An Cailín Ciúin / The Quiet Girl hit the big screens and a GAA shorts-wearing star spoke cúpla focal on the red carpet. What has been brewing under the surface for a while has suddenly gained newfound momentum.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Irish language is cool again.
And it’s not just Hollywood: in the advertising and marketing industry, there is more of a focus than ever on including our native language in our ads. Recently, the Advertising Provision stated that public bodies must do 20% of their advertising through Irish, and we have all seen this start to be implemented (or heard, if you’ve been listening to the radio le déanaí!).
So at pluto, we embraced our inner Paul Mescal and despite some nerves, we all banded together to learn some Irish and implement it in our place of work. For the month of March, there was fierce competition around the office as we battled each other on the DuoLingo leaderboard. Emails were sent with newly translated intros, sign-offs and signatures. We decorated pluto HQ with new signage as Gaeilge – no one can forget the word ríomhaire now after staring at it for a month! We went back to school with some Irish classes, including a session with “Múinteoir Niall” from Conradh na Gaeilge (GRMA, Niall!). And of course, we couldn’t not let the month pass without practicing our cúpla focal at Club Chonradh, the Irish language bar in Harcourt Street.
Aside from our own learning, we created content as Gaeilge for our clients throughout the month. While we are passionate about embracing and supporting our Irish language and culture, we are also truly excited about leading the way in our industry in uplifting Gaeilge in our media.
As agencies, we can’t wait around to be told to include our language in advertising, in campaigns and in content. Even if it seems daunting, we all must be like Paul and give it a try, even if you don’t have all the words yet. Because it’s our responsibility to make Irish visible, accessible, modern and, well, fun!
We’ve had a great time learning Irish. Even those who were apprehensive found that they were picking up words they forgot they had. And those who were brand new to Irish said that the language didn’t seem so intimidating anymore.
As agencies we can challenge perceptions of the language with new creative content –for example, everyone in our office has been creating TikToks as Gaeilge for the craic all month.
So, if you find yourself in need of a campaign as Gaeilge, or you want to include the Irish language in your content, talk to us today. We want to put our new vocab to use!
