01 – Agency Hacks and Cards For Humanity

01: Agency Hacks and Cards For Humanity

Daryl (Host): Hello and welcome to episode one of the Irish Marketing Podcast, powered by IMJ and Tinpot Productions. Each week we’re going to do our best to bring you the essential stories, stats, insights and analyses, creativity and chaos from marketing, ad, and related territories. My name is Daryl; as well as being the head of Tinpot Productions, I’ll be your host for the duration. Today’s inaugural pod will feature The Public House’s MD, Kerrie Sweeney, elaborating on three of her essential agency hacks, covering everything from the meaningful to the mundane.

Kerrie Sweeney (Clip): When you start a new job and they tell you “we’re like one big happy family here”, you know there’s going to be some human rights infringements on the way.

Daryl (Host): Publicis Business Director Edel joins us in studio to talk about trip chaining and how AXA is helping women to time out.

Edel McCabe (Clip): We could see that people were using the car as a space for a bit of peace and quiet. We wanted to turn that into a moment and a habit, and normalize that pause.

Daryl (Host): And Laura Costello from Thinkhouse is up for a game of Cards for Humanity.

Aisha (Clip): By the first round, you can see everyone’s kind of like, “Okay, we’re playing a game. Is it going to be competitive? How much of ourselves do we actually have to share?”

Daryl (Host): But today, we start with Kerrie Sweeney, who joined The Public House as MD last year. Recently, she wrote an article for adworld.ie, which broke down what she called the pride and peril of steering a creative agency. Kerrie, you’ve boiled things down to six hacks that have helped you over that time. The first one you wrote about was all about how important it is to find the right space to make key decisions. Can you tell us a little bit more about that idea?

Kerrie Sweeney: I was only yesterday describing the day-to-day to somebody as, you know that game whack-a-mole where you hit down one thing and then another thing pops up? Some days it’s just like that on repeat all day. Fixed one thing and everything pops up, and then before you know it, it’s 4:30 or 5:00 and you’re like, “I actually haven’t thought about anything outside of fighting fires all day.” Often it’s only on your way home from work, maybe a little stroll through Stephen’s Green and Merrion Square on the way home, that I kind of have some time to think. Carving out that time for yourself is so important, and the decisions that I make or the time that I actually do think is never really in the office. I’ve found more and more then over the last year to actually try and purposely do those things—like purposely step away, purposely walk around the block, just get out and get away.

Daryl (Host): And is that partly a physical-based thing, whereby you need to be physically away from the day-to-day and the whack-a-mole and the clutter to have yourself thinking in a different way?

Kerrie Sweeney: Yeah, definitely. I think when people can see you there, they’re inclined to come up and ask you sometimes the most ridiculous questions as well, like “Can I expense this?” or “Where do you keep the kitchen roll in the office?” and things like that. They’re all valid questions, but they do knock you out of what you’re thinking. I think, yeah, just having boundaries with people as well and having that space for yourself, stepping away from the team, from the building, from my laptop.

Daryl (Host): “Where do you keep the kitchen roll?” In the kitchen!

Kerrie Sweeney: Do you know, it moves around, and this is the problem that we’re having! People don’t store things in the same place. I like to say a place for everything and everything in its place, but no…

Daryl (Host): The second thing you had mentioned was: culture is the most important and fragile thing in an agency. You talk about the corporate “one big family” thing—is that line a bit of a myth or a trope, this idea of an agency being a family?

Kerrie Sweeney: Yeah, I find that line kind of creepy, I really do. I read a tweet a few months ago and I resonated so much with it: “When you start a new job and they tell you ‘we’re like one big happy family here’, you know there’s going to be some human rights infringements on the way.” You have your family, you have your friends, and it’s important to not be emotionally manipulative like that. A big thing for me is I want people to be here by choice; I want them to decide to show up every day. We’re a group of adults—this is just a group of adults deciding to show up every day for each other. Some days you can show up a little bit more than others, and that’s fine too. But taking the emotion out of that family thing, just be decent human beings, and bring your dogs in as well. I love that. Although Rob, one of our directors, is allergic to dogs, but we just give him antihistamines.

Daryl (Host): Very good. Hack number three: you mentioned that clients don’t just want a creative agency, they want a creative partner. You also talk about the fact that sometimes it means having uncomfortable conversations. Can you talk a little bit about what kinds of uncomfortable conversations are sometimes necessary and maybe to the benefit of the client, and if you could elaborate on one phrase, which is “paying the cost of dull”?

Kerrie Sweeney: We’re quite lucky that a lot of our clients come to us specifically because they want to do work that’s interesting. Our agency philosophy is “boring doesn’t sell.” If you don’t buy into that, it’s harder to work with us as an agency because we’re going to give you the most interesting thing possible. But yeah, we have to have those difficult conversations and say, “You came to us for this reason. This is your brief. We’re showing you this work. You want to dial it back or take it back a notch… we can’t move the dial by doing that for you.” Having those conversations often helps to remind everybody what we’re trying to do together. They’re the most difficult ones when you have to challenge clients on their own feedback.

Daryl (Host): And this isn’t just a notional idea; there is methodology and research behind this that points to the financial and economic benefits of this approach. Am I right in saying that?

Kerrie Sweeney: WARC had done a study about two years ago and said that 85% of advertising goes unnoticed purely because it’s boring, dull wallpaper. You walk by it on the street, you don’t remember it. We try and keep our clients in that top 15% so that whatever their budgets or messages are, it’s really resonating with the audience that it needs to, and it’s not going to waste. It’s not wallpaper; it’s not sitting in the “sea of same”, as we say. You’ll notice it a lot—with a lot of energy companies out there, you’ll see the hard hat, the wind turbine, the high-vis vest. I couldn’t tell you which energy company that is, but I think it’s all of them, bar one or two. They don’t understand that it’s actually a bigger risk to do that than it is to do something different and stand out from the crowd. The day we give our clients that kind of work is the day that we’re not living by our philosophy and we’re doing something terribly wrong.

Edel McCabe — Publicis and AXA’s “Problems Parked” Campaign

Daryl (Host): That was Kerrie Sweeney there from The Public House with her first three hacks for surviving and thriving at the front lines of agency endeavors. We’ll have more from Kerrie in our next podcast next week. But next to Edel McCabe from Publicis, who worked on the recent “Problems Parked” campaign for AXA. The campaign was inspired by a 2024 Mind Health Report showing arresting figures for women’s mental health. When I spoke to Edel, she gave me some background on the research that underpinned the campaign.

Edel McCabe: AXA run this Mind Health Report yearly and it’s a global initiative, but we look at what the local figures are for Ireland and see where we can make an impact. When we looked at the 2024 one, there was one statistic that jumped out really strongly at us: mental health issues affect 51% of women in Ireland, which was staggering. We really wanted to look at that and see what we could do to help women take action or drive awareness and destigmatize that statistic, and try turn it into an act of self-care.

Daryl (Host): Do you think that 51% was a significant increase on previous years?

Edel McCabe: It was definitely a significant increase on men’s mental health, so there was a disproportionate effect on women, and that’s why it stood out for us. Now, talking to some mental health professionals when we were researching this, some of them were surprised that it was low—they actually think that the figure is probably higher.

Daryl (Host): Wow. And would they have any understanding as to why this disparity exists between women and men?

Edel McCabe: One of the things is that women tend to take on a lot of responsibilities in the caring space—whether it’s caring for children, households, or parents. They call it “trip chaining”, where you might be driving the kids to school, going to the supermarket, going to work, or going to after-school activities. Women tend to take time in the car. As we looked into this, we could see that people were using the car as a space for a bit of peace and quiet and a reset. We wanted to turn that into a moment and a habit and normalize that pause.

Daryl (Host): You’ve aligned with Q-Park. Could you just elaborate on the rationale behind aligning with Q-Park and how that worked in practice?

Edel McCabe: Q-Park came on as a really great partner and gave women 51 minutes of free parking in order to take that time for themselves and highlight that statistic of 51% of women having mental health issues.

Woman (Vox Pop): I always try and put on a brave face, but it’s overwhelming. I can’t find space or time for myself anymore.

Edel McCabe: The AXA Mind Health Self-Check Tool is really useful because it’s free and clinically backed. The idea is you get a score, you can keep checking back in to see if you’re doing better, and knowing really when to stop and say: “I really need to have a look at my lifestyle, the support I’m getting, and how I’m feeling.”

Woman 1 (Vox Pop): I didn’t realize how much I needed that.

Woman 2 (Vox Pop): It’s so important to just take some time for yourself to decompress, to de-stress.

Woman 3 (Vox Pop): I just feel like as women, we carry so much, you sometimes just forget to stop.

Daryl (Host): I’m interested in the broader question in relation to brands. Do you think that they can have a positive part to play? Obviously they have in this instance, but is there a role that traditionally is managed by the state or by health providers, but something positive and proactive that brands can do to help people?

Edel McCabe: I think so. When brands have large customer bases, they have to be looking after them in ways that are outside the products and services that they actually sell them. That can be a big thing like a policy change or something really simple like this tool. AXA in France have the “Three Words” initiative, where they’ve actually changed their policy: when your home insurance policy says it’ll protect and rehouse you in terms of flood or fire, they’ve added three words to that policy—”and domestic violence”—when you are at risk and need to leave.

Laura Costello — Thinkhouse and Cards for Humanity

Daryl (Host): And thanks to Edel McCabe from Publicis there, talking to some of the ways in which brands can take an active role in positive mental health. Now, working in collaboration with global youth agency Thinkhouse, they recently came up with a novel storytelling game designed to encourage and inspire active global citizenship. I’m with Laura Costello, Head of Sustainability and Planet Services at Thinkhouse. Laura, tell us what the game’s all about.

Laura Costello: Cards for Humanity came from a three-year project that we’ve been running with GOAL NextGen. GOAL NextGen are part of GOAL, the global charity, and their work is trying to drive a sense of global citizenship in Ireland with young people—getting people to engage in global justice issues and sustainability through creativity. Cards for Humanity came up as an idea based on the insight that in an era where we connect digitally online and see the rise of AI, how do we generate moments of real human connection? It’s about connecting people to have conversations about things that might be surprising or new for them.

Daryl (Host): So we have Cards for Humanity on the table here. Can you talk me through the gameplay and what’s involved?

Laura Costello: Yes. There’s four different sections of cards. You start with “Self and Story” to get warmed up talking about personal stories or being a little vulnerable. Then you go into “Community and Connection”, then “Global Citizenship and Debate”, and then “Imagination and Action”, looking to the future. We also have wild cards if you want to skip a question. In group gameplay, there are options to give people points for vulnerability or creativity—it’s all around sparking that deeper level of conversation.

Daryl (Host): I probably shouldn’t ask this—do you envisage that the game might be played with a drink in hand, or is that “no comment”?

Laura Costello: The idea for the game is that it can be played in as many different situations as you’d like. When we first started talking about it, we had a connection council come together to workshop it—including Leon from Black & Irish, Gaff from Shanakee, Melanie from Herstory, Tubby Rex, and Aisha from Gorm. People talked about playing around a dinner table, with friends, or in workspaces as workshop prompts. You could put it in your bag and bring it anywhere.

Daryl (Host): Okay, so that’s a “yes”.

Aisha (Clip): By the first round, you can see everyone’s kind of like, “Okay, we’re playing a game. Is it going to be competitive? How much of ourselves do we actually have to share?” But the beauty of it was as we played more rounds, you got to really see each person in the space, and not only just see them, but hear them, feel them, and listen to the things that are important to them.

Daryl (Host): That’s a short clip from Aisha from Gorm, talking about her experience of Cards for Humanity. Now, I have your digital version of Cards for Humanity. I thought the best way to illustrate what Cards for Humanity is about is to give it a whirl. If you don’t mind, I’m going to ask you a couple of questions here.

Laura Costello: You’ll have to answer a question, too!

Daryl (Host): Oh, I knew that was coming!

Laura Costello: Back and forth.

Daryl (Host): Okay, so here we go: “Is protest an effective way to create change? Why or why not?”

Laura Costello: Yeah, I think protest is a really effective way to create change. We’ve seen it in the US equality protests over the years and women getting the right to vote—that was all around taking to the streets. It works because you’re able to see an expression of community and what people really care about heard really loudly. I’m a proud protester for things that I really care about, because it feels like you’re doing something, and that feeling can get multiplied when you’re with other people to lead to even more momentum behind the cause.

Laura Costello: You’re next!

Daryl (Host): “What do you believe are the best solutions to a housing crisis?” I am not a housing expert. I would say two things: Firstly, Dublin City post-COVID is not the city that it was, particularly at weekends. Secondly, I would hope that commercial spaces could be repurposed to have people living in the city, helping the city become more lived-in and ensuring empty spaces aren’t sitting vacant.

Laura Costello: Great. Okay, hit me.

Daryl (Host): “Who is the activist that most inspires you and why?”

Laura Costello: Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Because she used the skills that she had developed in her profession for something that she believed in—a values base, similar to what I’m doing in my work now. How do you stay in an industry that you believe has fundamental flaws, but try and use it to create change? Ruth Bader Ginsburg used the law in really clever ways to create transformative change for women.

Daryl (Host): Good answer. If you’re working in a scenario where there are plenty of flaws, arguably there’s plenty of scope for change. Can you tell us a little bit about your own role as Head of Sustainability and Planet Services?

Laura Costello: Thinkhouse is a youth marketing company with three core services: Fame, Transformation, and Planet. Fame is everything you generally associate with marketing and advertising. Transformation is where our planning and strategy department (Youth Lab) provides insights and strategies to connect brands with the next generation. Planet is all around working with brands and organizations through this transition to sustainability—a world working in harmony with nature. I work on the client side with brands, businesses, NGOs, non-profits, and government programs to create campaigns for the type of world we all want to see come about.

Daryl (Host): And that’s about as good a note to end on for this week as I can think of. Thanks to Laura, Edel, and Kerrie for being with us, and also you for taking the time. The next Irish Marketing Podcast will land next Friday and is available wherever you pick your pods.