In Costa Rica we opened the association of advertising agencies to all commercial communication companies, we changed the original guild model and we have launched a new name. The transformation of ASCAP, more than 50 years old, has responded with success to the speed of the times and the new challenges.
At the General Assembly of ASCAP members, held on February 10, 2009, the country’s advertising agencies voted unanimously in favor of the opening. In an unprecedented decision in the region, advertising agencies encouraged the entry of public relations agencies, media centers, digital agencies, promotions agencies and other branches of commercial communication.
With distance and time, today it looks like a reasonable and sensible decision, although at the time it was a daring step and contrary to the protectionist and closed tradition of its beginnings. The evolution of the market would have been a sufficient driver of change, but a fresh vision of competitiveness and its development also prevailed. The strategic route chosen, influenced by Incae and the ideas of Dr. Michael Porter, was marked under accepted assumptions to raise the competitive level in the country. For this reason, an attempt was made to facilitate a conglomerate of creative and innovative companies, as well as a broad understanding of the new order in advertising and commercial communication. As a necessary consequence, it was chosen to include all the main players in the industry.
In its ethos, the association is about the stimulation of its industry, the protection of its growth and the sustainability of its members’ business. In reading the moment in which we live, as well as its vision for the future, the association chose to stimulate the demand for better products and services, to strengthen the supply from companies equipped to compete globally, as well as to recognize the broad spectrum of companies that serve today what used to be concentrated in the local and conventional advertising agency.
For this reason, it was also natural to change our name. We have become the COMUNIDAD de Empresas de Comunicación Comercial. The new brand recognizes that we have much in common, highlights the reality that it is better in unity and emphasizes the positive synergy possible when parts are added to maximize their potential, precisely in community. COMMUNITY is focused on making our world a better place and promotes creativity as an essential springboard to achieve this.
The world is changing and so is the way we live in it. While the forces of inertia and resistance to change continue, COMUNIDAD has decided to evolve and continue to be an exemplary actor in the country, demonstrating that it does what it says, that it revolutionizes itself and continues to make its contribution, both from its associates and from its revitalized trade organization. COMUNIDAD, today more than ever before, is open and invites all proactive companies that wish to join, to thrive in community and make their contribution.
