Irish Independent Choices Reminds Ireland That Information Shapes Decisions
Irish Independent's 2013 'Choices' campaign is a film-led Irish media campaign built on the proposition that better choices in life require being better informed, positioning the newspaper as an active aid to personal and civic decision-making in Ireland.
Launched in May 2013 in Ireland, 'Choices' delivers a single, focused argument: that access to credible, balanced journalism is not merely informational but consequential. The campaign inverts the conventional media brand promise, which typically centres on reach, heritage, or entertainment value, and instead frames the Irish Independent as an instrument of life improvement. The proposition is unusually direct for the category. Where competitor media brands in the Irish market tend to emphasise trust or breadth of coverage, 'Choices' anchors its value in outcome — the quality of the decisions its readers are equipped to make, according to Bordbia Ie.
The campaign operates through a single film asset, a discipline that concentrates creative and strategic weight into one execution rather than distributing it across a campaign system. In the Irish media landscape of 2013, where print advertising expenditure was already in structural decline — falling to €170 million from €184 million in 2012, according to Adworld Ie — a film-led campaign represented a deliberate choice to fight on television's terrain. The Irish Independent, as reported by Magazinesireland Ie.independent.ie/archive/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Independent Ie, was Ireland's leading media brand at the time, and 'Choices' reflects the confidence of a market leader willing to make an argument rather than simply assert a position. The Clapboard Score for this campaign is 63 out of 100, reflecting solid strategic clarity and a coherent creative concept, offset by the limited verifiable performance data available in the public record.
Irish Independent entered the 2013 campaign cycle as Ireland's leading media brand operating inside a print advertising market under sustained pressure. According to adworld.ie, print advertising in Ireland — encompassing newspapers and magazines — totalled €170 million in 2013, a figure that had fallen from €215 million in 2011, representing a significant contraction over just two years. Against that backdrop, the strategic brief for 'Choices' was not simply to sell newspapers but to reframe what newspapers are for.
The campaign's central insight is both simple and defensible: the quality of a person's choices is constrained by the quality of their information. By claiming this territory, Irish International, Dublin — the agency behind the campaign — moved the Irish Independent out of a product-feature conversation and into a values conversation. The newspaper is not positioned as the most comprehensive or the most entertaining; it is positioned as the most useful when the stakes are real. This is a strategically mature move, particularly in a media environment where digital advertising in Ireland was growing rapidly, reaching €167 million in 2013 and up approximately eleven percent year on year, according to adworld.ie.
The competitive context matters here. Irish Times, the most direct editorial competitor to Irish Independent in the Irish quality daily market, has historically occupied a similar space around informed citizenship. By making decision-quality the explicit promise of 'Choices', Irish Independent sought to sharpen its differentiation not just from digital platforms and broadcasters but from within its own print category. The film medium was selected deliberately: television advertising commanded the largest single share of Irish advertising expenditure in 2013, at approximately €202 million, per adworld.ie, signalling where Irish audiences could be reached at scale.
Director Richard Cheney leads the production of 'Choices', working through Dublin-based production company Piranha Bar, according to YouTube. The creative team at Irish International, Dublin is led by creative director and copywriter Mark Nutley, with art direction by Pat Hamill. Together, these collaborators translate a strategic proposition — that better information produces better decisions — into a single film execution designed to carry the full weight of the Irish Independent's brand argument.
The craft challenge inherent in the 'Choices' brief is one of abstraction made tangible. Decision-making is an interior, invisible process, and the film must render it visible and emotionally legible without reducing a complex idea to a simplistic demonstration. Piranha Bar, as a production company, brings a track record within the Irish commercial production landscape, and Cheney's directorial role suggests a focus on character-driven or observational storytelling as the mechanism for externalising the internal stakes of choice. The campaign's single-asset discipline means the film cannot rely on cumulative impact across multiple executions; every creative decision within it must serve the proposition fully.
Mark Nutley's dual role as creative director and copywriter places the verbal architecture of the campaign — its central line and the logic it carries — at the heart of the execution. The 'Choices' proposition is essentially a written argument translated into film, which reflects a tradition within Irish advertising of language-led creative thinking. Pat Hamill's art direction would have shaped the visual register of that argument, determining whether the film's world feels grounded in everyday Irish life or reaches for something more stylised. The production's reliance on a single media asset in May 2013, a period when Irish media campaigns were beginning to extend across digital channels, represents a restrained and confident creative philosophy.
No verified third-party performance data for 'Choices' is publicly available in the documented record. No trade press reviews, award show results, or independently reported campaign metrics have been identified for this film. What can be assessed is the structural effectiveness of the campaign's approach, evaluated against the market conditions it entered and the creative logic it employed.
The decision to deploy a single film asset in May 2013 — when television advertising represented the largest individual medium in Ireland at approximately €202 million according to adworld.ie — is structurally sound. A concentrated execution in a high-reach environment maximises the likelihood that the proposition lands with sufficient weight to shift brand perception rather than merely generate awareness. The 'Choices' argument is also built for durability: a values-based claim about the relationship between information and decision quality does not expire with a news cycle or a product update.
For a market leader such as Irish Independent operating inside a print category that, per adworld.ie, had contracted from €215 million in 2011 to €170 million in 2013, a campaign that reframes the category's purpose rather than defending its format represents a strategically appropriate response to structural decline. The campaign does not argue that print is better; it argues that being better informed — by implication through Irish Independent — produces measurably better outcomes in life. That is a harder claim to dismiss and a more resilient platform for brand equity. The Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100 reflects a campaign that thinks clearly and executes with discipline, held back from a higher rating by the absence of measurable public results and the limited scale of a single-asset deployment.
'Choices' is a 2013 Irish Independent film campaign created by Irish International, Dublin. It argues that better choices in life require being better informed, positioning the newspaper as a decision-making tool for audiences in Ireland. The campaign launched in May 2013 and comprises a single film asset.
Richard Cheney directed the 'Choices' film, produced by Dublin-based Piranha Bar. The creative team at Irish International, Dublin included creative director and copywriter Mark Nutley and art director Pat Hamill, who together developed the campaign's argument about information and decision quality for the Irish market.
The campaign's core proposition is that better choices in life require better information. Irish International, Dublin framed the Irish Independent not as a source of news but as an active instrument of personal and civic decision-making, differentiating the brand within a contracting Irish print advertising market.
Print advertising in Ireland totalled €170 million in 2013, according to adworld.ie, down from €215 million in 2011. Irish Independent launched 'Choices' inside this declining environment, using a film-led campaign to compete on television's terrain rather than defend the print format directly.
The Clapboard Score for 'Choices' is 63 out of 100. The rating reflects the campaign's clear strategic logic and disciplined single-asset execution, offset by the absence of publicly verified performance metrics and the limited scale of a one-film deployment in the Irish media market.
Irish Times, the closest editorial rival to Irish Independent in the Irish quality daily market, has historically claimed similar ground around informed citizenship. 'Choices' sharpens Irish Independent's differentiation by anchoring its promise in decision outcomes rather than editorial breadth, making a more consequential and harder-to-dismiss brand argument.
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