GAA's 'Where We All Belong' campaign, created by BBDO Dublin in May 2019, reframes the Gaelic Athletic Association as an inclusive community institution beyond
GAA Where We All Belong Reframes Irish Sport as Community
GAA's "Where We All Belong" is a 2019 Irish film campaign created by BBDO Dublin that repositions the Gaelic Athletic Association not as a competition but as an inclusive community institution encompassing players, coaches, club officials, supporters, and multiple generations across Ireland.
The Gaelic Athletic Association is described by adsoftheworld.com as Ireland's largest sporting organisation and one of the world's major amateur sporting associations. In Ireland, that scale carries a particular cultural weight: the GAA is not simply a governing body for Gaelic games but a presence woven into parish life, family ritual, and national identity across every county. The "Where We All Belong" campaign, published in May 2019, sets out to honour that full breadth of belonging rather than reduce the organisation to its most visible on-field moments.
BBDO Dublin was appointed as GAA's creative agency in December 2018, according to Adworld Ie, making "Where We All Belong" the agency's first brand campaign for the client. The brief, as reflected in the film's positioning, called for messaging that would speak to every person with a relationship to the GAA — from the county senior player to the volunteer who marks the pitch on a winter morning. The campaign launched under the hashtag #GAABelong, extending the film's narrative into social conversation across Ireland. The single media asset at the heart of the campaign is a film, and its compression of community archetypes into one cohesive narrative is the strategic and creative engine of the entire effort. Clapboard, which archives the campaign, assigns it a score of 66 out of 100, reflecting competent execution of a resonant strategic idea within the conventions of the Irish sports film genre.
"Where We All Belong" rests on a single, well-grounded insight: that the GAA's true competitive advantage over rival sports organisations is not the quality of its athletes but the density of its community infrastructure. In Ireland, where professional football leagues such as the League of Ireland and rugby's United Rugby Championship compete for discretionary attention and commercial sponsorship, the GAA's distinction lies in its amateur ethos and its parish-level reach — a structural reality no professional league can replicate.
The campaign's positioning reflects a deliberate shift, noted by adworld.ie and clapboard.com, away from match-day drama and toward the everyday relationships and volunteer activity that sustain the association between fixtures. This is a meaningful strategic move because it insulates the GAA's brand narrative from the volatility of on-field performance and instead anchors it in something more durable: belonging. Belonging is not contingent on a county team reaching an All-Ireland final; it is reproduced every week in training sessions, club meetings, and community gatherings across Ireland.
The commercial context reinforces the logic of this positioning. Dublin GAA reported commercial income of over two million euro in 2019, a year-on-year increase of more than fifty percent, according to Gaa Ie. That trajectory suggests a commercial environment in which the GAA's brand equity was actively expanding, making 2019 a well-timed moment to invest in a campaign that deepened emotional connection rather than simply drove ticket sales. By framing the GAA as a community home rather than a sporting spectacle, BBDO Dublin created a platform capable of supporting long-term brand building rather than seasonal activation alone.
Executive Creative Director Dylan Cotter led the creative team at BBDO Dublin that produced "Where We All Belong." The campaign's art direction was handled by Rob Murray, with copywriting by Des Kavanagh and agency production by Andrew Counihan, according to clapboard.com and adsoftheworld.com. The film was coordinated on the production side by Dermot O'Hanlon at Red Rage Films during the March to April 2019 production window, as documented on linkedin.com. The director, post-production house, editor, and music composer for the campaign are not verified in publicly available sources.
The creative approach, as evidenced by the campaign's positioning and hashtag strategy, favours emotional accumulation over dramatic spectacle. Where a match-day sports film might build to a crescendo of crowd noise and athletic achievement, "Where We All Belong" is structured around recognition — the small, repeated moments that make a person feel they are part of something larger than themselves. Kavanagh's copy and Murray's visual framing work in service of that accumulation, placing coaches, parents, officials, and supporters on equal narrative footing with players. This is a precise creative decision: it ensures that any viewer with a GAA connection, however peripheral, sees themselves reflected in the film.
The single-asset format, noted by clapboard.com, concentrates the campaign's entire emotional argument into one film rather than distributing it across a broader multi-format system. In the context of Irish sports advertising, where budgets and production windows are often constrained by the association's amateur and community funding model, that discipline is both a creative and a practical virtue. The #GAABelong hashtag extends the film's invitation outward, asking audiences across Ireland to contribute their own expressions of belonging to the campaign's social dimension.
No verified performance data for "Where We All Belong" — including view counts, engagement rates, or brand-tracking results — is publicly available, according to searches of Campaign, Ad Age, Adweek, and the GAA's own published communications. The absence of documented metrics is consistent with the norms of Irish sports association advertising, where campaign effectiveness is rarely disclosed through trade press in the manner common to commercial consumer brands.
Structural analysis offers a credible substitute framework. The campaign's positioning as an inclusive community narrative rather than a performance-driven sports film gives it a durability that purely seasonal activation lacks. By speaking to volunteers, supporters, and administrators alongside players, BBDO Dublin widened the addressable audience of a single film to encompass virtually every adult in Ireland with a GAA connection — a community that, given the association's status as Ireland's largest sporting organisation as described by adsoftheworld.com, represents a substantial proportion of the national population.
The commercial context is also instructive. Dublin GAA's total income rose from approximately four point four million euro in 2018 to approximately five point two million euro in 2019, according to gaa.ie, with commercial income growing sharply over the same period. While this income growth cannot be attributed solely to the campaign, it establishes that the GAA brand was commercially healthy in the year "Where We All Belong" ran. Clapboard assigns the campaign a score of 66 out of 100, a rating that reflects solid strategic grounding and competent craft execution, with scope for greater creative distinctiveness to elevate the work beyond its genre conventions.
"Where We All Belong" is a 2019 GAA film campaign created by BBDO Dublin. It repositions the Gaelic Athletic Association as an inclusive community institution rather than a sporting competition, addressing players, coaches, volunteers, supporters, and multiple generations across Ireland under the hashtag #GAABelong.
BBDO Dublin created "Where We All Belong" for the GAA. According to adworld.ie, BBDO was appointed as GAA's creative agency in December 2018, and the May 2019 film campaign was the agency's first brand work for the Gaelic Athletic Association in Ireland.
Dylan Cotter served as Executive Creative Director at BBDO Dublin on the campaign. Rob Murray was Art Director, Des Kavanagh was Copywriter, and Andrew Counihan was Agency Producer, according to clapboard.com. Production coordination was handled by Dermot O'Hanlon at Red Rage Films, per linkedin.com.
The campaign's strategy shifted the GAA's brand narrative away from match-day competition toward everyday community belonging. According to adworld.ie and clapboard.com, BBDO Dublin positioned the Gaelic Athletic Association as a home defined by relationships, rituals, and volunteer activity rather than fixtures or athletic achievement alone.
Clapboard assigns "Where We All Belong" a score of 66 out of 100. The rating reflects solid strategic grounding and competent creative craft, with the assessment noting scope for greater distinctiveness to elevate the 2019 Irish campaign beyond the established conventions of the sports film genre.
No verified performance data for "Where We All Belong" is publicly available. No view counts, engagement figures, or brand-tracking results appear in Campaign, Ad Age, or Adweek. Dublin GAA's commercial income grew sharply in 2019, according to gaa.ie, though this cannot be attributed solely to the campaign.
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