Echo is expanding its work for the university sector through a major stakeholder study for City University (in London) in support of its five year strategy planning. Other new wins have included research into the feasibility of developing a CPD scheme for travel professionals for ABTA, the Association of British Travel Agents, developing a reputation scorecard for the board of UNITE plc, the UK's largest student accommodation provider, supporting Russell Reynolds Associates in a new
global white paper, delivering an 18-month industry issues tracking study for the American Gaming Association and providing global communications effectiveness measures for pharmaceutical group Novartis and Amadeus, IT solutions providers for the global travel and tourism industry
Communicating Risk Before Crisis Strikes click here>
As appeared in Britain's most widely read business magazine, Management Today, in the Britain's Most Admired feature, contributed article by CEO Sandra Macleod "The fresh air of the outside world helps leaders achieve clarity on changes" click here for the full article
Related link: http://www.clickmt.com
Quote Uuquote
In the new book "Securing the business benefits of globalization", UnisysVP of Global Strategic Programs Ian Ryder writes: "There are just three main reasons to measure:
1) For understanding (to discover and decide)
2) To create the right behavior
3) To manage gaps (reality gap)"
Related link: http://www.promethee.asso.fr
Award-Winning Formula
Echo dominated the recent AMEC Awards, winning seven out of ten categories and taking home the prestigious Platinum Award, three Golds, five Silvers and one Bronze. As well as scooping the Platinum Award and a Gold award for their monthly scorecards for Surrey Police, Echo Research also won a further two Gold awards for their Reputation Drivers service in the Innovation category, and for their global media analysis work for MAC Cosmetics in the International category. In
addition to Barclays Premiership Sponsorship, J Sainsbury's and Standard Life Investments, Silver awards also went to integrated research work for The Walt Disney Company and WWF.
What the Judges said
"Outstanding", "What the profession needs", "Excellent focus on key actionables", "A model worthy of imitation", "Something I would want to take back to my firm", "Excellent example of how evaluation can change behavior in the client", "One of the barriers to more extensive use of evaluation is cost. …by using Echo's extensive client base without breaching confidentiality, this model is based on independent
confirmation of the key attributes driving reputation and keep cost down." more>
Upcoming Event
Best of the Best Event: 3rd April, RSA, London: hear directly from our winning clients on how they linked research with strategy to demonstrate effect and drive change. Click here if you would be interested in joining the afternoon seminar
Driving Reputation
Based on commonly agreed components of an organization's reputation across academia and business, Echo assesses and benchmarks all our clients' drivers of reputation. For example, this leading international financial services company is benchmarked against nine of its largest global competitors, allowing comparisons against perceived average, and best and worst in class. Understanding why this is so, and relating it back to expectations among key stakeholders is helping our
clients to create greater understanding of reputation across management disciplines, and realign communications to strategic goals. To learn what drives reputation in your sector or market, or to benchmark your specific performance. Click here>
Feedback
Echo hosted a series of four round-table 'Echo Chambers' on the findings of its study "Maximizing the Route to the Top" (link) among key clients and influencers. The following highlights some of the lively debate and comments, with our thanks to all who took part: "The 'obsession' with Board membership may be overdone; membership of the executive team should be regarded as no lessan achievement and prerequisite for effectiveness."
"Mutual learning is important - CEOs about communications, communicators about the company's business. CEOs are more frequently fired for being poor communicators than not !" "Actively seek to add things to the management agenda (research, crisis management workshops etc) to keep communications in management's eye and make it pivotal to the top end of the business." "People skills and management, delegation were surprisingly weak in the study, yet
increasingly essential - not just for PR, but for the heads of all key functional/business areas." "The real value of PR is if it is embedded in the organization, across all main directors, not just a stand alone skill. It may be that SMEs have the lead over larger organizations here as they have no choice other than to go down this route, and to better effect as a result."
For more on the above issues and other questions, such as: What role, impact external advisors? Isn't Marketing so much easier to measure than PR as it has a range of evaluation methods it can draw on? Isn't research expensive? If a large part of PR is keeping things out of the press, rather than in, how does one measure how bad it could have been? At the corporate level, how is reputation measured? Click here>
