Companies win €3m of free advertising

THREE homegrown companies picked up almost €3 million in free advertising yesterday as the country’s national newspapers rewarded creativity in advertising.

The National Newspapers of Ireland (NNI), the umbrella group representing the Irish Examiner and 17 other national titles, handed out the prizes as part of the Press Builds Brand initiative, its latest campaign to highlight the effectiveness of press advertising.

The prizes were awarded after NNI matched 22 small and medium companies from the food and drink sector with the same number of advertising agencies to work together and develop advertising programmes.

The top award went to Glenisk, an Offaly-based dairy business that sells organic milk and yoghurt and other specialist products, and advertising agency TMP Worldwide.

The companies came together to create a brand advertising campaign entitled ‘The way it should be’, which highlighted the company’s environmentally-conscious background and the healthy and natural qualities in its products.

Glenisk will receive marketing supports worth €1.2m that will allow it to run an advertising campaign throughout the national press next year.

TMP was rewarded with €30,000, which consisted of €10,000 for the team that developed the campaign and €20,000 to produce and place the ads themselves.

Two runner-up prizes went to Lifefibre - which is based in Castleisland, Co Kerry and makes specialist healthy breads - and Brady Family Ham, a Naas-based manufacturer of traditional cooked meat products.

Lifefibre’s campaign was developed by advertising agency Vizeum and was entitled ‘A brand less ordinary’, while Initiative and Bloom worked with Brady Family Ham on its ‘Our family’ series of ads.

Both companies will receive advertising support worth €750,000 each, while their agencies will pick up €15,000 each for their agency teams and ad production.

Speaking at the awards ceremony in Croke Park yesterday, NNI chairman Gavin O’Reilly said the Press Builds Brands campaign aimed to pave the way for a company to emulate the success of Ballygowan, the bottled water product which he said owed its success to brand building through press advertising.

“The winners will get to exploit the power of the NNI’s 18 national newspaper titles with all the different sizes, supplements and product options available,” he said.

“These are big budgets for any company and, naturally, we’re confident that big things will happen with the winning brands.”