The Euro Changeover Board has awarded its advertising account to Adept Creative Facilities and Aim/Carat. The £4.2 million (€5.3 million) account was the biggest up for grabs this year and the decision represents a major win for Adept, a small creative shop headed by Mr Denis Goodbody and Mr Adrian van der Lee. Aim/Carat will be responsible for the media planning and buying on the account.
Fifteen agencies initially pitched and that figure was whittled down to five - believed to be McConnells, Bates, Des O'Meara, the Larkin Partnership as well as Adept. Despite the large budget, no agency from outside Ireland expressed any interest in the account.
It is a tough brief. The Republic's changeover from pounds to euros represents an enormous change in everyone's daily life. On February 9th, 2002 the euro will become Ireland's official currency and pounds and pence will no longer be legal tender. The changeover will be more complex than the introduction of decriminalisation in 1971 and even though that too had a cut-off day of February 15th, the tendency to translate everything back into old money was still strong, particularly among the older generation well into the latter years of that decade.
"The main thrust of the campaign will be to motivate individuals," according to Mr Goodbody, and the latest edition of Eurobarometer seems to indicate a fairly receptive - though changing - audience. The proportion of the Irish population in favour of the euro remains high in the EU at 63 per cent. But enthusiasm is beginning to slide - the figure is down 15 points from the last survey six months ago and opposition to the euro is up 9 per cent to 22 per cent.
A further challenge is that Adept will communicate a message about something that, for most people at least, does not even exist.
Euros have already started to appear on household bills and supermarket receipts but the general thinking is that the reality of the euro will not hit home until retailers start accepting payment in pounds and pence and give change in euros.
Pensioners, people working in the home and unemployed people, will be particularly targeted by the advertising campaign which will have an ongoing communications audit to ensure it is reaching its audience.
Euros have had a soft introduction to date but not as soft as the introduction of the metric system. Apparently our general inability to get used to the metric system has led the EU to keep changing the absolute changeover day and metric will not be the official measurement system in Ireland until 2010.
