Thoughts from the chair

Being now (somewhat unbelievably) over half-way through the HCA year, the fruits of the sub-committees' labours have translated into a number of tangible HCA activities, with more to follow, as described below.

My sincere thanks must go to all who work so hard to make these outputs a success. As an organisation we're now extending our reach within the pharmaceutical sector, with initiatives such as the first industry benchmarking survey, which is currently in the field, and the Return on Investment (RoI) consultation process. In addition many of you will have seen that the HCA-sponsored the ticket wallets (complete with HCA flyer) for the 2005 Communiqué awards.

RoI Forum

With pharmaceutical companies increasingly evaluating healthcare PR and asking what the RoI is for specific activities, the HCA RoI Forum on 14 June sought to drive consensus on how this should be defined and measured. The Forum, driven by members of the HCA Evaluation sub-committee, saw senior pharmaceutical industry professionals leading lively debate about potential methodologies to determine RoI in different communications situations.

We are now keen to broaden the consultation and your support as an HCA member would be invaluable. The full report/consultation document from the meeting and a supporting questionnaire are available online at www.hca-uk.org/roi.cfm - the report was also distributed at the 2005 Communiqué awards.

Please do take 10 minutes to log-on and make your contribution. Input from pharmaceutical industry members is particularly needed, but the views of all will be appreciated.

Agency benchmarking survey

The third agency benchmarking survey has been completed with a record number of participants. The results were distributed on 24 June, with individual agency benchmark reports being sent out the week commencing 27 June and the Executive Summary distributed in early July. The key highlights were:

• Recruitment has become an even more critical business issue, with agencies needing both to replace leavers and increase total headcount - the greatest concern being the limited pool of high caliber candidates. In the longer term, agencies highlighted the need to attract more people into the industry.
• Agencies are increasingly operating in a climate of 'more for less' - providing greater depth and breadth of services, under pressure from procurement to agree discounted or conditional fee structures while payments are delayed, and account budgets are declining.
• There is continued optimism about the future and the majority of respondents were generally hopeful of increasing their turnover and maintaining, or even increasing, their profit margins.
• The importance of collaborative working relationships between agencies and industry, including those with procurement, was highlighted.

Training programme

The HCA Media Relations workshop on 22 June was attended by 18 HCA members, drawn from four industry and six agency member companies, and was extremely well received. Presentations were made by renowned journalists and media experts including Dr Sue Mayor and Rhonda Siddall.

Our next event is a Marketing Insights seminar on 2 August which will provide a rare opportunity for senior PR agency staff from HCA member companies to gain a unique insight into recent structural changes, shifts in attitudes to sales and marketing, and the importance placed on PR within the pharmaceutical marketing mix.

To register please log-on to www.hca-uk.org/events_diary.cfm and go to the Training Section. Please note that the deadline for registration is Friday 29 July.  Also look out for details of two exciting new workshops on Global PR and Industry Insights later in the year.

Website update - the HCA members' Document Archive

Housed within the members-only password protected area of the HCA website, the Documents Archive is an online filing system that facilitates the sharing of files. This section of the website can be accessed through the left-hand navigation bar of the members' homepage.

Highlights of documents currently held in the Documents Archive include:

• The last three benchmarking survey summary reports
• HCA logos and templates
• HCA fact sheets
• Membership benefit PowerPoint slides
• Results of the membership annual survey

If you would like to add additional files to the Documents Archive please e-mail them to: webofficer@hca-uk.org