Department of Justice Ireland's 'Let's Have the Consent Conversation' campaign, created by Javelin in 2023, uses illustrated narrative film to normalise
ARCHIVEDepartment of Justice Puts Consent at the Centre of Irish Public Discourse
Ireland's Department of Justice launched "Let's Have the Consent Conversation" in November 2023, a government-backed film campaign created by Javelin Dublin that positions consent as a continuous, inclusive dialogue relevant to every person, every relationship, and every setting across Ireland.
The campaign carries a single, declarative proposition: the more openly people talk about consent, the more clearly they understand it and one another. Rather than reducing consent to a legal or institutional concept, the creative frames it as a social norm — something discussable between anyone, anywhere, at any time. The governing line, "whoever you're with, wherever you are, there is no wrong time to have the consent conversation," deliberately removes barriers of context and relationship type, broadening the audience from a narrow demographic to the entire Irish public.
Distributed across television, radio, digital audio, video on demand, digital out-of-home, social media, out-of-home, and ambient media, the campaign achieved wide-reach saturation during its initial phase running through late 2023 and into early 2024, according to Adworld Ie. This multi-channel architecture ensured the campaign met Irish audiences across the full spectrum of daily media consumption, from commuter outdoor placements to primetime broadcast. The Clapboard Score for the campaign is 63 out of 100, reflecting solid structural execution within the public utility category. The campaign was submitted to Clapboard's archive by Senior Art Director Clayton Homer and contains one primary film asset, logged with 2,568 views and 50 likes as recorded on the platform.
ARCHIVEIreland's Department of Justice grounded the campaign in evidence gathered years before any creative brief was written. The Department partnered with the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre in 2020 to fund dedicated research into sexual consent in Ireland, according to Javelin Ie and irishlegal.com. That research phase — which was an evidence-gathering project rather than a public advertising campaign — established the strategic insight that silence and social discomfort are primary drivers of misunderstanding around consent. The 2023 campaign is the direct creative expression of those findings.
The strategic rationale is rooted in a simple behavioural observation: normalisation through repetition. By positioning consent as a topic no more uncomfortable than any other interpersonal subject, Javelin applied a destigmatisation framework familiar in Irish public health communications, where campaigns addressing mental health and road safety have historically shifted cultural attitudes through sustained, empathetic narrative. Ireland's public-sector advertising market totalled approximately €97 million in 2023, representing around 7% of the country's €1.47 billion total advertising market, according to Assets Gov Ie. This context signals that government campaigns in Ireland operate within a competitive attention environment, where creative distinctiveness is necessary for a campaign to register.
The campaign sits within the public utility category, a space where the Road Safety Authority and the Health Service Executive are established precedents for government-led behaviour change in Ireland. Against those comparators, Javelin's approach differentiates itself by foregrounding dialogue rather than consequence — inviting conversation rather than issuing warnings. This tonal choice reflects an understanding that Irish audiences in 2023 respond more readily to inclusive framing than to fear-based messaging, a shift evidenced in the Department's own research partnership with the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, as reported by javelin.ie.
Director Gavin Kelly led the creative execution of "Let's Have the Consent Conversation," produced by Piranha Bar, with Emily Brady serving as producer, according to Piranhabar Ie and adsoftheworld.com. The film's visual grammar is built around an immediately recognisable device: illustrated characters whose heads are shaped like quotation marks, as documented by javelin.ie. This typographic anthropomorphism transforms punctuation — the symbols that frame spoken words — into the protagonists of a consent narrative, making the core message legible at a glance and reinforcing the campaign's emphasis on speech and dialogue as the mechanism of understanding.
Creative direction was led jointly by Adrian Cosgrove and Cathal O'Flaherty, with Des Kavanagh serving as senior copywriter and Clayton Homer as senior art director, according to adsoftheworld.com and javelin.ie. Director of photography Cathal Watters handled the visual cinematography elements, while Caleb Long served as editor. The three-dimensional work was led by Cormac Kelly and Eric Dolan, with Shaun Kelly responsible for the two-dimensional design and illustration that gives the campaign its graphic consistency, per piranhabar.ie.
The decision to use animation and illustration alongside live production separates the campaign from more conventional government public service announcements in Ireland, which typically rely on documentary-style realism. By introducing a stylised visual world, the creative team created emotional distance that makes the subject approachable without diminishing its seriousness. The quotation-mark character design functions simultaneously as a mnemonic device and a philosophical statement — every character in the campaign is, literally, a vessel for conversation. This integration of concept and craft gives the film a coherence that sustains attention across multiple media touchpoints, from a thirty-second television spot to an ambient out-of-home placement.
No independently verified third-party performance metrics for "Let's Have the Consent Conversation" are publicly available beyond platform-level engagement data recorded on Clapboard, where the campaign has accumulated 2,568 views and 50 likes. No verified awards for the campaign appear across Cannes Lions, Effies, One Show, D&AD, Clios, Webby, or WARC databases, according to research conducted across those sources.
Structural analysis supports a qualified assessment of effectiveness. The campaign's multi-channel distribution — spanning television, radio, digital audio, video on demand, digital out-of-home, social media, out-of-home, and ambient formats across Ireland, as reported by adworld.ie — reflects a media strategy calibrated to maximise reach within the public utility category. Ireland's public-sector advertising expenditure declined to approximately €93.4 million in 2024, a fall of around 4% from 2023 levels, according to assets.Gov Ie. This contraction in government advertising spend makes the 2023 launch window — during a period of relatively higher public-sector investment — strategically well-timed.
The campaign's core creative device, the quotation-mark character, provides strong mnemonic value across formats. In a media environment where government campaigns must compete against commercial advertisers for attention, a visually singular device improves recall probability. The campaign's tonal strategy — invitation over instruction — aligns with the behavioural communications literature on attitude change, which consistently identifies empathetic framing as more durable than directive or fear-based messaging. Against that framework, the structural foundations of "Let's Have the Consent Conversation" are sound, even where quantitative outcome data remains undisclosed.
"Let's Have the Consent Conversation" is a 2023 Irish government film campaign created by Javelin for the Department of Justice. It positions consent as a continuous, everyday dialogue relevant to all relationships and settings, distributed across television, radio, digital, out-of-home, and ambient media throughout Ireland.
Javelin Dublin created the campaign. Director Gavin Kelly led the film execution through production company Piranha Bar. Creative directors Adrian Cosgrove and Cathal O'Flaherty oversaw the work, with Des Kavanagh as senior copywriter and Clayton Homer as senior art director, according to javelin.ie and adsoftheworld.com.
Ireland's Department of Justice partnered with the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre in 2020 to fund dedicated research into sexual consent in Ireland, according to javelin.ie. That evidence-gathering project identified silence and social discomfort as primary drivers of misunderstanding, directly informing the 2023 campaign's strategy of normalising open dialogue.
The campaign features illustrated characters with heads shaped like quotation marks, as documented by javelin.ie. This typographic device makes the emphasis on speech and dialogue immediately legible. Three-dimensional work was led by Cormac Kelly and Eric Dolan, with Shaun Kelly handling two-dimensional design, per piranhabar.ie.
The Clapboard Score for "Let's Have the Consent Conversation" is 63 out of 100. This score reflects solid structural execution within the public utility category, recognising the campaign's coherent concept, multi-channel distribution across Ireland, and distinctive visual identity, while noting the absence of publicly verified third-party performance metrics.
No verified awards for the campaign appear in the Cannes Lions, Effies, One Show, D&AD, Clios, Webby, or WARC databases, according to research across those sources. The campaign launched in November 2023 in Ireland and its primary documented engagement figures are recorded on the Clapboard platform.
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