Chris Pontius of Jackass fame has his Wicklow home on the market for €1.1 million. The Old Schoolhouse in Avoca is a 4 bedroom property and is in a really beautiful location – lucky guy to have lived there as it’s only a short walk from the Meeting of the Waters. He and his Wicklow wife are heading back to live in LA soon, hence the need to offload the country pile.

Get all the details here if you fancy making the move down Wickla way.

The 26^th June is the night that PR people in Ireland all convene in the Mansion House in Dublin for a night of sober reflection on the year that was and a joyous celebration of the year to come. I speak of the the annual PR awards for excellence which are the equivalent of the Irish Film and TV Awards or the PPI Radio Awards.

By subjecting our best campaigns or projects to independent benchmarking, assessment and judgement – and to furthermore make the results of this process available for others to learn from – is undoubtedly beneficial, as it continues to have the desired outcome of raising professional standards across our industry as a whole.

You can browse through the short list on the PRII website here. There’s an absolute ton of campaigns there, and it’s a pity the institute didn’t link to them so we could all have a look at the work of the various companies and individuals involved. Maybe they think that nobody is interested and just couldn’t be bothered presenting the short list in a more attractive and engaging way.

The “Integrated Campaigns” category had instantly recognisable (to me anyway) campaigns up for the award:

The launch of itsyourmoney.ie for the financial regulator (Website)

Ferry Marketing Campaign for Dublin Port (Pen Ire blog link about the campaign)

Mr. Tayto “Looking for Love” for Tayto/Hunky Dory (Mr Tayto’s Blog)

Keep Recycling – Let’s get it sorted for Repak (Further details)

Of all the campaigns listed I think the Ferry Marketing Campaign was the least successful. I saw the posters many times, but I really didn’t know what Dublin Port were trying to communicate to me. I genuinely thought it was some literary promotion they had going.

For my money, the winner of this category must surely be itsyourmoney.ie – just take a look at youtube and the number of spoofs of the “I don’t know what a tracker mortgage is” ad on a bus. I also liked the money monster ad.

What do you think yourself about the various campaigns listed – which one do you think will win the award next month? I’ve set up a poll below so you can have your say!

[poll id="2"]

Photo in header image owned by Tom Harwood and adapted under a creative commons license.