The Central Office of Information (COI), which provides
communication services to government departments and agencies, has
signalled its commitment to media evaluation by drawing up a roster of
nine evaluation agencies.
Out of 12 applicants, the COI has picked CARMA International, CMS,
Infopress, Impacon, Mantra, Media Measurement, Media Track, Metrica and
Test Research.
To help encourage government use of evaluation agencies, the COI
organised a seminar on evaluation on Wednesday. Around 80 heads of the
Government Information and Communication Service were due to attend.
’There was already a client demand for this,’ said COI sponsorship and
promotions head Samantha Mercer.
CARMA recently evaluated the portion of the Inland Revenue’s tax
self-assessment campaign that ran in January this year, to see how it
had been received by self-employed people with no accountants and higher
rate tax payers.
The COI will offer media evaluation to those clients using its in-house
regional PR network and campaign promotion service, or those using the
COI roster to select PR agencies for large national campaigns.
The COI says clients should spend between three and 12 per cent of their
PR budget on evaluation, with bigger campaigns spending more. It will
recommend the most suitable evaluation agency for the campaign, draw up
the brief and monitor the performance of the agency. The roster will be
reviewed in three years.
Sandra Macleod, managing director of CARMA International, said of the
roster: ’It is a reflection of the maturity of the evaluation
market.’
Leader, p11.
