The 2026 PRCA Spotlight Awards recognised a communications industry increasingly expected to deliver measurable commercial, public-policy and societal outcomes.

Ireland’s PR and communications industry gathered at the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin on 25 June 2026 to recognise the campaigns, agencies and professionals setting standards across the sector. The awards attracted nearly 100 shortlisted entries across a variety of categories.

Spencer Recruitment supported the event as an award sponsor, with managing director Brendan Madden attending alongside representatives from across Ireland’s agency and communications community.

The results were subsequently covered by the Business Post in its article, “Highlighting excellence in PR: The 2026 PRCA Spotlight Award winners”, published on 3 July 2026.

Beyond the individual awards, the winning work provides a useful indication of how Irish PR is changing. The strongest campaigns combined audience insight and creative execution with evidence of business growth, public influence, community benefit or behavioural change.

What were the 2026 PRCA Spotlight Awards?

The 2026 PRCA Spotlight Awards celebrated 94 shortlisted entries across 23 categories, recognising Irish campaigns, agencies and professionals for measurable business, policy and societal impact.

The annual awards are organised by the Public Relations Consultants Association, representing consultancy and agency practice within the Irish communications industry.

The categories reflected the breadth of contemporary PR work. Awards were presented for consumer, corporate, health, technology, lifestyle, ESG, public-sector, public-information, public-affairs and charitable campaigns.

There were also awards for agency performance, service innovation, emerging talent and long-term contribution to the profession.

Brian Harrison, PRCA chair and managing director of MKC Communications, described the qualities evident in the work as “judgment, empathy, creativity”.

Those qualities were visible across campaigns dealing with subjects as varied as tourism, cancer awareness, hearing health, food information, men’s health, recruitment, financial sustainability and the future of Ireland’s post-office network.

Who won at the 2026 PRCA Spotlight Awards?

Jago, Springboard Communications, Aislinn Burke and Rhona Blake received the principal campaign, agency, emerging-talent and lifetime-achievement honours at the 2026 awards.

Jago’s Awakening Giant Landscapes campaign also won Best Lifestyle Campaign.

Springboard Communications was named Agency of the Year for the second consecutive year, while We The People was among the most successful agencies on the night, receiving four awards across its individual and campaign work.

View the complete list of 2026 PRCA Spotlight Award winners →

What did the winning PR campaigns have in common?

The strongest campaigns began with a defined organisational problem and showed how communications contributed to a measurable change in revenue, behaviour, policy, awareness or public trust.

This was the clearest shared feature across the awards.

The judges were not simply recognising activity, media coverage or creative execution. The winning entries connected communications work to outcomes that mattered to the organisations involved.

These included:

• reversing declining tourism revenue;
• increasing bookings and visitor spending;
• improving understanding of health issues;
• supporting cancer research;
• influencing public policy;
• improving access to public information;
• changing public conversations;
• strengthening recruitment activity;
• and protecting important community services.

Crispin Manners, chair of the judging panel, said the strongest campaigns “deliver transformational outcomes”.

That distinction matters for both agencies and in-house teams. Media coverage, content production and campaign reach remain useful measures, but they do not explain the full value of communications.

More meaningful evaluation asks what audiences understood, felt or did differently—and how that change supported the organisation’s goals.

Why did Jago and Tourism Northern Ireland win Campaign of the Year?

Jago’s Awakening Giant Landscapes campaign won because it used research and audience insight to reposition Northern Ireland around emotional experiences and reverse declining tourism revenue. The campaign moved beyond presenting Northern Ireland simply as a collection of places to visit. Instead, it focused on the emotional value of the experience: how the landscape, culture and sense of discovery could make visitors feel.

The strategy was credited with increasing bookings, encouraging greater visitor spending and strengthening Northern Ireland’s appeal in a competitive tourism market. Its success illustrates an important communications principle. Effective campaigns do not start with a media format, social channel or creative execution. They start by identifying the audience barrier that needs to change.

The communications strategy then addresses that barrier through positioning, messaging, creative work and distribution.

For organisations assessing campaign effectiveness, the useful question is not only whether the work attracted attention. It is whether the campaign changed perception or behaviour in a way that supported a wider commercial or organisational objective.

Which other campaigns were recognised?

The 2026 winners addressed commercial growth, health, recruitment, public policy, consumer behaviour, charitable causes and societal change across Ireland.

Selected category winners included:

• Best Consumer Campaign: Jailbird Communications and Bulmers Ireland for Bulmers 90th Anniversary.
• Best Health and Wellness Campaign: Crichton Communications and Breast Cancer Ireland for Breast Cancer Know More.
• Best Technology Campaign: Harte Media and Midland Steel for Reinventing Steel Rebar.
• Best Social-first Campaign: Drury Communications and Sisk for SiskTok: Sisk’s TikTok First Recruitment Strategy.
• Best Integrated Campaign: Wilson Hartnell, Tangerine, OMD and Specsavers Ireland for a national hearing-health campaign.
• Best Public Information Campaign: We The People and Safefood for Talk About Food.
• Best Corporate Campaign: Káno Communications and Movember for Changing the Face of Men’s Health.
• Best ESG Campaign: Wilson Hartnell and Diageo/Guinness for IDA x Guinness Never Settle Boot.
• Best Public Affairs Campaign: MKC Communications and the Irish Postmasters’ Union for Securing the Future of Ireland’s Post Office Network.
• Best Ongoing Communications Strategy: Harris PR and Ford Ireland for Harris PR Powers The Future is Ford.

The range of recognised work demonstrates that PR now operates across commercial performance, reputation, recruitment, health communication, public information, government engagement and long-term societal issues.

It also demonstrates why communications roles can be difficult to define. Two positions carrying the same title may require very different levels of media judgement, policy knowledge, audience insight, commercial awareness or stakeholder management.

Why was Springboard Communications named Agency of the Year?

Springboard Communications was recognised for combining commercial growth and client loyalty with sustained investment in specialist talent, recruitment, training and expert-led services.

The Agency of the Year award was particularly relevant to the current Irish communications talent market.

Judges highlighted Springboard’s response to a rapidly changing industry, including its investment in people and its movement towards a more specialist, expert-led proposition.

Those investments were linked to:

• continued business growth;
• strong client relationships;
• new and innovative services;
• specialist agency capability;
• and meaningful commercial outcomes for clients.

The result suggests that agency competitiveness is increasingly connected to the quality and development of its people.

Clients still expect creativity and delivery. However, they also increasingly need strategic counsel, sector knowledge, measurement capability, digital fluency and experienced professionals who can operate confidently with senior stakeholders.

Spencer Recruitment’s analysis of Ireland’s marketing, PR and communications hiring market in 2026 found that demand is strongest in experienced, specialist and reputation-critical roles.

For agencies, this places greater importance on clear career progression, training and the retention of experienced account talent. For employers, it increases the value of defining the required communications capability before beginning a search.

What do the Hall of Fame and Rising Star awards show?

The awards for Rhona Blake and Aislinn Burke recognised both long-term professional leadership and the development of emerging Irish communications talent.

Rhona Blake, managing director of FleishmanHillard Ireland, became the second person inducted into the PRCA Hall of Fame. The award recognised more than four decades of leadership, professional development and contribution to Irish public relations.

Her advice to professionals building their careers was direct:

“A good network makes your job a whole lot easier and a whole lot more fun. Go network!”

Aislinn Burke of We The People received the Rising Star Award for her work across public-sector and social-impact clients. The judges highlighted her ability to produce measurable results in complex environments, including areas where the communications challenge may not be immediately visible to the wider public.

Together, the two awards show why a healthy communications profession requires both accumulated judgement and opportunities for emerging practitioners to take responsibility for substantive work.

Senior professionals play an important role in transferring standards, experience and institutional knowledge. Newer professionals need access to complex assignments, trusted mentorship and visible career pathways if that knowledge is to continue developing across the industry.

How is AI changing the Irish PR profession?

AI is accelerating communications research, drafting and analysis, but the winning campaigns show that strategy, audience understanding and human judgement remain decisive.

Artificial intelligence is already changing how PR and communications teams monitor issues, summarise information, research audiences, develop initial drafts and organise content workflows.

However, the awards suggest that technology is not the principal source of effective communications.

The winning campaigns depended on decisions that cannot be reduced to automated production:

• identifying the real organisational problem;
• interpreting audience attitudes;
• recognising reputational risk;
• selecting the appropriate message;
• understanding local context;
• managing sensitive stakeholders;
• and deciding what outcome should be measured.

AI can help a communications team work more efficiently. It cannot independently determine how a health issue should be communicated, when an organisation should respond to public criticism or how a complex policy campaign should balance competing stakeholder interests.

This is affecting recruitment as well as campaign delivery. Employers increasingly expect candidates to understand AI-supported workflows, but practical fluency must sit alongside accuracy, ethical awareness, editorial control and professional judgement.

What skills are becoming more important in PR and communications?

Irish employers increasingly need communications professionals who combine writing and media capability with strategic advice, stakeholder judgement, measurement and digital fluency.

The awards indicate that professional value is moving beyond output production alone.

Employers and agencies increasingly need people who can:

• connect communications activity to organisational outcomes;
• interpret audience research;
• advise senior stakeholders;
• manage sensitive or complex issues;
• work across media, digital and stakeholder channels;
• understand public-policy or regulated environments where relevant;
• measure changes in awareness, behaviour or organisational performance;
• and use AI tools without weakening accuracy or trust.

This does not mean that writing, creativity or media relationships are becoming less important. It means those skills increasingly need to be applied within a broader strategic and commercial context.

For those needing help recruiting the perfect candidate, Spencer Recruitment works with employers recruiting across PR, communications and corporate affairs, from agency account appointments to senior in-house leadership roles.

What can employers learn from the PRCA winners?

Employers should define the outcome a communications hire must influence before choosing the title, seniority, salary or assessment process for the role.

The award-winning campaigns were clear about the problem being addressed, and recruitment briefs should follow the same principle.

Before hiring a PR or communications professional, an employer should establish whether the principal need is:

Problems arise when employers combine these functions into one role without adjusting the seniority, resources or salary.

A Communications Manager expected to manage media relations, employee communication, policy monitoring, executive advice and crisis response may not be a conventional manager-level appointment. The remit may require a senior communications or corporate-affairs professional.

Read more in our Marketing, PR & Communications Salary & Hiring Guide →

The awards provide the same lesson for assessment. Candidates should be asked to demonstrate outcomes, decisions and professional judgement—not simply list campaigns, channels or responsibilities.

What can PR professionals learn from the 2026 winners?

PR professionals should document the decisions they made, the problem they addressed and the outcome they influenced—not only the communications activity they delivered.

The recognised campaigns show the growing value of evidence.

A strong professional example should explain:

1. the organisational or audience problem;
2. the insight that shaped the approach;
3. the individual’s own responsibility;
4. the strategic and creative decisions made;
5. how the work was measured;
6. and what changed as a result.

This form of evidence is useful for awards submissions, career development and recruitment processes. It allows employers to distinguish between candidates who participated in visible work and those who exercised meaningful ownership, judgement or leadership.

What do the 2026 awards reveal about the future of Irish PR?

The awards point towards an Irish PR industry that is more strategic, specialist, measurable and closely connected to organisational decision-making.

Four conclusions stand out.

PR is increasingly tied to business and organisational strategy. Winning campaigns supported revenue, public understanding, policy objectives, recruitment and social outcomes.

Measurement is becoming more meaningful. The strongest entries connected communications outputs to changes in awareness, behaviour, trust or performance.

Specialist knowledge matters. Health, public affairs, tourism, corporate reputation and societal-change campaigns each required different forms of audience and sector understanding.

People remain the central differentiator. The awards recognised strategic judgement, emerging talent, professional leadership and agency investment in expertise.

Technology will continue to change how communications work is produced. The standard set by the 2026 winners suggests that the profession’s value will still depend on how well people understand audiences, interpret complexity and turn communications into outcomes that matter.

Frequently asked questions

Who won Campaign of the Year at the 2026 PRCA Spotlight Awards?

Jago and Tourism Northern Ireland won Campaign of the Year for Awakening Giant Landscapes, which also received the award for Best Lifestyle Campaign.

Which agency won Agency of the Year in 2026?

Springboard Communications won Agency of the Year for the second consecutive year, with judges recognising its investment in talent, training, specialist expertise and service development.

Who received the 2026 Rising Star Award?

Aislinn Burke of We The People received the Rising Star Award for her work with public-sector and social-impact organisations operating in complex communications environments.

Who was inducted into the PRCA Hall of Fame?

Rhona Blake, managing director of FleishmanHillard Ireland, became the second person inducted into the PRCA Hall of Fame in recognition of more than four decades of industry leadership.

What do the PRCA Spotlight Awards recognise?

The awards recognise outstanding Irish PR campaigns, agencies and professionals across consumer, corporate, health, technology, public-affairs, public-sector, ESG and societal-change communications.