This guy gives great metrics!
Like many of my colleagues on the speaking circuit, I've learned not to expect any major new revelations from your average conference (with the exception of the IPRRC and Measurement Summit of course). However, the IABC conference in St. Johns featured two speakers that knocked my socks off. The first was Andrew Doyle -- the guy I kept throwing in the river in the middle of his speech -- Once I started paying attention, I was riveted. Talk about great metrics. For their anti-smoking campaign, he could care less about the fact that the campaign was a semi-finalist at Cannes. He wasn't even satisfied with reporting an 18% increase in awareness. He showed that the people who were aware of the campaign were more than twice as likely to attempt to quit smoking and that overall smoking rates declined.
For a workplace safety campaign, he could point to a 10% decline in accidents among young people and 43 fewer deaths.
His whole spiel was about being consistent in your actions and deeds, listening to the customer, and measuring real change, not just how many eyeballs you reached. No wonder he's been named a "SuperStar" by his Alma mater.
He really gets communications in the 21st century.
And if Andrew gets integrated communications, Hill & Knowlton's Jo-Ann Polak gets crisis communications. The big aha for most of the audience was that media is only 15% of a crisis and everything else (the bottom of the iceberg) is 85% and that's all about relationships and conversations.
As a member of IABC Newfoundland and Labrador and long-time IABC junkie, thanks so much for those fabulous comments about the conference and awards gala in St. John's. It was a wonderful event and praise coming from you much appreciated!
Posted by: Lana Collins, ABC | May 26, 2006 at 12:41 PM