It has often been said that there is never a good time or bad time to start a business but, with the benefit of hindsight, fate might have been a bit kinder to Cathy O’Donohoe, CEO of Pluto when she co-founded what was initially an experiential and events agency 18 years ago, as she tells John McGee.
“We were only a year in business when the financial crash came and the phones stopped ringing,” she recalls.
“Client event requirements almost stopped overnight,” she adds.
O’Donohoe, fuelled by determination and a vision, teamed up with Elaine O’Reilly to launch Pluto in 2006. Despite the challenges of a crashing economy and slashed marketing budgets, they navigated the storm with perseverance, sleepless nights, and a fearless commitment to their craft. While some larger agencies fell by the wayside, Pluto emerged stronger and, as she says, “proving that passion and resilience can weather any storm.
Looking back, it was such a joy, but it was also an absolute slog. Thankfully, we have been blessed with wonderful colleagues and clients who joined us then and who are still with us now.”
“Soon, initial clients like Nokia, permanent tsb and Meteor, for example, started using us for projects that required other media solutions, so it was the catalyst for the first leg of our transformation,” says O’Donohoe.
“Elaine O’Reilly, my co-founder, and I had six children under 10 at the time so it was a juggle, but I’m still so humbled by the support and goodwill that came our way from so many wonderful clients, who took a leap of faith on a start-up and set us on our way,” she says.
“So, a hunger and frustration to do more, shaped our journey.”
Fast forward eighteen years into that journey and Pluto – now partly owned by the LWA Group – is thriving with a staff of 26 operating from offices in Clonskeagh, Co. Dublin with two distinct but complementary practices – pluto the Agency and pluto Live operating side-by-side.
According to O’Donohoe, the two practices were clearly defined in late 2018 but the “natural next step” was not taken until 2023 when it formally established both brands in the marketplace by appointing Ian McCabe as managing director of Pluto the Agency and Amanda Carwood as managing director of Pluto Live.
Explaining the rationale, she says: “A good agency wants to be impactful. Having a creative department, producing excellent content for live experiences, meant that clients started asking us to produce more. In 2018, we presented a strategy to the team that crystalised the direction that our organic growth was taking us. Very simply it was the start of a journey to shift Pluto from ‘an experiential agency with a full creative department, to a full creative agency with an experiential /events department.”
“For Pluto Live, some of our clients aren’t necessarily traditional marketeers. They can be in employee engagement or maybe operating as executive assistant in a large tech company. For this cohort of clients, they may have been confused by our evolution towards a more traditional creative offering. That’s why it made sense to establish two separate brands, representing each practise. One which focusses solely on the events work and the other which delivers best in class creative across all media.
“A good agency wants to be impactful. Having a creative department, producing excellent content for live experiences, meant that clients started asking us to produce more.”
“We felt that there was a gap in the market for a creative agency that did things a little bit differently,” adds Ian McCabe, managing director of Pluto the Agency who joined in 2022 after 15 years with Publicis Dublin.
“With our roots in events, we understand impact and have always been close to the point of experience with consumers,” he adds.
“We know what it takes to deliver those meaningful moments on behalf of brands. We wanted to take that experience and bring it through to our advertising and creative work,” he adds.
“We start from the impact required by our clients and work back from there – coordinating a suite of services that will have a different DNA and makeup each time, because each campaign is different,” he says.
“Each client, each campaign, each problem is different. Each response to a brief will be different, maximizing impact through our diversely skilled teams and proven credentials across disciplines,” McCabe says.
“We’ve done everything for clients from helping them tell their story in broad awareness channels like TV, right down the funnel through to direct response sales conversion work and everything in between. However, we’ve a number of areas of expertise in pluto the Agency that we like to lean into with our clients,” he adds. “
To date, McCabe says demand from clients has come from” all directions covering all disciplines.
“We have seen demand from clients for an agency who can house both their events and their creative work. There is often a gap between the two areas for clients and this is something we have looked to close.
“One client, Polestar, is the perfect example here. We run all of its roadshow events, and we also do all of its comms from TV right through to outdoor, programmatic display ads well as social. It’s a full through-the-line account for us and solves a real need for the client,” says McCabe. ‘
In recent years, many creative and media agencies have witnessed an explosion in the amount of social work coming from clients. It’s an area of the business that has grown rapidly for Pluto.
“We want to help clients unlock the power of social through focused strategy, creative storytelling and, most importantly, impact.”
“Social is becoming less of an afterthought and has moved higher up the food chain for clients. We’ve recently recruited Alex Totaro, who headed up Samsung UK’s social department for the last number of years and with that we have been able to really add strategic value for clients in the social space,” he says.
“We want to help clients unlock the power of social through focused strategy, creative storytelling and, most importantly, impact. Working with the likes of Yoplait, Green Farm and Carbery, for example, has allowed us to craft always-on social media strategies that shift the conventional omnichannel approach to a content-driven, platform-first output, where we help create best-in-class content that feels native to the platform and gets the right people engaged.”
“By focusing on the target audience, strategic insight around trends and top-performing content, we’re able to infuse the brand’s DNA in a way that creates the right tone of voice and allows them to shine on platforms like Instagram and TikTok in the pursuit of younger, highly engaged audiences,” McCabe says.
“We also work with Pieta, a non-profit organisation with a huge ambition to shift their messaging to a younger demographic. We’ve created strategic campaigns on TikTok, where this audience lives and breathes authentic native content, to help them drive awareness of their initiatives.
“We are currently running a lead generation campaign on TikTok by partnering with a known fitness creator that acts as the centrepiece of the challenge, combining their credibility with Pieta’s credentials and removing barriers when it comes to signing up in a way that had been cost-prohibitive in the past. In these instances, impact is at the core of our thinking in making sure the budgets go as far as possible in helping our partner reach these goals whilst providing invaluable insights to help shape their longer-term goals through the power of social,” McCabe adds.
“The reality is clients are being asked to do more with less. More than ever clients need to make an impact and need to make every euro work for them. We’re trying to partner with them in order to make the impact needed.”
With retail media undergoing substantial growth in terms of advertising spend, shopper marketing is also enjoying a minor renaissance of its own McCabe says. As one of the cornerstones of Pluto’s business, this has also helped the agency grow in recent years.
“A number of years ago we acquired Runway marketing who were a specialist shopper agency. We have integrated this team now into Pluto and with it has come wonderful thinking that really serves FMCG clients well,” he says.
“For a lot of our FMCG clients, what happens in the aisle will get amplified out into a full TTL campaign, showing that real strategic shopper thinking isn’t an afterthought for brands, it’s a must have.”
“For a lot of our FMCG clients, what happens in the aisle will get amplified out into a full TTL campaign, showing that real strategic shopper thinking isn’t an afterthought for brands, it’s a must have.” he says.
McCabe cites some recent examples of the agency’s shopper marketing services in action.
“We helped McVitie’s roll out their True Originals platform in Ireland and it ended up being across all media and we worked with them on everything from strategy right into creative and production.”
“Recently we wanted to show consumers that if you are making an Irish coffee and you are not using Powers, you’re probably doing it wrong. We worked with the IDL team from strategy right through to execution on this wonderful campaign and helped reaffirmed Powers as the original Irish Coffee whiskey. We’ve a couple of really nice FMCG campaigns going live now in September which we’re excited about.”
But marketers still have a lot to learn when it comes to embracing shopper marketing into the wider marketing mix, McCabe says.
“I think for a lot of clients it’s the afterthought. It’s how the big ATL campaign looks like in store and can at times be a resizing job. To us, it’s never been that. It needs its own strategy, it needs its own thinking, and it needs its own creativity,” he says.
“Also, retailers are becoming more demanding and there’s the constant struggle between doing what the retailer needs and stands out. We feel we’re well placed to deliver on this having such great expertise in what works in store and what certain retailers will allow.”
Another area in which Pluto has been spreading its wings is the whole area of youth marketing.
“The demand for youth marketing is booming due to several factors,” says McCabe.
“Young consumers are trendsetters, influencing market trends and brand popularity. Their heavy use of digital and social media platforms makes them a key audience for brands looking to engage in these spaces.”
“Youth are also driving social justice movements, expecting brands to align with their values on sustainability and inclusivity. The economic power of young consumers and their influence on household purchases further fuel the need for targeted, authentic, and innovative youth marketing strategies.”
“We did the first TikTok campaign in Ireland and ran the first BeReal campaign too. Being in the right places matters. Secondly, I think understanding youth audiences means you understand wider consumer culture. Youth are often at the forefront of social and cultural movements and in today’s market it’s more important to be aware of that than ever,” says McCabe.
The youth market and the ever evolving social and cultural trends have also injected life into the growing experiential market in recent years, something that has allowed Pluto Live grow its own business.
“Ever evolving cultural trends and innovation means that the events business never stops evolving,” says managing director, Amanda Carwood.
“At Pluto live, we are always trying to forecast what resonates with different audiences for the brands we work with,” she says.
“Many brands are choosing experiential marketing over traditional advertising to build loyalty amongst Gen Z which values authenticity and real connections. Experiential marketing allows brands to build on this connection through authentic and memorable experiences.
“Research has shown time and time again that Gen Z crave experiences that are immersive and interactive. Experiential marketing such as pop-up events, interactive installations along with digital experiences engage them further and make their experience more memorable.” Carwood says.
“Experiential marketing also allows brands to showcase their values and commitment to social and environmental issues in more tangible ways,” she adds.
In recent years, experiential marketing has also become a lot more sophisticated when it comes measurement, impact and engagement.
“Engagement, metrics and ROI are at the core of everything we do.”
“Years ago, event agencies started planning with the logistics of the event, now planning begins for us with impact; how the messaging is consumed and the emotional connection with the brand will be experienced. The logistics are designed and built around that content consumption and emotional experience,” she adds.
Having its origins in experiential and events, it will come as no surprise that Pluto Live has done it all Carwood says.
“If it involves a live experience, either in person or online, we produce it. Everything from conferences to brand activations, product launches, town halls right through to kick-off events, employee engagement celebrations, awards ceremonies and travel incentive programmes,” she says.
One particular event it organised this year was a global summit for retailer and Penney’s owner Primark
“2024 kicked off for Pluto with Primark Connect where we partnered with Primark to create a summit for over 1,700 of the business’ top leaders for two action-packed days of business updates, breakouts, immersive experiences, entertainment and networking. This was a fantastic showcase for what pluto Live can offer and since then we have produced large scale events across the automotive, agri, pharma and tech industry. This week, we have a team in Florence for a large tech event and we continue to produce events all over Ireland and Europe, as well as in the US,” she says.
While optimistic about the future of experiential marketing in the overall marketing mix, Carwood says a number of factors will also dictate its direction.
“Honestly it changes by the week and what is definitive this week, could seem dated next week but certainly efforts to combat climate change will continue to remain in focus. We fully expect social justice and inclusion and diversity to remain critical to all audiences. On a simpler level, no trade show or event really exists any more without digital integration and displays. Sustainable materials and reuseable modular systems are considered in set builds and design along with accessibility for all,” she says.
But she also says that it’s next to impossible to talk about the future of experiential without talking about the influence artificial intelligence (AI) will have.
“Experiential activity and events have always been one of the most important marketing channels for brands to maximise personal connections.”
“Sam Altman, the CEO of Open AI agrees that, in five years’ time, there will be a premium on human in-person fantastic experiences, as a result of AI. That’s incredibly exciting. AI is ubiquitous in our day-to-day operations, and it’s used in pre-planning, virtual and on-site delegate engagement and it currently forms a significant part of the conversation and content,” Carwood says.
“In Pluto Live we have been working with various AI tools for a while to enhance some of our events but with the speed of development of AI technology, we are excited about furthering and enriching consumer social experiences, making events more engaging and inclusive, amplifying our ability to connect and collaborate like never before. The potential transformative powers of AI, not just on experiential marketing but across the entire marketing ecosystem, will indeed be substantial if yet unquantifiable,” she adds.
Returning to Cathy O’Donohoe, when she set up the business 18 years ago, she says she chose its name carefully and if ever an agency lives up to its name, this is it.
“In astrology, Pluto represents rebirth and transformation,” she says.
“The name remains true to everything we aim to achieve for our clients, and it also represents our continuous evolution and the incredible journey we have been on ever since.”
