Now that we've fully embraced digital marketing, the challenge for An Post, and direct mail, is to stay relevant as a communications channel.  

Quite often, it’s been seen as too traditional, too labour intensive and less effective as other new kids on the block.

So, we set out to prove them wrong by having some fun with the format, by showing just how personal, tactile and results driven they could be.

We also showed how well it works alongside digital by asking marketing professionals to figure out fun challenges on the DM, before driving them online to leave their answers, and win prizes.

And it delivered, with an impressive engagement rate of 16% of the audience. 

Not bad, for a bit of old fashioned paper.

Vodafone launched their new unified communications product, One Net Business in the summer of 2016.

The product comes with many innovative features and combines all your lines of communication like mobiles, landline, instant messaging and file sharing together, through the cloud.

It gives you lots of great benefits, and means you've only one provider for all your communications.

The challenge was how to deliver what it does and what those benefits are to prospective buyers in a way that was easy to follow. 

The campaign took two steps - an educational video for the website and sales team - based on the product being the perfect employee

And a bolder launch campaign around the idea of 'Simplify the game.' 

Radio ad

"Alan was great to work with on the One Net Business launch campaign. He really got under the skin of a complex product-centric brief, taking an overwhelmingly long list of features, and distilling them into four easily digestible benefits. He helped tell the One Net Business story in an interesting and engaging way."

Jennie McCurry - Account Director in Target McConnells

Post Media – What’s Your Story? - Breakfast Event

This event, hosted by An Post as a way to encourage charities into using DM, was all about the power of storytelling and how it beats cold statistics to engage potential donors every time.

The challenge here lay in telling a story about the power of telling a story. 

The result was a DM (and collateral) that not only delivered a sold-out event, but also (extra to what was briefed) encouraged the audience to win a DM campaign worth €1,000 by tweeting their best 6-word stories like the legendary one below: 

'For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn.' - Ernest Hemingway

It proved to be a really successful campaign and the competition created a real buzz prior to the campaign, and on the day itself.

"We were asked to develop a campaign around story telling, and Alan (and teammate) came up with the idea, while also adding another nice to have - a competition for charities to tell their short story (based on Ernest Hemingway's shortest story). He wasn’t asked to do this, and it was a brilliant success. It created a real buzz at the event as charities were eager to get their hands on the prize and it also created loads of content on Twitter."

Triona O'Brien - Account Manager at Target McConnells

Coming at the end of a season-long series of festivals, the challenge for this campaign was to frame the Vodafone Galway Comedy Festival as a credible local and international event.  It started with developing the line ‘There’s Laughter in the Eyre,’ (Eyre being the reference to the city's main meeting point Eyre Square). And this line became the platform for the campaign, as well as being emblematic of the spirit of the festival (and the city) itself.  

It went on to be the centrepiece of the beautifully illustrated artwork. And it inspired an anarchic radio ad featuring the poster's carnival ringmaster calling all of Galway (and beyond) to attend, bearing grins. 

The result brought record sales to Galway with 20,000 attending the event over the week.

30 Sec Radio Ad

Full Length Song

"Alan has a real talent for writing jingle-esque and rhyming scripts, as was proven most recently with his excellent ad for Galway Comedy festival."

Karl Waters, Senior Copywriter at Target McConnells

Keeping up with the craft-beer explosion has become overwhelming for the average Joe, who just wants a reliable choice.  Smithwick’s, around for over 300 years, sought to promote their original craft beer credentials by highlighting their heritage.  The challenge here was in how I could translate this through a series of comms in Cork. The result showed a keen insight of the place and its history, told in a pithily witty way. 

As part of the expansion of their offering in Ireland, Flogas booked a series of sport sponsorship print campaigns.  The challenge here was in encouraging people to move from oil heating to LPG (Liquid Petroleum Gas) in a snappy, immediate way.  These rugby, cricket and horse racing ads (video screens at Leopardstown) were the result.

This is an example of a social content piece that engaged viewers and showcased the Vodafone Dublin Comedy Festival, all at the same time.

Our angle was the year-on-year success of the event in attracting new and established international comedians to our shores. 

And the idea involved testing them against the richness of the Irish  approach to the English language, which plays a big part in our sense of humour. 

Could these American Comedians decipher some of our well-known phrases?

The result was a highly shareable piece of content - with 258 shares and 260 comments on Facebook. 

One Direct – Taking Care of Not Being There

The challenge here was in setting the right tone for an Over 50s funeral campaign.  I started by finding a straight talking line that would resonate with a 50 plus audience and have them think about their mortality in a way that wasn’t morbid.  The line became a platform for a series of communications, including a TV ad which sold the concept of taking care of your family, even when you were not around. 

I've always enjoyed writing, from a bit of comedy in college to writing my own songs when I wasn't bothered going into college.

The result of this semi-wasted youth was a knack of writing lyrics, and just getting things to rhyme. 

It has seen me take quite a few commissions for friend's birthdays and weddings, but it's in the been the past few years that I've managed to bring these on to a more produced level.  

From an office spec video to encourage people to buy Wonky Veg, to paying tribute to our legendary employee of the month nominee Jenny, or to telling the story of the World Cup 'predict the score' competition I organised at work - (Our teams at work were named after Fathers Ted, Jack and Dougal) it's been both fun and inspiring.

Crilly Goes to Rio

So if you need any lyrics written, be you Shirley who's turning 40's best pal, or Andrew Lloyd Webber, please get in touch and I'll see what I can do.