one of my favorite books published in 2022 "Don't Trust Your Gut" - and teaches us how to use data correctly to achieve nothing more and nothing less than what we want in life. This book is not a manifesto against intuition. Nor is it the "Bible of Dataism" as it is sometimes called in the market, because, well, marketing. Instead, it's more of a guide to knowledge based on data. Because who knows us best other than the Algorithm. More specifically, data.

Now, if data knows us so well, then it is our duty to know data in return.

And that's how I ended up taking courses at AMEC College and obtaining my certification in Evaluation & Measurement in Communication. Who is AMEC?

International Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication - are the founders of the Barcelona Principles, which set the standard for communication, or at least for PR-driven communication. Their job is to set standards that help the industry mature and to flag practices that do not help professionalization - such as measuring based on AVE (estimated advertising value) indicators. They not only set the principles, but also help the industry improve through their educational institution - AMEC College.

Last year I did the training mentioned above and I was the valedictorian of the 2022/2023 class, as they say pretentiously, or the "nerd of the year" as my colleague Lore says. Also last year - GRF+ became the first PR driven agency from Romania to become an AMEC member.

I'll try not to bore you too much and focus on two important things I learned from AMEC College:

1. Tools: Integrated Evaluation Framework (IEF) - helps you plan your campaigns based on communication objectives aligned with the client's business objectives. It is about traceable communication based on data from media, digital and consumer research. Because there is no strategy without research, no D without R and no accurate communication without data.
2. A different way of thinking about evaluation as part of a communication continuum. Not just one or two slides at the end of a presentation where we say whether or not we were successful. A cyclical planning process that begins with setting campaign objectives and then consists of three major stages:

1. Formative evaluation: in which we inform about the campaign and form our starting insights.
2. Process evaluation: in which we monitor our results and calibrate our communication accordingly.
3. Summative evaluation: in which we draw the line, measure, and the conclusions and indicators from the previous campaign become the formative ones for the next campaign. In other words, we think flow. And we create flow.

Fun fact: I first heard about formative and summative evaluations from my son. Toma learns in a British educational system and according to British educational principles. It's similar to how AMEC teaches.

If this material hasn't convinced you to change your perspective on the evaluation process as a flow and to look for AMEC tools, we have one more chance. The second-year master's students at the School of Journalism and Communication Sciences at the University of Bucharest received an exam assignment from a professor to create a PR-driven communication campaign to promote AMEC standards on the Romanian market. If it doesn't work out there either, we'll see you in the fall. At the summative evaluation. 

paul.kasprovschi@grf.plus