ARCHIVEDublin Bus Takes the Long Road to Pride With Rothco
Dublin Bus launched 'The Long Road to Pride' in July 2019, a digital public interest campaign created by Rothco | Accenture Interactive in Ireland that brought older LGBTQ+ people together with younger supporters to attend Dublin Pride, framing the bus network as a space of genuine civic inclusion rather than a vehicle for conventional product advertising.
The campaign addresses a specific and verifiable gap in Pride participation. Rothco and Dublin Bus identified that LGBTQ+ people over 65 were dramatically underrepresented at Pride events, with only approximately one percent of around 60,000 attendees falling into that age group, according to Adworld Ie. That single insight reframed what a public transport operator could say about its role in Irish civic life. Rather than promoting fares, routes, or frequency, Dublin Bus positioned the bus itself as one of the few remaining public spaces in Ireland where people of all ages, backgrounds, and orientations share the same experience.
Mary Ryan, Marketing and Information Manager at Dublin Bus, articulated this positioning directly, as reported by campaignsoftheworld.com: 'Dublin Bus is one of the last places where people of all ages, backgrounds and orientations come together, but at Pride one group is not on board. Dublin Bus is a space for everyone and it's important people really feel that. Inclusion is so important to us and when the team in ROTHCO brought this issue to us, we knew it was something we wanted to support.' That statement anchors the entire campaign in institutional sincerity rather than performative allyship, a distinction that proved central to how the work was received across Ireland. The campaign was published on July 1, 2019, and supported by social content across Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn, as noted by adsoftheworld.com. Clapboard Score: 78/100.
Rothco identified that older LGBTQ+ people were effectively absent from Dublin Pride. The creative agency, operating as part of Accenture Interactive, recognised that this absence was not a matter of indifference but of practical and emotional barriers — isolation, mobility, the accumulated weight of decades during which being openly LGBTQ+ in Ireland carried legal and social risk.
In Ireland, the journey toward legal equality for LGBTQ+ people has been long and contested. Same-sex activity was decriminalised only in 1993, and Ireland became the first country to legalise same-sex marriage by popular vote in 2015, according to Rte Ie. For LGBTQ+ people who lived through the years before decriminalisation, Pride is not a heritage celebration but a deeply personal reckoning. Rothco's strategic insight was that the bus — a shared, neutral, public space — could be the mechanism through which younger allies literally escorted older LGBTQ+ people to an event many had never felt able to attend.
This positions the campaign in sharp contrast to the approach taken by competitors in the Irish public transport and public service advertising space. Where campaigns from operators such as Transdev Ireland, which manages the Luas light rail network in Dublin, have focused on service features and network expansion, Dublin Bus and Rothco chose to anchor the brand in human dignity and social utility. The strategy also drew on a longer Dublin Bus creative lineage: the 2017 'Dublin Legends' campaign, developed in-house by Rothco, used bus shelters and a free story booklet distributed with the hashtag #DBSTORYBOOK to celebrate 30 years of Dublin Bus stories, as documented by adworld.ie. 'The Long Road to Pride' extended that tradition of treating the bus as a site of shared human experience rather than a functional transit product, making the 2019 public interest work feel earned rather than opportunistic.
The campaign's primary asset is a single film, published on July 1, 2019, that documents the act of younger LGBTQ+ supporters travelling by Dublin Bus to collect older LGBTQ+ people and accompany them to Dublin Pride. The format is documentary in register rather than scripted, allowing the emotional weight of the journeys — and the faces of the older participants — to carry the narrative without rhetorical manipulation.
Production credits for 'The Long Road to Pride' are not publicly documented in full. However, the campaign was conceived and produced by Rothco, the Dublin-based creative agency that operates as part of Accenture Interactive, as confirmed by adsoftheworld.com. The decision to deploy a single hero film rather than a multi-format above-the-line campaign reflects both the intimacy of the subject matter and the realities of a public service advertising context, where budgets are structured around community value rather than commercial return. No media budget or production budget figures have been published for this campaign.
Adworld.ie, in its coverage dated 5 July 2019, described the campaign in terms that underline the restraint of the creative approach — the film works precisely because it does not aestheticise the participants or construct an aspirational vision of Pride. Instead it observes. The supporting social content, distributed across Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn as reported by adsoftheworld.com, amplified the film without fragmenting its emotional coherence. Each platform received content designed to extend the core idea rather than repackage it, a discipline that kept the campaign message consistent across the Irish digital landscape throughout Pride 2019. The work's structure — one powerful film, sustained by honest social distribution — reflects a creative confidence that is characteristic of Rothco's broader body of work for Dublin Bus.
ARCHIVENo verified performance data for 'The Long Road to Pride' — including reach, engagement, brand-tracking movement, or sales-related metrics — is publicly available. No media budget or paid-impression figures have been published. What the public record does confirm is recognition within the LGBTQ+ media and advertising community.
The campaign was nominated for Advertising Campaign of the Year at the PinkNews Awards 2019, as confirmed by thepinknews.com. The PinkNews Awards represent one of the most prominent annual recognitions of LGBTQ+-focused media and advertising in the United Kingdom and Ireland, and a nomination in the campaign category places 'The Long Road to Pride' in competitive company with work from major commercial brands. No wins at Cannes Lions, the Effie Awards, the One Show, D&AD, the Clios, the Webby Awards, or WARC Awards have been verified for this campaign.
Structurally, the campaign's effectiveness rests on the precision of its insight and the economy of its execution. By identifying a real and underreported social gap — the near-absence of LGBTQ+ people over 65 at Dublin Pride, with approximately one percent of around 60,000 attendees in that age group according to adworld.ie — Rothco and Dublin Bus created a public interest narrative that justified earned media and organic social sharing without requiring significant paid amplification. In the Irish public service and transport advertising context, where the CIÉ commuter-network advertising estate was described as an estimated €45 million property as of 2022 according to Marketing Ie, campaigns that generate editorial coverage and social reach without proportional paid spend represent genuine strategic value. 'The Long Road to Pride' achieves that balance by grounding every creative decision in a human truth rather than a communications objective.
'The Long Road to Pride' is a 2019 public interest campaign by Dublin Bus, created by Rothco | Accenture Interactive in Ireland. The campaign brought older LGBTQ+ people to Dublin Pride with younger supporters, using the bus as a symbol of civic inclusion. It was published on July 1, 2019, and distributed across social media platforms.
Rothco identified that LGBTQ+ people over 65 were virtually absent from Dublin Pride. According to adworld.ie, only approximately one percent of around 60,000 attendees were over 65. Rothco and Dublin Bus used that insight to position the public bus network as an instrument of real social inclusion rather than a transit service.
The campaign received a nomination for Advertising Campaign of the Year at the PinkNews Awards 2019, as confirmed by thepinknews.com. No wins at Cannes Lions, D&AD, the Effies, the One Show, the Clios, the Webby Awards, or WARC Awards have been verified for this campaign.
Rothco, operating as part of Accenture Interactive, created the campaign for Dublin Bus. The primary asset is a single documentary-register film supported by social content on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn, as reported by adsoftheworld.com. Full production credits are not publicly documented.
Dublin Bus has a consistent history of treating the bus as a civic space. The 2017 'Dublin Legends' campaign, also produced by Rothco, used bus shelters and story booklets to celebrate community stories, according to adworld.ie. 'The Long Road to Pride' extended that strategic tradition into an LGBTQ+ inclusion context in 2019.
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