Irish advertising companies must look beyond the local market and fight for global contracts, according to a leading London-based industry figure

UNTIL NOW, global companies have worn a path to the door of advertising and marketing companies on Madison Avenue in New York and their counterparts in London, but the market is changing.

From his second-floor offices on Regent Street in London, Belfast-born Tom Holmes, a veteran of Saatchi & Saatchi and other major advertising players, is working to refashion the industry. The idea behind his company, Creativebrief, is simple. Using its website, companies with contracts to fill post their details online and inspect the work of advertising agencies that might be able to carry out the job.

“Major companies increasingly want to take their business out of the major centres. They know creative talent is everywhere. This allows the smallest agency to perform at the same level as the largest industry player,” he says.

So far, Creativebrief has put £500 million (€550 million) worth of business through its books on behalf of clients such as Lloyds TSB, the BBC, ITV, Scottish Newcastle, Tate & Lyle, Diageo and Scottish Power.

Low-cost BMI subsidiary BMI Baby, for example, recently awarded its online PR contract to “a company north of Birmingham, and they are doing it because they are finding agencies with quality management and exceptional skills”, says Holmes.

Russian Standard Vodka – the second-biggest advertising spender in the UK – used Creativebrief when it was planning a television, cinema and print campaign for the UK, though this contract did go to a London agency.

Too often in the past, major companies went down paths previously travelled when they had advertising and marketing contracts to fill. “They often don’t know where to look; they are too busy to keep in touch with everything that is happening,” says Holmes. He believes the changing trends offer major opportunities for Irish advertising and marketing companies to cast their net into wider and deeper ponds.

“There are huge opportunities for them to get involved,” he says. “We put everyone on a level playing field. We don’t vet the agencies’ work. The brands can look at that for themselves, but we put everyone on the same plane.”

Creative industries contribute £60 billion a year to the UK’s gross domestic product, while their Irish counterparts – which include those working in cultural bodies, as well as the more commercial side of creativity – produce about €11 billion.

Five or six years ago, advertising and marketing agencies in Dublin and Belfast were not interested in co-operating with each other, let alone looking beyond their shores for business, according to Holmes.

“I want to inject a bit of confidence into the system: that they can look over the parapet, and we are getting the brands to look as well,” he says, adding: “Irish agencies compare really well with their counterparts elsewhere.”

Three Irish firms – McCann Erickson and Bonfire from Dublin, and Genesis from Belfast – spoke to members of the Irish International Business Network (IIBN) recently at an event jointly hosted by Creativebrief and the IIBN.

McCann Erickson managing director Orlaith Blaney said clever marketing was more necessary than ever, and urged Irish companies and executives in the UK to consider using Irish creative talent in their campaigns.

Creativebrief charges agencies between £2,500 and £4,500 a year. For this fee, agencies can post samples of their work online, showing the final work that they produced and how it came about.

“What we do is entirely unique,” says Creativebrief managing director Paul Duncanson, a veteran of the advertising business.

“Agencies have long complained about the cost of putting together pitches. It can cost up to £100,000.

“If am I a client and I don’t really know what I am looking for, my friends will know a few agencies and I’ll ask them to pitch, without ever seeing what else is out there.”

With Creativebrief, the approach is different. “Brands can have a look at what is out there, see who is doing interesting stuff and then put together a list of people to go further,” says Duncanson.

Major brands will, in the future, spend more money to promote their business. “Private equity firms will have to understand brands. Before it used to be about holding on to a company for three years and then flogging it. Now it has to be built,” says Holmes.

“More companies are going to be restructured, given the economic climate that is around, and that is going to require advertising and marketing. And Ireland is well placed to capture some of it.”