IDA plans €900k public relations campaign on America's west coast

The target audience for the communication work will be leading decision makers at big tech and life sciences firms on the west coast

Michael Lohan, chief executive at the IDA. IDA Ireland already employs Padilla PR to provide PR services on the east coast of the US.

The IDA is set to spend around €900,000 to increase its presence on the US west coast as part of a bid to help secure projects from the next tech investment wave.   

New documents published show that the Government agency has put an indicative cost of €900,000 on a two-year contract for public relations services on the US west coast.

IDA Ireland already employs Padilla PR to provide PR services on the east coast of the US and has company offices in the US west coast at Mountain View in northern California, at Irvine in southern California, and in Seattle in Washington state.

The documentation states that the target audience for the PR agency’s communication work will be leading decision makers at big tech and life sciences firms on the west coast "and those leading fast-growth emerging firms, many of them coming from the unique 'Valley' ecosystem and general Bay area”.

The work of the PR firm will be building on a strong IDA track record in securing inward investment from the west coast. The tender states that Bay Area companies play a particularly strong role in Ireland with major operations in Ireland. 

The firms include Airbnb, Alphabet's Google, Applied Materials, Autodesk, Cadence, Cisco, DocuSign, Dropbox, EBay, Fidelity, Fitbit, Gilead, GoFundMe, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Indeed, Intel, LinkedIn, Meta's Facebook, Oracle, PayPal, Salesforce, Slack, Stripe, Twilio, Uber, Udemy, Broadcom, Wells Fargo, Workday, as well as Zendesk.

"For many, Ireland serves as the company’s European headquarters,” according to the document.