Dublin agency Rothco made a bit of history this week at Cannes, picking up its first bronze award at the prestigious Cannes Lions Festival for its “Shred of Decency” campaign.
This is the first Irish award in Cannes since Ogilvy picked up its Bronze Award for its “Stupid Little Bitch” campaign for the ISPCC in 2013.
In what was a first for an Irish advertising agency, Rothco teamed up with the Daintree paper shop on Camden Street to create a radical new campaign in support of same-sex marriage in Ireland.
The agency created confetti made from No Campaign flyers to raise money for the Yes campaign in the run up to Ireland’s marriage equality referendum which took place in May. In order to make the confetti the team collected the “negative and dishonest” flyers, leaflets and online literature produced by a section of the No Campaign. This material was then shredded and put into packs called ‘A Shred of Decency’ confetti which were sold in Daintree’s shop as well as online. Rothco also teamed up with Piranha Bar to create an animated film to encourage confetti sprinkling and to ensure as many people as possible became involved and help the referendum pass. The campaign also benefitted from a high profile social media campaign on both Twitter and Instagram. All profits generated by the campaign went to the Yes campaign.
Rothco was also the only Irish agency to present a talk at Cannes with  CEO Patrick Hickey, managing director Richard Carr and chief strategy officer Emer Howard taking to the stage on Wednesday to talk about “Blood, Sex, Storytelling: Turning Crowds into Audiences.”
