The WATIFY awareness-raising campaign was launched by the European Commission in 2014. The campaign focuses on digital entrepreneurship and the digital transformation of European industry. Taking its name from the question ‘What if I…?”, the campaign has been implemented in two distinct phases (hereinafter referred to as WATIFY 1 and WATIFY 2). It has sought to inform SMEs, regional authorities and other intermediaries across Europe about the opportunities presented by digitalisation. The core actions of both phases included the organisation of events, mobilisation of inspirational figures, an online presence, and the preparation and dissemination of various promotional materials.
This external evaluation covered all of WATIFY’s activities and aims to gain a better understanding of its relevance, coherence, added value, effectiveness and efficiency. Evidence for the evaluation was collected via desk research, as well as via interviews and an open online survey of the main stakeholders. In addition to the open survey of various stakeholder groups, a targeted survey of SMEs was implemented via the panel provider CINT. . In total, 1,608 responses were collected from 16 Member States through the panel survey. Evidence collected from these sources was triangulated in order to arrive at the evaluation’s conclusions and recommendations.