James Elms joins as Head of Corporate & Business and Mary McGuire announced as Head of Sponsorship

We are continuing to expand our offering with the creation of a new Corporate & Business Communications division, headed up by James Elms, while Mary McGuire has been announced as the new Head of Sponsorship.

The independent agency, founded by Bernard and James Brogan, has grown by an average of 35% year-on-year and has increased its client base both in Ireland and internationally. As part of its growth strategy, it will create two further divisions taking its total to five with plans for the current team of 32 to grow to 40 in 2024.

Having built an award-winning communications practice at Legacy, the appointment of James Elms will create a standalone Corporate & Business Division to meet the growing needs of Legacy’s client base in this area. Elms brings his experience from strategic communication roles at Sky and Betfair (part of Flutter Entertainment), plus consulting for some of Europe’s fastest growing tech startups, to the Legacy Communications team.

The new division vows to bring a modern approach to Corporate & Business communications, leveraging the best of B2C tactics to drive tangible repetitional results and fuel revenue growth for B2B and Corporate clients. Niamh Hopkins will continue to lead Consumer Communications at Legacy.

In recent years the Legacy Brand & Sponsorship offering, led by Shireen McDonagh, has surged. This will now evolve into two divisions with McDonagh leading the Brand Division and Mary McGuire taking the reigns as Head of Sponsorship. With a track record of innovation and strategy McGuire has consistently grown with Legacy since joining in 2020, bringing her culture-first mindset to the fore in all client work including clients such as Indeed, AIG, Amgen, laya healthcare, Aviva, PTSB, among many others.

As Head of Sponsorship, McGuire is poised to inspire and lead the team to even greater success as Legacy continues to push the boundaries of creativity and communication within the sponsorship industry.

Mícheál Brennan will continue to lead our growing Search & Digital practice which has been nominated for Awards in Europe and the US in recent months, winning 2 awards at the European Search Awards.

Our Managing Director, Kevin Moore, commented: “Our growth is testament to our team and its very satisfying to provide two further leadership opportunities at Legacy with James and Mary heading up the two divisions. We are constantly looking at how our services can evolve to achieve the best possible results for our clients in an ever-changing industry and I’m really looking forward to the coming years with this team.”

Laya healthcare is thrilled to unveil its latest endeavour, ‘Driven,’ a multi-platform campaign featuring a five-part video series in conversation with brand ambassador, Johnny Sexton, that delves into the profound self-belief of some of Ireland’s greatest sports stars.

Created in collaboration with us in Legacy Communications, and produced by Motherland, ‘Driven’ is set to inspire and captivate audiences as brand ambassador Johnny Sexton engages in heartfelt and unique conversations with other sporting legends, hosted by Richie Sadlier.

With ‘Driven,’ viewers gain an exclusive peek into what motivates Johnny Sexton, as he leads the Irish rugby team this weekend in France. The series features intimate discussions Leona Maguire, Henry Shefflin, Cora Staunton, and Johnny’s brother, Mark Sexton about the rise of their individual sporting careers and what drove them to perform at their best even through tough times. Through their anecdotes and insights, the series offers a rare glimpse into the inner drive that powers these iconic athletes.

The ‘Driven’ series promises to be a must-watch for sports enthusiasts, offering a deep dive into the minds of Ireland’s greatest athletes, fuelled by their unwavering determination. With Johnny Sexton at the helm, ‘Driven’ brings forth the stories of these iconic athletes who have risen to legendary status through their unwavering belief in themselves.

See more layahealthcare.ie/driven

Darkness Into Light is taking place this Saturday, May 6th, and Legacy is walking this year as a team in Phoenix Park to fundraise for Pieta.

Pieta is not only a longstanding client of Legacy Communications, but the charity also holds great meaning for our team, and we raise money every year for their largest fundraising event.

We’re over halfway to reaching our €1,000 goal so we’d really appreciate any donations either through Legacy’s company fundraiser page or directly to Pieta.

Thanks for the support, you can find our company fundraiser page here.

Clara from our search & digital PR team took to the stage at #BrightonSEO today to talk about the 30,30,3 rule for pitching journalists.

If you’re interested in learning more then check out the slides below!

Recently in April, I contacted one of my clients, a health and safety consultant based in Cork and asked him how he felt things were going with his Google Ads campaign. This client is meticulous when it comes to tracking revenue so I knew it would be a good answer and would be well tracked. His answer was the reason why I am such an advocate for Google Ads and why I feel that all small businesses should have a campaign. In the previous month – March 2015 – he had spent €100 on Google Ads, his return on this €100 spend was €1,655 which is a massive return on such a relatively small marketing spend. The revenue from Google Ads was made up as follows:

A Manual Handling course worth €240

A site visit worth €120

A site visit worth €180

A site visit worth €50

A safety course worth €640

A safety course worth €425

We also looked over his previous revenue and found that a lot of the clients that find him on Google initially, become repeat clients afterwards. In most cases his first “in” with the company is when they find him on google while searching for keywords like “manual handling course Cork”. After he has given the manual handling course at the business and they realize that he is a normal human being just like them and isn’t a health and safety maniac that “won’t let them use pencils for fear of them being too sharp and cutting someone”, they often enquire about other services he offers such as risk assessments, safety statements and on site consulting. One builder that found him through google when searching for a manual handling course has since given him €520 worth of business in the last 12 months and referred him to another builder that gave him approx €1,460 worth of work in the same period. That’s €520 directly from his Google Ads campaign and €1,460 indirectly, a return of €1,980 all from one click on Google which probably cost him in the region of €1.50-€2.00

So if you are a small business owner do yourself a favour and do it today, set up a Google Ads campaign and get yourself found online, it could end up bringing a lot of extra revenue to your business. If you don’t have the spare time to do it then hire a PPC agency like Legacy Communications to manage it for you, an experienced Google Ads agency will help you get a higher return and will get this return much quicker than you will, due to the learning curve you will be on when setting up your first Google Ads campaign.

If you can’t afford to pay a consulting fee and have some spare time to learn how to setup and manage an Google Ads campaign yourself then you absolutely have to do it! Some agencies will try to make Google Ads sound mystical, magical and impossible in bid to convince you that you need to pay them a fee, but the truth is that it Google Ads is user friendly and designed to help you bring in more business, everybody has to start somewhere even the top specialist at the top Google Ads agency had to learn Google Ads from scratch so there is nothing stopping you from learning it either. Our blog “setting up your first Google Ads campaign” has some great tips for someone that has never used Google Ads and points out some brilliant resources. You can also call Google, their new business team will help you setup your first Google Ads campaign and guide you to the right keywords for your business.

If you have any questions or would like some insight then contact us for a free review, we would be more than happy to get you on the road to PPC success.

Legacy and leading UK PR and social agency Good Relations, have been appointed to lead consumer PR for Krispy Kreme across both markets. Krispy Kreme has made the appointment as part of an ambitious growth plan to widen appeal and increase relevance amongst new and existing customers.

Legacy Communications and Good Relations’ mandate is to build a distinctive and memorable place in culture for Krispy Kreme, bringing alive the joy that the brand delivers every day. The ambitious PR campaign will focus on the moments and places that matter for customers and will be accompanied by an extensive influencer campaign as well as support for new store openings and NPD announcements.

The account will be led by Niamh Hopkins, Head of Communications at Legacy Communications, who oversees the agency’s PR and influencer accounts. Legacy will work closely with lead Lawrence Collis, Executive Director at Good Relations to deliver on-the-ground support for Krispy Kreme in Ireland.

Niamh Hopkins, Head of Communications at Legacy Communications, commented on the win: ‘’ We were delighted to partner with Good Relations on this hugely exciting pitch. As leaders in consumer PR, with a special expertise in food PR, Krispy Kreme is a brand we’ve always admired and are excited to roll out the new strategy for the brand in Ireland.’’

Legacy, which specialises in services including PR, Content and Search Marketing, and Sponsorship, has been on a winning streak lately with the company doubling its head count from 15 to 29 since 2020. This appointment is the latest addition to the agency’s growing portfolio which includes recent wins this summer such as San Pellegrino, Asics, Dogs Trust, Hubspot, Portwest, Breakthrough Cancer Research and Dubarry. Other clients include Aldi Ireland, Pieta, Energia, Indeed, laya healthcare, Hidden Hearing, Active Iron, Amgen and Lyre’s.

More than just a game…

Legacy’s Kevin Moore was back sharing his thoughts in yesterday’s Sunday Independent about the upcoming College Football game taking place at the Aviva Stadium on Saturday.

When it comes to the business of sport, American football, and the National Football League (NFL) in particular, is the big dog in the United States. The earning power of the players, the scale of the television and sponsorship deals and the size of the audience all combine to create the juggernaut that sits above all other sports in the US. Forbes lists the average value of NFL teams at over $3 billion each.

Sitting alongside their professional counterpart is the amateur sport of college football, itself a billion-dollar industry. It draws several comparisons to our beloved GAA — amateur players playing in front of packed stadiums full of die-hard fans and an engine behind it that generates big sponsorship revenue and television figures.

But to really appreciate the scale of college football, it is worth digging into some jaw dropping numbers. College football itself ranks as the nation’s second most popular sport when attendance and viewership are combined, larger than baseball and basketball. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) generated record revenues of $1.16 billion for the 2021 fiscal year.

The NFL caters for the professional elite, staging 16 games on an average weekend during the season. The scale of college football is far greater with 65 games played every weekend in the top division alone. And while most NFL stadia host around 65,000 fans, college football regularly houses over 100,000 per game.

College football is widely regarded to have deeper traditions in terms of the rivalries between teams and more passionate fans due to it being more suburban than the largely city-based NFL. College football is often the only show in town. For example, Nebraska, which doesn’t have an NFL team (or any professional sports franchise), holds the record for the longest consecutive stadium sell-out in the US. For 60 years they have filled their 85,000-seater stadium, so that on game day, Memorial Stadium becomes Nebraska’s third largest city.

In recent years, London has become the home away from home for the NFL with Wembley and other stadia hosting big games, generating good attendance and interest. Similarly, Ireland has become the go-to place outside of the US for college football with several games over the past decade, none more popular than the Aviva Stadium sell-out of Navy and Notre Dame in 2012.

The Notre Dame alumni arrived in Dublin that September in unprecedented numbers, with 35,000 fans travelling across the Atlantic for the game. To put this in context, more American fans travelled to Dublin to watch Navy take on Notre Dame in the Aviva Stadium, than travelled to London a month earlier for the Olympic Games.

Economically, Ireland benefited hugely from the affluent Notre Dame travelling support. Many spent at least five days here, and they did not just confine their spending to the capital city. The wider economic benefit of the game has been calculated at well over €100m, and the event was used as a platform to launch Tourism Ireland’s ‘Gathering’ initiative, which was such a success in 2013.

As the ‘home’ team on the day, Navy were tasked with organising the event. This model changed with the creation of Ireland American Events Limited — a joint venture between Irish firm Corporate.ie and America’s Anthony Travel, which is now part of On Location Experience, one of the leading sports and entertainment companies in the US.

The new venture set about attempting to make college football an annual event in Ireland, one that would encompass a host of beneficial Ireland-American initiatives surrounding the game. The Aer Lingus College Football Series was born and attracting the prestigious Navy and Notre Dame fixture back to Ireland for next year’s instalment is a major coup for the promoters.

Despite several attempts by Covid to derail it, the series returns in earnest next Saturday at the Aviva Stadium when the Northwestern Wildcats from Chicago will host the Nebraska Cornhuskers. The high-profile Big Ten Conference fixture will open the 2022 season with the Aviva Stadium expected to host over 35,000 fans. The broadcasted game on Fox will have a live US TV audience of around 3.5 million, providing another money-can’t-buy opportunity to promote Ireland in the US.

This is the first time that either team has travelled to play in Ireland, and they are coming in force with title sponsors, Aer Lingus. On game day, 230 football players, 146 band members and 32 cheerleaders will take to the field.

The game represents the biggest inbound international event in Ireland since 2019 with 13,000 US fans and 3,000 European fans travelling for game week in Dublin. Overall, the game is worth an estimated €63m to the economy.

Home games for the college football teams are a big revenue generator so the travelling teams work with the promoter to offset some of this. But there is a bigger picture to why they come.

Game organiser on the US side, John Anthony explains, “First and foremost, the colleges see this as a big opportunity to provide a once in a lifetime experience to their students and fans. Additionally, there are unique opportunities for the universities to build international relationships across business, government, and education.”

Examples of these relationships and ancillary events will be seen throughout Dublin this week. On the business front, the prestigious Ireland–USA CEO Club Lunch, which will take place the day before the game at the Mansion House, brings together influential Irish, US and European CEOs, along with the top travelling CEOs associated with both universities.

Thousands of people are expected to attend the traditional pep rallies in Merrion Square on the eve of the game and then on match day, the unique tradition of the tailgate party will take over Temple Bar before the game.

The 5.30pm start time this year will suit the local population better than previous years, allowing for people to enjoy these events around the city before arriving at the Aviva for the main show. Tickets are still on sale via Ticketmaster so if you want to see what all the fuss is about, this is your chance.