Piaras Kelly PR - Public Relations in Ireland

You have to admire the opportunists out there who garner publicity off the back of another story. Case in point, Lycos who revealed last week that “the search term ‘Elin Nordegren’ showed the biggest increase for the week ending 23 September.” Silicon Republic reports:
Elin Nordegren is Tiger Woods’ wife, and was the focus [...]

Just noticed that Ronnie Simpson, MD or Simpson Financial & Technology Public Relations, has started a blog. That brings the number of Irish PR bloggers to three: Tom Murphy, myself and now Ronnie. It’s great to see someone else dipping their toe into this medium, especially someone with as much experience. [...]

TCAL.net draws to my attention that TG4, the native Irish language television station, is now almost ten years old. Quite a feat when you consider that few people would have thought it would have lasted this long.
Anyhow, TCAL.net points out that it has a poll for the best shows over the past few years. [...]

Hans Kullin points out that the Metro in Sweden was fined 500,000 kronor after it had published an advertising wrap in the form of an article. The post immediately caught my interest because a similar advert in a Dublin freesheet in the last fortnight leaned far more towards editorial content than previous wraps I [...]

David Harvey was in the office to tell us about City Channel last week. City Channel is one of the leading media organisations in Ireland when it comes to ethnic programming and he announced that they were about to launch another program for one of Ireland’s new communities, the Filipino audience.
What really caught my [...]

I don’t normally simply link to a new website I have begun to read, but in this instance I think mediaforum.ie deserves to be highlighted. Anyone involved in the communications industry in Ireland or that is interested in the Irish media should visit this website.
It was created as a space for balanced debate about [...]

When anyone ever mentions the future of Public Relations, the ensuing conversation typically revolves around the Internet and how it will affect our industry. In Ireland, the Internet might not immediately spring to mind, but words like blog and Bebo are slowly becoming part of our vocabulary.
The main challenge facing the Irish PR industry [...]

Forgot to mention this after attending the IIA conference last week. The IIA (Irish Internet Association) has launched a quarterly newsletter with AMAS which will detail online activity in Ireland. It’s quite useful given that the statistics that are usually quoted at us are from the UK.
The statistics show that we’re pretty much [...]

I posted a quick tip a couple of weeks ago about how to find regional photographers in Ireland by ringing the local paper for a recommendation. A colleague stumbled across this website today where you can select photographers by county and by speciality. Very handy resource and saves the bother of making of [...]

Unfortunately last week saw the demise of Capital Magazine, a biweekly publication aimed at young Dubliners. When it launched I thought it would struggle due to the number of free magazines aimed at a similar market such as Mongrel. Twenty six weeks later I was proved right.
A strange thing happened though during those [...]

Irish bookmakers have made Grainne Seoige the firm favourite to succeed Pat Kenny as the host of the Late, Late Show, when he decides to step down, despite the fact that she is yet to start presenting her new show on RTE. As an aside, the move is a blow for Sky News Ireland [...]

Silicon Republic, the guys behind the eThursday section in the Irish Indepndent, Knowledge Ireland and Digital Ireland, now have an RSS feed for the site. I find it exceptionally useful because it saves me the bother of having to visit the site everyday after reading Electric News’ headlines, amongst other tech publications, in my [...]

As it turns out the Smart Telecom TV Now Awards were on last night, so Dublin was awash with soap stars and z-list celebrities. I was fairly perplexed while leaving Reynards nightclub last night to find three paparazzi outside. Out of morbid curiosity I asked who it was they were waiting for. [...]

The Herald AM has undergone a bit of a redesign. I’m not impressed, the new design looks exceptional bland and comes across as more of a website design.
Here’s the new cover.

Here’s the old cover design.

And here’s an inside page featuring the new layout. Look at the top of the page to see what [...]

Richard Moyles has set up a new website which is an interesting spin-off of the Million Dollar Homepage. The site, entitled SpendYourStash.com, is targeting advertisers who are trying to get a slice of the SSIA windfall which is going to enter the Irish economy soon.
For those unfamiliar with the SSIA scheme, it’s a savings [...]

I’ve been booking a few regional photographers recently and thought I’d post a helpful tip on how to find one easily.
The majority of Ireland’s PR photographers are based in Dublin so when you’re running a local event somewhere like Waterford, it’s awkward enough trying to find someone that is reliable and know to the local [...]

Another week and another launch, last week it was for Channel 6, Ireland’s new TV station.
Channel 6 - personally I don’t get it. The selling point is that it doesn’t do the news and weather, just entertainment. I understand the concept, but since I’m able to get the majority their content on other [...]

Ranking high on Google is the holy grail of the Internet. I work in Public Relations in Ireland and I’ve lost count of how many consultancies there are in Ireland at the minute. Each of these comapnies is spending €5k+ on a fancy website, yet I outrank them on Google and this [...]

There are thousands of charities across the globe all vying for money from a limited pot. Because it is such a competitive space, charities are having to go above and beyond with their efforts in order to raise awareness about their cause.
I read about a very interesting fundraiser in the Irish Times yesterday. [...]

The picture above is the packed house at the Irish Blog Awards on Saturday night. The picture below is the front cover of the Sunday times, the picture on the front page is of Una Keane, an Irish singer, and Joe Conway, of Digicast, to announce the launch of Making Waves, a new [...]

I was out in the recently reopened Laughter Lounge in Dublin last week. One of the comedians on the night really highlighted the fact that the media seem hell bent on keeping the public in a state of fear. Open the papers any day of the week and there will be a prominent [...]

The Sunday Business Post has a nice article on Irish businesses and podcasting in today’s Computers in Business supplement. Bernie Goldbach has a synopsis of the article on his website. One thing that annoys me about podcasting though is the belief that it will become a successful commercial enterprise in the near future. [...]

Despite numerous invitations from friends, I still haven’t managed to get around to setting up my own Bebo page. However this weekend, I did actually manage to make it to the website in order to see what all the fuss was about. It didn’t take long though to see that Bebo is going [...]

I was reading a recent post by Antony Mayfield about how a rise in circulation does not necessarily mean revenue growth. His comments about the Guardian’s investment and innovation online got me thinking though.
Current methods to decide circulation and listenership figures in Ireland seem to becoming a bit outdated because they aren’t capturing the [...]

Dublin’s freesheets, Herald AM and Metro, have agreed to give anti-litter campaigners €120,000 worth of free advertising following complaints about the rise in littering following their launch. I’d touched upon the subject before and am glad to see that each publication will try to help change the mindset of Dubliners - walking the city [...]