Meet the PR Awards jury member Jesper Andersen: – Embrace data in all forms and get used to not just collecting data but also evaluating

Jesper Andersen always had an interest for the art of argumentation as he minored in Rhetoric at University, and when he at a later point got a student job at a PR firm it just clicked. Today he is an international keynote speaker and advisor specializing in communication measurement and evaluation.

– Public Relations, in the original sense, is a crucial part of maintaining an organization's good relationships with its stakeholders. Unfortunately, today a lot of practitioners believe it stands for "press relations" and misinterpret their role as simply sending stuff to the media, Jesper says.

With experience as both a PR consultant and the Head of PR in various companies before switching to his current focus, Jesper Andersen knows PR very well from the practitioners side. Today he is busy teaching companies and organizations how to measurably create communication outcomes that lead to business impact.

– Reaching the fundamental understanding that without measurement and evaluation and demonstrating a proper contribution to the organization's goals, communication will eventually become an irrelevant afterthought, strategically. We absolutely have to embrace being held to account for the results we create - or fail to create, Jesper says and points out that this will be important when looking into the future of PR and communications.

– I believe there are several important developments in front of us, and another one is obviously coming to terms with what AI will mean for our practice, he adds.

Jesper’s interest and understanding for measurement specifically shows in his membership of AMEC – the international Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication – an association that aims to define and develop the industry standard for measuring communications. It is also a forum for communications research, media intelligence and insights – and one of Jesper’s biggest industry inspirations.

– Over the last 9 years I have been privileged to learn from some of the greatest minds in our industry through that organization, which I would wholeheartedly recommend to anyone, Jesper says.

And when we ask him for some inspiration for newcomers in the PR and communication industry, his advice to anyone new in the industry is to not let numbers scare you.

– Don't be afraid of numbers. Embrace data in all forms and get used to not just collecting data but also evaluating it as part of looking at your performance and contribution to the overall success, he explains.

– I believe that measurement and evaluation is crucial to proving the value that we create as professional communicators, Jesper concludes.