BACKGROUND

A strong and organized market requires a nationwide organization to represent its interests, advocate its claims with society and divulge the work carried out by industry companies. Based on this central idea, a group of entrepreneurs from the organizational communication industry began to regularly meet starting in the year 2000.

The group at first included some ten companies, and acquired momentum with the increasing adhesion of businessmen from other states. The association created work commissions to discuss Ethics, markets, pricing and organization. As new companies became interested in the discussion, the certainty that the organizational communication industry could no longer move forward without a representative class association also ripened.

Thus on April 17, 2002 , 56 communication agencies held a meeting that formalized the creation of the Brazilian Association of Communication Agencies (ABRACOM).

From that day on, every company that provides services of media contact, communication advisory, public relations, event promotion, seminars and workshops, institutional publicity, crisis management, among others, has now a representative class association.

After ABRACOM was created, it became necessary to consolidate and expand the communication agency market, within high professional and business competence standards, to disseminate the industry within other market segments, define a Code of Business Ethics, and work to further the matter of communication agency professionalization.

ABRACOM appointed directors for its first and pioneering administration, under the leadership of its president, Joao Rodarte. Today, presided by Jose Luiz Schiavoni whose term will end in April 2006, ABRACOM is a consolidated organization. It has 206 members from 21 states. It has in place a professionalized framework that supports the activities of its directors.

To provide for the diversity of a continental country, ABRACOM has 4 regional directors (South, Southeast, Center-West and North/Northeast), as well as two state coordinators ( Para and Pernambuco).

ABRACOM that has as members the leading communication companies in Brazil plans to affiliate every single company in the industry, regardless of size or kind of service they provide.

Economic globalization forces companies to disseminate their information worldwide with the speed of the Internet. More and more companies see the need to promote and crystallize their brands in the market by adding competence values, ethical behavior and social accountability to their corporate images.

Therefore, ABRACOM principal challenge is to make communication agencies recognized as the ideal partners of corporations to perform those tasks. Most certainly, ABRACOM consolidation is a milestone in the history of the industry that already features a high level of professionalization and a great potential of economic development.