Heading into Christmas and a new year is always a time for celebration, but also a time for reflection.

We've had a hugely successful and rewarding 2018 at Alice PR. Here are some of our highlights:

Team Alice PR Highlights of 2018 from Repeal to the Gender Pay Gap#Repealed

2018 saw significant changes in Ireland  not least of which was the successful referendum result back in May.

We count ourselves so lucky to have been part of it all though our work with our clients, the Coalition to Repeal the Eighth Amendment and Together For Yes. For Alice staff, it was a career highlight, and we are so proud to have helped #RepealThe8th. “Alice PR has been brilliant to work with and played a key role in our campaign. We appreciated the enthusiasm and wholehearted support of an energetic, effective and very professional team who totally understood our ethos and our aims. Our warmest thanks to you all.”

Ailbhe Smith, Coalition to Repeal the Eighth Amendment / Together for Yes

Expansion

As our client list grows, so too does our staff and this year we've been lucky enough to have found four super new members of Team Alice who haven't been afraid to get stuck in and who 'get' how we work straight away.

We strengthened our ongoing partnership with Language this year, with Adam May – co-founder and Managing Director of Language – joining the Alice team as an Associate.  Adam has 30 years’ experience in branding, communications, marketing and business management, and has developed messaging strategies and branding for Yes Equality and Together for Yes, as well as delivering national campaigns for clients ranging from Women’s Aid and the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission to the Central Statistics Office and the Department of Finance.  A pretty impressive track record all round!

This year, we offered internships to some really excellent PR graduates and we are delighted that two interns have now progressed to join our staff team.

Darragh started out with us as an intern while completing a postgraduate diploma in public relations with the Fitzwilliam Institute and took up a full time role with us back in April. While Vanessa, our most recent intern, originally from Glasgow, is taking up the position of Junior Account Executive from the start of 2019.

At Alice PR, we put a lot of effort into ensuring that we give our interns a well-rounded, hands-on experience. We’re really conscious that our interns feel part of the team and that they enjoy the experience. That’s why it’s great when we see interns like Darragh and Vanessa really embracing the programme and the work and progressing on to becoming a member of the team.

Northern Ireland

Another highlight was growing Alice’s all-island presence.  Julie Sherlock came on board as our second Northern Ireland-based team-member, and we managed our first major event and PR campaign for Clockwise in the North.  With Julie and Louise at the helm, of course the results were excellent and we were left with a very happy client.😊

Collaborations

We continue to collaborate with our partners Language & Honey. We are the designated Irish PR consultancy for The Honey Partnership, an award-winning marketing services agency, headquartered in London and operating worldwide. We also share an office and have a partnership with the creative agency Language, allowing us to offer our clients a full suite of creative communications services.

Personal work highlights of 2018:

Martina:

For Martina, getting the chance to work in a number of different European locations was a real highlight of the year.  In March, she travelled to Vienna to deliver PR training to academics from all over Europe for the HERA (Humanities in the European Research Area) Network.  Later in the year, she organised for a delegation from Dress for Success Dublin and the Oireachtas cross-party group on workplace equality to travel to Brussels – for a whirlwind 24 hours of meetings and briefings with MEPs, EU officials and civil society organisations.  And, most recently, she travelled to Reykjavík in Iceland to deliver advanced online communications training to networks that support the Horizon 2020 research funding programme.

Martina says these experiences really energised her and left her with new ideas for our future work – particularly meeting people working in communications, politics and academia from a diverse range of European countries.  As an added bonus, she got to explore the fascinating cities of Vienna and Reykjavík (there was too little time for exploring in Brussels!) and got to experience life in a country (Iceland) that only gets four hours of daylight during the winter months.

Martina began her career in journalism, and still gets a little thrill from seeing her work in print, so she was delighted to be invited to contribute guest articles to a number of publications this year: she wrote about PR for SMEs for Accountancy Ireland Magazine; contributed an article on how to deal with online trolls to the Irish Dairy Farmer, a publication from the Irish Farmers’ Journal; and had a guest blog published on leading US PR website, Spin Sucks – on the topic of pro-bono PR!

So Martina says she’s heading into 2019, happy to have such a talented, dedicated and fun team at Alice, and very much looking forward to future growth and good times ahead!

Ciara:

University for All Week with UCD was one of Ciara's highlights. She says the students were fantastic and very generous with their time sharing stories with media to inspire people from all backgrounds that university is for them.

Coordinating the social media training programme for tourism businesses – which we delivered for County Wicklow Partnership – was another highlight for Ciara.  She says it was great to see the trainees' confidence grow, as the programme was rolled out.

Our work with Early Childhood Ireland and the Children's Right's Alliance all had a policy focus that Ciara loved - it was great to great extensive media coverage for two such brilliant organisations.

Elaine:

Highlights for Elaine included getting some time to dedicate to the Alice website and the search rankings for Alice PR - it's the kind of challenge she enjoys, as it feeds her inner geek!

She also loved devising and implementing campaigns for Right at Home. She says one thing that she really loves about Alice PR is that we get to work with great clients who do things for the right reason - whether that's in the not-for-profit sector or commercial. This year, we got to interview some of the staff who provide care to people with disabilities and the elderly clients of Right at Home and it was lovely to hear them express their love for their jobs and the reasons they do what they do. So heart-warming to read, especially at this time of the year!

Eva:

For Eva, there were plenty of highlights from working with DIAS. Certainly landing on the front page of The Irish Times after all of the planning and work that went into organising and promoting their strategy launch last month was a big one!

Also, getting a chance to meet Professor Erwin Schrödinger's grandson - and organising all of the activities around his visit to Dublin for DIAS back in June – was a real treat!

From the political side of things, our annual visit to Brussels with the Irish Research Council was excellent; and Eva also enjoyed working on the Oireachtas “shadowing scheme” that we’ve developed for the Council.

Niamh:

This year, Niamh really enjoyed working with Dun Laoghaire Rathdown Drug and Alcohol Taskforce on their recent report launch on the experiences of long-term methadone users. The report was so interesting and will be of real value to the community, so it was brilliant to land lots of national coverage for them on it – including ‘Drivetime’, ‘Morning Ireland’ and coverage in The Irish Times, Irish Independent, Times Ireland, the Examiner, plus more online!

As in every year, working on WellFest was also a highlight for Niamh! It was particularly exciting this year, with the move to the new venue of the Royal Hospital Kilmainham. The festival was covered in almost all of the papers that weekend, which was the cherry on top after a really busy lead-up. Working on events is always a highlight for Niamh – she loves how fast-paced and all-consuming it can be. (And she enjoys the sleep afterwards too!)

The Irish Times front page for DIAS last month was also a big highlight for Niamh – and the first front page for a client she has worked on at Alice.

However, according to Niamh: “The real realhighlight every year, though, is being part of #TeamAlice.” (Awh shucks!)

“They are a bunch of sounders and are never short of a laugh and a mess when times are tough – or even when times aren’t! Everyone is also really supportive of my chocolate habit, which is so kind.”

Emily:

PR highlights for Emily this year included working on Dublin Festival of History for the first time, the Local Enterprise Office for Dublin City and, like Ciara, UCD’s University for All week. She says it’s immensely satisfying seeing interesting and positive events and initiatives getting media attention. Getting two front pages (for AONTAS and Brain TumourIreland) this year was pretty sweet – all thanks to Marc O’Sullivan!

Emily loved delivering training on behalf of County Wicklow Partnership and LEO Meath – it must be her nosy nature, but she found it great fun training people from all walks of life on how social media can benefit their business.

Like Niamh, she says: “The real highlight though (is that cheese I smell?) is the daily craic and messin’ that comes with being part of #TeamAlice – a great bunch! Here’s to a fun-filled (and highly professional) 2019!”

Personal highlights

We couldn't end the year without mentioning the wedding of the summer - Martina and Raj tied the knot, with three (!) beautiful ceremonies back in May. Team Alice had a right day out in the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham to celebrate - and to wish them well in their life together.

We are all very excited for Eva, who is getting married to the very lucky and lovely Finn today. Such a lovely way to end the year. A huge congratulations to them - we wish you every happiness.

Happy Christmas to all of our clients, friends and families. Thank you for all of your support over the last year. We look forward to working with you in 2019.