Ad agency and stationer find rewarding marriage with confetti campaign

Dublin agency Rothco had a very good Cannes – winning a bronze in the “crisis communications and issues management” category of the top festival of advertising creativity.

"There are so many categories and we had to consider carefully which one we'd enter," said a delighted Patrick Hickey, managing director of Rothco, who also presented a talk in Cannes called "Blood, Sex and Storytelling", borrowing loosely from Shakespeare to explain how to build an audience.

The winning campaign was devised in the build-up to the same-sex marriage referendum. The agency knew it wanted to get involved on the Yes Equality side – if the right project came along. It did with Daintree, the specialist stationery shop on Dublin’s Camden Street.

Rothco’s approach changed the image of the shop which the current owners, Ger and Lar Barron, inherited when they bought the business.

The refusal of the previous owner, Paul Barnes, to stock same-sex wedding cake decorations on religious grounds, had got a great deal of publicity and, as shoppers tend not to follow the ins and outs of business ownership, many may not have realised Daintree had changed hands and the new owners welcome of the pink pound.

Rotho’s “A Shred of Decency” campaign involved making confetti from “negative and dishonest” leaflets distributed by some sections of the No side. On the box – it was sold as a Yes Equality fundraiser – it was described as confetti “made from 100 per cent recycled lies”.

An animated advertisement telling the story was made, as was an upbeat and positive video, with favours from all sides, particularly production house Piranha Bar, called in to help the campaign. The result, says Hickey, was 62 million media impressions and worldwide coverage, from advertising trade publications to CNN; a powerful, joyous message in the Yes Equality arsenal; and a changed image of a business.