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Echo Research Scoop Double Grand Prix Honours at the 2007 AMEC Awards
Echo Research won the prestigious Platinum Award as well as the Innovation Award for its work for McDonald's at the 2007 AMEC Communication Effectiveness Awards held in London at the end of November.
The judges described the analysis provided by Echo Research as a very good piece of integrated research that provided a real breakthrough for McDonald's in terms of making a major change to its communications.

Klaske de Jonge, Director of Corporate Communications Europe for Mars Inc (left) and Ben Lloyd, Echo's Consumer Sector Director (right), receive the Gold Prize for best the integrated reputation research programme.

Echo also took home another two gold awards for work for one the world's largest private companies, Mars Inc, for integrated reputation research, and work for the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority.
Other awards were given for Echo's work for the Financial Services Authority, Hewlett-Packard, the French Elections (on blog tracking), the Business for Diplomatic Action, and health-care work for GAVI's PneumoADIP. Echo won a third of all awards on the night.
Sandra Macleod, Echo CEO commented: " we continue to win awards for our clients who push ahead the frontiers of strategic communications to support their leadership teams in more holistic thinking, anticipating and planning for success. As these awards testify, more and more of Echo's research is destined for senior management and boards, to help broaden the understanding and debate around communications effectiveness, reputation and risk."
This year the awards attracted 67 entries across 14 categories, showing a 30% increase in participation. The judging panel was chaired by Dr Tom Watson, Reader in Communications at Bournemouth University.
Speaking to guests at the Awards ceremony, Dr Watson said: " An overwhelming feature of this year's AMEC Awards was the basic strength of the short-listed entries, demonstrating how widespread the use of measurement and evaluation has become."

AMEC (the Association for Measurement & Evaluation of Communication) represents 25 media analysis companies and individuals worldwide. AMEC Full Members adhere to AMEC's Quality Assurance Code and provide professional, independent and impartial planning, evaluation and research. AMEC members have operations in Australia, Belgium, France, Ireland, Italy, Scandinavia, Slovakia, Spain, the UK and the US. The current membership represents more than £30/$57 million in evaluation revenues annually

For further information about AMEC email: jacquelinemilton@amecorg.com