by Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner, SoolNua Reflections in the light of Ireland’s Events Industry Awards 2015 During our time at Ovation | MCI, entering for MICE industry awards was a key pillar in our business strategy because it ticked multiple boxes – extending the life of the event beyond its execution, helping us measure the… Read more »
by Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner, SoolNua IMEX is both Google and Amazon for the Meetings Industry. It’s a search engine and a showroom for network building, knowledge transfer and business exchange. It has a robust digital life but IMEX principally pivots around real people in real places in real time. It is by now the… Read more »
by Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner, SoolNua Once a year, at Christmas, I indulge another of my passions and write about music on this blog. This year I’m allowing myself a second such diversion to tell you how I could have been Bono. It’s a timely post as Bono and the U2 boys are all over… Read more »
by Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner, SoolNua All’s changed… Regular readers of this blog will have noticed how its byline and biography have changed. They used to say that I was Vice President of Industry Relations at MCI and Managing Director at Ovation Global DMC. About 15 months ago this changed to Managing Partner at SoolNua. When… Read more »
by Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner, SoolNua I pulled back the curtains in anticipation of waking in a room with a view and when I awoke there it was, in all its glittering morning glory, the Sugar Loaf, beautifully framed in the floor-to-ceiling window, a modest mountain by world standards, but massive to us who live in… Read more »
by Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Director, SoolNua The rise and rise of content marketing has brought the art of storytelling right into the science of marketing. These days marketers approach new products and services in search of their underlying story more than their features and benefits. Naturally this has extended to destination marketing and it’s causing… Read more »
by Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner, SoolNua It’s all about the content In his “Hacking the System” Bruce McMillan recently posted a two part blog on new paradigms in destination marketing. He highlights two new waves that Destination Marketing Organisations (DMOs) – and, indeed, any other public or private sector enterprise involved in Place Branding –… Read more »
by Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner, SoolNua Too much choice … This blog started in January 2011 and each year since then I’ve indulged myself by posting my own personal “Best of …” albums from the previous year. Accessing good music today is actually much harder than it was in the early 70s when I first… Read more »
by Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner, SoolNua A new business model? My industry friend Dries Jacobus, Managing Director Borealis Incentives, Belgium posed the following question recently on the ADMEI Linkedin Group As a DMC in Belgium (where taxes on labour are high, so staff is expensive) clients very often re-negotiate the staff cost. Sometimes down to… Read more »
by Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner, SoolNua The awesome power of brands Volumes have been written about the emotional power of brands but brands connected with national identity can often go deeper, insinuating themselves, almost, into our very DNA. These brands can become powerful symbols and signifiers across the full spectrum of our humanity, connecting us… Read more »