Enterprise Ireland is the government organisation responsible for the development and growth of Irish enterprises in world markets. They work in partnership with Irish enterprises to help them start, grow, innovate and win export sales in global markets.

Fuzion worked with Enterprise Ireland and the Local Enterprise Offices nationally by providing a wide range of services including PR consultancy, PR and media training, strategic communications consultancy and graphic design for print and web.

OUR ROLE

Our role with Enterprise Ireland was to provide ongoing PR and creative consultancy to the network of Local Enterprise Offices (LEOs) nationally in communicating the wide range of supports that are available through the LEOs, to help small businesses and micro enterprises to plan, start or grow.  It gave us an invaluable insight into the workings of the LEOs, key messages, what resonates with media and has helped us to strengthen our already strong relationship with key business press.

Fuzion was a part of the PR and communications support team and provided ongoing support on a wide range of projects including Ireland’s Best Young Entrepreneur (IBYE), the Student Enterprise Programme, National Enterprise Awards, the Enterprise Village at the Ploughing Championships, Local Enterprise Week, National Women’s Enterprise Day. In 2018 and 2019 we supported the roll out of the Making it Happen campaign, a B2B lead generation focused campaign which is still used today. In 2020 to 2021, Fuzion supported the roll out of the PR campaign Look for Local, a new communications campaign for the LEOs that focussed on a consumer audience. This was a new direction for the state agency as it is traditionally a B2B focussed audience for all campaigns. Fuzion helped to  reach an estimated 1,989,397 of the Irish population through a range of national media publications and PR activities in 2021 and 2743250 in 2020. 

On the creative side of things, we developed a wide range of collateral from logos, infographics, brochures, social media graphics and avatars for use nationally and tailored to be used regionally by the various LEO offices around the country.

We worked on event support, media outreach and invites, photo call concepts, and profiling of their business case studies. 

We secured strong national coverage for entrepreneurs in Ireland who availed of LEO support to help grow their business. We did this to get authentic and tactical positive mentions in the media, for the initiatives, funding and advice available from the LEOs. These mentions have the aim of inspiring and encouraging other budding entrepreneurs to contact their Local Enterprise Office.

We secured media interviews across print, online and broadcast for the clients of the LEOs in titles such as the Business Post, Irish Times, Irish Examiner, Businessandfinance.com, RTE Nationwide, RTE News, Newstalk and so much more.

This contract was very complex with many moving parts, many diverse initiatives throughout the calendar and varied stakeholders including Enterprise Ireland, Microfinance Ireland, Department of Business Enterprise and Innovation, Department of Education and Skills, the Local Authorities, the Local Enterprise Office Network, LEO clients, and other suppliers to specific initiatives including venues, event management and companies.

The services and supports provided by the Local Enterprise Offices network comes alive primarily through the stories/ case studies of the clients that have benefited from these services, and we would see this approach as also being relevant in this case.    

RESULTS

Fuzion’s remit for Enterprise Ireland was to secure national media coverage for the network of Local Enterprise Office; and in the 3.5 years we worked with the state agency we achieved significant coverage across all platforms – print, radio, TV and online, both mainstream and trade.  There were 490  pieces of national media recorded over the course of the contract, and strategic mentions for the Local Enterprise Offices and/or the specific campaigns the coverage related to re-enforce the LEOs as the “go-to” organisation when it comes to support for SMEs.

We achieved a large number of high value media opportunities including RTE Radio and online, RTE Nationwide, The Late Late Show, Newstalk, Irish Times , Irish Independent, Sunday Times, Business Post , Sunday Independent.