Client Agency Collaboration Award

Marketers hire agencies for their expertise and their broad external perspective, but getting the best results for the business requires a special collaborative effort by both parties, establishing a relational framework encompassing role clarity and healthy challenge to bring out the best of both teams. Great client-agency collaboration can create a boost for the brand and the business, and this award aims to highlight instances where this has been done excellently. The award will be made jointly to the client/agency based upon their success in generating empathy and trust, bonding around a shared mission, unlocking business potential and triggering exceptional results.

Tourism Northern Ireland and BBDO Naomi Waite

Winner

In 2019, only 6.1% of island of Ireland trips by ROI residents were to Northern Ireland. Tourism Northern Ireland had a very difficult goal – to put NI on the holiday map for ROI residents. And then came a global pandemic. Against all the odds, BBDO Dublin and Tourism NI forged a partnership built upon resilience, resourcefulness and agility, resolving as a team to guide the tourism and hospitality industry through the crisis, and to foster sustained growth. The collaboration made a giant impact, with Tourism Northern Ireland achieving its best ever results in the first 9 months of 2022 alone.

Coca- Cola and Edelman Aisling Wilde

Finalist

Coca-Cola was facing an existential threat, losing relevance amongst younger audience, seen as not exciting and not relevant to their lives. They turned to Edelman for an informed external strategic view. We restructured our combined team to create a culture that challenged the status quo, promoted exploration, discovery and was completely orientated around the crucial Gen Z audience. This partnership was built on bravery from the Coke client to challenge the norm and reorienting the Edelman offer to what was required. Together they delivered their best business results in years and created a new team culture to futureproof both businesses.

Sky Ireland and Core Kieran Forde

Finalist

Sky Ireland is the first-ever, standalone Primary Partner of the Women’s National Football Team (WNT). Through this landmark sponsorship and the activity to support it, Sky & agency partners Core delivered success both on & off the pitch. The activation of ‘OUTBELIEVE’ brought the partnership to life & has increased affinity and consideration for Sky to maintain market share. The partnership has also helped Sky engage with new audiences unlocking headroom. This successful clientagency relationship has resulted in an enduring platform that has supported the WNT qualifying for their firstever World Cup, against all odds. A real triumph for everybody involved.

Irish Distillers and The Tenth Man Oskar Persson

Finalist

Jameson needed to move from a fragmented marketing mix, to a brand with a unique and ifferentiated position in culture to drive brand closeness. We married Jameson’s history with music to The Tenth Man’s cultural authority and set out on a new mission to be seen as the most culturally connected brand in Ireland. We brought together musicians that may never have met if not for Jameson, told their stories in an engaging way on social, digital and music media, and delivered epic experiential to debut the results. Delivering exceptional results, and even a single or two along the way

Diageo Ireland and Verve Darren Buttle

Finalist

Diageo’s portfolio of brands along with music and the arts were at the heart of Irish culture in 2022. Coming out of the pandemic, and launching into a supercharged summer of concerts/festivals, where brands were vying for consumer attention, Diageo knew it needed to exceed all previous campaigns in order to gain success and achieve the programmes objectives. Verve and Diageo have a long standing trusted partnership working closely with each other for over 20 years which helped with the cross function alignment and management of the programme