Size was not the issue when David Quinn and Damian Penco got together to set up an agency in 2000, no more than it is the reason for them to get out of bed these spring mornings and set off for Bloom. Being big, or at least bigger, may well happen and no harm in that, but creating ideas which boost clients is the agency consensus.

THREATENING GREATNESS Bloom co-founders Damian Penco and David Quinn with general manager Robert Coyle. The Dublin north city agency has carved a niche for itself in its seven years in adland and so there are no plans to deviate from the perennial onus on creating ideas that work.

Size was not the issue when David Quinn and Damian Penco got together to set up an agency in 2000, no more than it is the reason for them to get out of bed these spring mornings and set off for Bloom. Being big, or at least bigger, may well happen and no harm in that, but creating ideas which boost clients is the agency consensus.

ROSY LANGUAGE Labour Party leader Pat Rabbitte TD and Liz McManus TD at the launch of the 'But, are you happy?' poster campaign. Bloom is trying to create political slogans which get voters and the media talking in the same way as Fianna Fail captured the zeitgeist with its 'A lot done, more to do' catch-cry during the last general election.

Seven years ago, Penco had been reading up a lot on challenger brands and how to compete against market leaders. Adam Morgan's Eating the Big Fish came to hand and has since never been out of reach. You had Avis in the US, the small fish which had to “try harder” if it was not to be swallowed up by the bigger fish, Hertz.

“You can be number two in the market,” Penco said, “and the market can be enormous, like Pepsi is to Coke worldwide. But if you behave like a challenger, there's a better spirit about how you play the game. You don't try to ape what the leader is doing and you try doing it differently and use your resources in a more creative and intelligent way.”

One of Bloom's first clients was the Dublin Brewing Company in nearby Smithfield, which Quinn describes as “the ultimate challenger to the ultimate market leader”. Although the agency now employs 17 staff, it has kept to its original maxim and has little hierarchy. As company owners, they feel they have every incentive to be motivated.
How Bloom originated is itself a cameo of the way the ad business had been shaping up at the time, with small, with niche shops sowing seeds of change. Cawley Nea lit the fuse and the likes of Chemistry and Rothco followed. David Quinn and Damien Penco were freelancing then; Penco, an art director, needed copy written up, so he phoned Quinn.

The two men had known each other from Ogilvy & Mather, although they had never actually worked together there as a team. Later they decided to reunite again, this time on a joint pitch. Not just any old pitch; Quinn and Penco sought to win the Euro Changeover, one of the most ambitious accounts to do the rounds for some years.

Adept Advertising was appointed to the Euro Changeover and Carat won the media. It was a €4 million account, so it was a big deal. Penco says they had what they still think to this day was a cracking idea. At the de-brief, the client told them they liked the proposals, but Quinn and Penco got the impression their freelance status was a no-no.

So they now had to form an agency and coin a suitable moniker. First up, Adrenalin. They played around with the Q&P initials, including Mind Your Ps & Qs, but felt it was too close to QMP. Then on June 16, Bloom's Day, 2000, they were with a client while Dublin was awash with people wandering about in bowler hats and Joycean dress.
Quinn thought why not call the agency Bloom, after Leopold Bloom, the character in James Joyce's Ulysses who, as the late artist and Capel Street gallery owner Gerard Davis liked to remind Dubliners, was an ad salesman. So it seemed like an obvious name for an agency and a tribute rooted in a flower's bright and hued image. Win, win.

The agency set up shop in St Mary's Place, on the north of the city, within smelling distance of a mutton kidney breakfast being grilled at 7 Eccles Street, the fictional home of Leopold and Molly Bloom and now part of the Mater Hospital. Across the street, the Joycean connection is maintained by a nameplate on a building known as Bloom House.

Robert Coyle, who joined Bloom four years ago as a consultant and never left, returns to the challenger mission. “You must look at things differently,” Coyle said, “and stand for something. When talking to clients, we say brands are like people and one of the worst things you can say about anyone is that you don't know what they stand for.

“It's worst than saying 'they're two-faced'. You can get a handle on two-faced but not knowing what a person or brand stands for is worse. Do I trust them? Do I hate them? Do I like them? Brands need to take a definite when up against a much larger competitor. Otherwise, how do you create any headlines or traction?” Coyle asked.

Penco says a challenger needs to be hungrier and smarter in advertising. That is where Bloom is now and where they intend to stay. It does not preclude evolution, which will inevitably see changes happen, but the agency's core philosophies will hold firm.

Quinn points to the massive changes occurring in adland with online now making its presence felt as a real and meaningful marketing tool and not the over-hyped panacea for all ills that some people sold it as at every marketing media seminar a decade ago.

Bloom makes no apology for sticking with tradition when it comes to industry honours and being passionate about entering and winning awards. They are proud of the gongs they won at the recent Radio Awards ceremony for Ireland West Tourism and the 'Betsy' spot, which saw them taking the Greenhorn for best emerging talent.

As Bloom does not have it own media department that discipline is handled by a host of other agencies. They work with Vizeum on Irish Distillers' West Coast Cooler and Lifestyle Sports and Red FM is among the accounts they share with Carat. The campaigns they create for the Labour Party and iRadio are booked by OMD.

They identified media agencies as being a source of business for them. Meetings were held with every media shop in Dublin worth talking about and Quinn says they became the first creative shop to do so. Bloom charges clients fees based on time and the media shops negotiate their own terms. Fee revenue last year was about €1.5 million.

Quinn said the bigger media agencies like Mindshare and Carat court Bloom. “A lot of the business they have is internationally aligned and for them to make profits here they need to create local work for clients, so it leads to positive relationships.” An agency like Bloom proves useful in the event where account conflicts arise.

With a general election only weeks away, one of the most immediate concerns Bloom has is developing ideas for the Labour Party. Penco said the agency was told at the debrief by consultant Jennifer English that they won the account for its strategic thinking, unlike others which came back with “nice posters of the party leader, or a headline”.

“An opposition is not the number one party in the market, you're the challenger brand,” Coyle said. “From research, we found that if Labour fights along the same lines as Fianna Fail they lose. We had to determine what's in the Labour DNA and frame it so that it's credible and appeals to the public. That's how 'But, are you happy?' came about.”

Bloom is part of a cross agency team, led by McCann Erickson, which developed the new Powerade campaign for Coca-Cola. 'Never Give Up' follows the training progress of Will Cullen, a 22-year-old bank official from Whitehall in Dublin, who was selected from candidates nationwide to take part in the Dublin City Triathlon in August.

Actress Barbara Bergin, writer of the RTE Two drama series Trouble in Paradise and Sunday Independent journalist Brendan O'Connor provide the voices for Bloom's Carbery Dubliner Cheese radio series. O'Connor pokes fun at fads like clothes for pets and SUVs. The campaign, with media by Mindshare, is extending to press and outdoor.

As Quinn remarks, Bloom is the only ad agency in Ireland with a day in its honour and he is adamant they will never follow others in selling out to an international network. If the agency continues to mature as it has done since its birth, that is a promise which may have to be revisited one June day in less than seven annual Bloomsdays from now.

From left to right are Anne-Marie Harrington, Dee Cunniffe, Tara Hendron, Geoff McGrath, Robert Boyle, Damian Penco, Dillon McKenna, Anda Ozola, David Quinn, Fred Mangan, Liam Frawley, Rob Davis, Robert Coyle, Yvonne Caplice, Kathleen Moore and Bobby Byrne. Absent were John Flynn & Janne Nymann.