The Brill Building Wins Grand Prix at Europe's IMC Awards

The Brill Building, the full service creative agency founded by Roisin Keown has made an stunning debut win at the year’s IMC European Awards for Integrated Marketing Communications.

41 winners were selected representing 24 agencies from five countries. Ireland took the lead with 15 trophies, followed by Czech Republic with 10 trophies, United Kingdom with eight, Italy with seven, and Spain with one trophy.

The Grand Prix for an exceptional work was presented to The Brill Building for their campaign The Shop that Nearly Wasn't for Breakthrough Cancer Research. 

Together with the client, which specialises in funding new treatments for difficult to treat cancers that have a low survival rate, the agency created an innovative and emotional live experience and online shop, where survivors themselves were presented as the proof research works – and led the call for more survivors.

Dan Henson, creative director, The Brill Building, and Live Experience lead on The Shop said: “The Brill Building are thrilled with this IMC Grand Prix win as we knew we faced very stiff competition from the best gold winning integrated marketing and experiential campaigns across Europe. We thank Breakthrough Cancer Research for their trust and positivity throughout. Our ambition was to create an immersive campaign promoting the positive effect cancer research has on the lives of the people it touches. Everyone involved in this campaign got behind it and that’s always a winning formula with or without any award when supporting such a worthwhile cause.”

The winning agencies were selected after two rounds of judging in a European competition of the best campaigns selected at the national level across Europe. The first-round selection was made by a jury panel made up of 40 leading industry professionals across Europe, with the second-round jury comprised of IMC Council member representatives. 

The Shop That Nearly Wasn’t, which is still open online showcases the work of cancer survivors, only possible because of the innovations in treatments made by cancer research. Survivors who contributed included illustrator and author of 'The President’s Glasses' Peter Donnelly, dance legend and artist Michael Flatley, film director and author Stephen Bradley, novelist Emily Hourican, artist and advertising creative director Monika Crowley and the work of photographer and melanoma survivor Kevin Griffin – who also shot the creative assets for the Print and Outdoor. Legislator and cancer survivor Senator David Norris was recruited as brand ambassador.

Breakthrough Cancer Research was able to increase the amount it donated to cancer research funding from €1.3m when they first started working with The Brill Building to €2.35m in 2021.

Leading the inter-agency campaign The Brill Building fulfilled its ‘one stop shop’ ethos by overseeing the fulfilment end to end from brand strategy through to concept, creative, campaign planning and the experiential build itself. With the shop build led by Henson and delivered by Movement Events, The Brill Building produced all the campaign assets in-house working with creative director Peter Snodden, award-winning photographer Kevin Griffin and director of photography Ross O’Callaghan. PR was from from Niamh Murphy and ETC, media from Donogh O’Herlihy at Fluent and online and social from Irish Media Agency.