Ask ChatGPT or Google to recommend a PR agency in Ireland and you won’t get a name. You’ll get homework.
Before it suggests anyone, AI asks you a few questions back. They change from search to search, but these three keep coming up:
- What is your industry or product?
- Do you want local Irish coverage, or UK and international press?
- Is your goal brand awareness, or SEO backlinks?
They’re good questions. Most businesses can’t answer them on the first call, and that’s how good budgets end up on the wrong campaigns.
So we’ve answered them for you, with help from Taylor Swift’s Irish ancestors, a pumpkin patch in Drogheda and a plate of Leitrim boxty.
1. What is your industry or product?
Every business thinks its story is boring. It almost never is. The angle is hiding in your history, your data or your customers, and our job is to find it before a journalist scrolls past.
Here’s where we’ve found it for clients in four very different sectors.
A museum and a pop star
Every outlet in Ireland was writing about the Eras Tour in June 2024. Only EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum could tell readers that Taylor Swift’s ancestors left Derry in 1836. EPIC’s genealogists found the story, The Public House shaped the creative, and we took it to the media.
More than 230 features followed, from Hot Press and the Irish Post to New York’s Irish Echo, and the campaign won the Grand Prix at the 2025 Spider Awards. Read the case study.
And a good story keeps paying off. When she got engaged in August 2025, EPIC had its “Derry Girl” post up the next day:
EPIC: Derry Girl Taylor Swift engaged to Travis Kelce
A waterpark and a weather forecast
Halloween at a Drogheda waterpark isn’t national news. Ireland AM broadcasting live from the pumpkin patch is. Funtasia’s Pumpkin Patch landed 19 pieces of coverage, and when the weather report from the park went sideways on live TV, The Sun turned the blunder into a story of its own.
A boxty and a memory
Boxty is Leitrim on a plate. For Dromod Boxty, we didn’t pitch a potato pancake. We pitched the dish your granny made, and the science of why a smell can take you straight back to her kitchen. Irish Country Magazine ran with the nostalgia, and the Irish Mirror told the story of how boxty travelled the world. Read the case study.
Crowd safety and the Ryder Cup
Safe Events Global keeps big crowds safe. Its expertise becomes news whenever a festival or stadium event has the country talking. When booing and abuse at the 2025 Ryder Cup made headlines, The Guardian asked whether crowd behaviour was out of control, and Safe Events was in the piece.
It works for a financial adviser on the gender pension gap (askpaul.ie on RTÉ.ie and in the Sunday World) and for a scrubs maker turning 40 (Medco in the Irish Independent and on Newstalk) too.
What to tell your agency: not just what you sell, but who buys it, what’s new, and what you know that nobody else does.
2. Local Irish press, or UK and international?
Start where your customers are. Then see how far the story can travel.
Ireland is a small media market, and that’s an advantage. A handful of national titles, strong regional papers and local radio, all read by people who trust them. Medco’s 40th birthday landed in The Corkman, The Southern Star and on Radio Kerry as well as the Irish Independent and Newstalk, because healthcare workers in Cork and Kerry read their local paper too.
The UK matters when your customers cross the border. Funtasia is an easy drive for families in Northern Ireland, so a waterpark story in The Sun, read on both sides of the border, did more work than it looked like on paper.
International press needs a hook that travels. EPIC tells the story of the 10 million people who left Ireland, and Taylor Swift’s ancestors were two of them. Tying the two together turned a Dublin museum’s history into a global story, reaching more than 13 million people worldwide.
What to tell your agency: where your customers actually come from. If 80% of your bookings are Irish, a New York headline is a lovely thing to frame. It isn’t a growth plan.
Not sure how far your story can travel? We’ll tell you honestly before you spend a cent.
3. Brand awareness or SEO backlinks?
Both. And there’s a third answer most businesses haven’t caught up with yet.
Be famous. Reach is nice. Sales are better. During the Taylor Swift campaign, EPIC’s June ticket sales rose 43% year on year.
Be found. The same campaign won Best Use of PR in a Search Campaign at the 2025 European Search Awards. Every one of those 230+ features was a chance at a link from a news site Google trusts, and links from real publishers are still one of the strongest ranking signals there is.
Be recommended. This is the new one. When we checked which sources AI tools quote about Funtasia, articles we’d placed months earlier kept coming up. One piece in The Sun was being quoted in AI answers in four countries, long after the news cycle had moved on.
That’s the shift. More buyers now ask AI for a recommendation instead of scrolling Google, and AI builds its answer from what trusted publishers have written. If you’re not in the coverage, you’re not in the answer.
What to tell your agency: which one matters most this year, and how you’ll measure it. Pick one to lead with, and the other two follow.
What we do with your answers
Your three answers become the brief. Here’s what you get back from us:
- An angle, not a press release. A reason a journalist would want your story this week.
- A target list that matches your market. Irish, regional, UK or international, named outlet by outlet before anything goes out.
- A measure we agree up front. Coverage, links, sales or AI visibility, tracked from day one.
- A record of the work, not just the wins. Every month, you see who we pitched, who replied and what’s lined up next.
We’re a Dublin digital marketing agency with PR, SEO and paid media under one roof, and the Digital Media Awards’ Best Small Agency for 2025. So when a story lands, our SEO team can see the links it earns and our paid team can see the sales it drives. See more of our work as a PR agency in Dublin.
FAQs: choosing a PR agency in Ireland
Can a small business get national coverage in Ireland?
Yes. National journalists need stories, not big budgets. A Leitrim boxty maker and a Drogheda family attraction have both landed national coverage with us. The angle does the work, not the size of the company.
Should I choose Irish or international PR?
Choose the market your customers are in. Irish national and regional media suit most Irish businesses. International press is worth chasing when your customers are abroad, or when your story has a global hook like a celebrity, a trend or a major event.
Does digital PR help SEO?
Yes. Coverage on trusted news sites earns links, and links are one of the strongest signals Google uses to rank websites. Our Taylor Swift campaign for EPIC won Best Use of PR in a Search Campaign at the 2025 European Search Awards.
Can PR get my business into AI Overviews and ChatGPT answers?
It’s one of the best ways to. AI tools build their answers from sources they trust, and news coverage is high on that list. We’ve seen client coverage quoted in AI answers months after it ran.
How much does a PR agency cost in Ireland?
It depends on what you need. A one-off campaign around a launch or event is priced as a project. Ongoing PR is a monthly retainer, and the fee depends on how many campaigns you run, which markets you’re targeting, and whether PR works alongside SEO and paid media. Tell us your goal and we’ll tell you honestly what it takes.
How long does it take to get coverage?
A reactive story can land in days. A planned campaign usually takes four to eight weeks from idea to coverage, because the research and pitching take time. SEO and AI visibility build over months.
Can a PR agency guarantee coverage?
No honest one can. Journalists decide what runs. What we can promise is the work: a strong angle, the right target list, consistent pitching and follow-ups, and a monthly record of all of it.
What should I give a PR agency before we start?
Your answers to the three questions in this post, plus anything only you know: customer data, company history, milestones and launches coming up. The best stories usually start with something the client thought was ordinary.