The Brill Building Makes Big Impact at Europe’s Activation Awards

The Brill Building, the leading full service creative, activation and PR agency based in Dublin and Galway has made a powerful return to the EACA IMPACT European Awards for Integrated Marketing Communications.

38 winners from 18 agencies across six countries were announced. The Brill Building secured four golds, one silver and one bronze for their campaigns The AR Lens To Save Lives for The Marie Keating Foundation and the Paddy Irishman launch with photographer Ross O’Callaghan’s Paddy Irishman Project and sponsor Tourism Ireland. 

Ireland led the results table with 17 trophies, followed by Spain, the UK, Italy, and the Czech Republic.

The AR Lens to Save Lives for the Marie Keating Foundation was the most awarded piece of work across all categories winning GOLD in Cause/Charity/Non Profit, in Digital, in Innovation and a BRONZE for Small Budget.

Together with partners Meta and Aleph and the charity, which specialises in early diagnosis for all cancers, the agency created an innovative social media lens – or filter – for lung cancer awareness that highlights the common symptoms of lung cancer on a mobile user’s image while using the camera lens on the platform. It is the first AR filter to be developed for cancer education and is one of the most successful filters Snapchat have developed, recording an average ‘play’ time of 31 seconds, above the platform standard of 17 seconds.  The campaign had previously received three shortlists at the Gerety international awards earlier in 2024.

Peter Snodden, The Brill Building, and creative innovation lead on The AR Lens to Save Lives said, ‘The Brill Building are thrilled with these wins as we knew we faced very stiff competition from the best integrated marketing and experiential campaigns across Europe. We were able to achieve this world first for cancer awareness approaches thanks to amazing partners in Meta and Aleph like Paul Gleeson in Ireland and Lee Gendenhuys in South Africa. Our ambition was to use existing technology in a new way, to increase symptom awareness. The most powerful tool we have in the fight against lung cancer is the patient’s own instincts that something may be wrong.’

Further confirming their success in delivering creative experiential campaigns, the agency’s campaign for the Paddy Irishman Project was the second best performing Irish entry and one of the top overall. The launch for Ross O’Callaghan’s portrait series with sponsor Tourism Ireland took home a Gold in Experiential/Sponsorship and a Silver in the highly competitive Integrated category. Using almost every marketing and creative discipline from projections, exhibition build, PR, social and ambient immersive tech the New York launch is the most successful debut of an Irish visual arts project in the US for many years with impact seen around the world. 

The project launch was a unique partnership between the agency with CEO Roisin Keown as creative producer and creative lead Peter Snodden as art and installation director with a host of Ireland’s top creative, PR and arts promotion talent for the photographer Ross O’Callaghan who conceived the portrait series and founded The Paddy Irishman Project. Commenting, Ross said, “This is an incredible endorsement for the ongoing work of the Paddy Irishman Project. We believe this is important work - to challenge enduring stereotypes about Ireland and the Irish around the world and to celebrate in a positive way the lived history of our island through the stories of our people. We appreciate the support Tourism Ireland have given us, to launch at the scale and impact the project and our Paddies deserve and with this further international recognition we get to continue bringing this new narrative of Ireland to new audiences.”

The 2024 IMPACT Awards from The European Association of Communications Agencies (EACA) and its IMPACT Council celebrate outstanding achievements in Interactive Marketing, Promotional Marketing and Brand Activation. The winning agencies were selected after two rounds of judging in a European competition of the best campaigns selected at the national level selected 25 leading industry professionals across Europe across Europe.

The agency used the occasion of their wins to announce they have joined the Platform 94 scaling incubator in Galway. Platform 94, now headed by CEO Marie Donnellan, was founded in 1994 to be a centre of Excellence for international scaling technology businesses throughout the west, north west and beyond and is increasingly the hub for some of the most ambitious businesses in the region. 

Commenting on the move The Brill Building CEO Roisin Keown said, “We intend to make 2025 a year for a step change for The Brill Building. Having confirmed our reputation as one of Europe’s leading innovation and activation agencies, and proven our media-agnostic approach to build brands with brill ideas across strategy, advertising, experiential tech and PR it’s the right time to expand out influence in the West and connect with a truly inspiring network of companies across multiple industries – all pioneering in their own fields”