Ireland came away with three top awards at last night’s European Sponsorship Association Awards in London with Electric Ireland, Liberty Insurance and the RBS 6 Nations landing major prizes.
Electric Ireland won the top prize of the ‘Best of Europe’ Award for it’s campaign around the Team Ireland Olympics sponsorship in 2012. They beat off stiff opposition from Sky’s sponsorship of the Great Britain Cycling Team.
The GAA was back in the winner’s enclosure for a second successive year. Liberty Insurance won the award for Business to Consumer sponsorship of the year, a remarkable achievement in the first of a five year deal to support the All Ireland Hurling and Camogie Championships.
It was a follow up to the Association having won the same award last year with Kellogg’s for the Cúl Camps programme.
The third of the eleven trophies to be awarded last night that will be on a plane back to Dublin today was the social media award won by the RBS 6 Nations. RaboDirect were a shortlisted finalist in the category while the An Post Cycle Race was another Irish campaign to be shortlisted.
It is a marvellous return for one country in the face of such huge international competition and richly deserved for an activity in Ireland that goes from strength to strength.
Special mention needs to be made of WHPR who were involved in both of the Electric Ireland and Liberty Insurance Awards.
Lesson for Sport: Sponsorship in Ireland is operating at the very highest level meaning there are some great brands demanding some very strong partnership programmes.
Lesson for Business: Sports sponsorship here enable credit on a global scale.
