Mayo woman wins Best Public Sector PR Campaign Award

CARR Communications’ PR account manager, Sinéad O’Donnell, a native of Ballyvary, Castlebar, has won a prestigious Excellence in Public Relations Award for a PR campaign she devised for the National Standards Authority of Ireland (NSAI).

The campaign, ‘Check Your Insulation Products and Installers are NSAI Certified’, was named Best Public Sector Campaign of 2016 at the Excellence in Public Relations Awards ceremony in the Shelbourne Hotel, Dublin.

A record number of organisations entered the competition this year, with 217 taking part in the awards, which have been dubbed the Oscars of PR.

Working with the NSAI, Sinéad devised a communications strategy in September 2015 to try and make consumers aware of the importance of high standards in retrofit insulation work and warn them of the potential dangers of not using certified insulation products and installers. The NSAI also hoped the campaign would highlight to traders the benefit of becoming involved in the NSAI’s insulation installers’ registration scheme and encourage others to register.

Since the campaign was launched, five new insulation installers have applied to NSAI and were trained, audited, certified and added to the NSAI’s list of 269 registered installers.

Traffic to the list of registered installers page on the NSAI website grew by over 147%, while the campaign also achieved widespread media coverage, reaching an estimated broadcast audience of over 4 million, as well as an estimated 776,000 readers.

Sinéad joined Carr Communications the team in September 2015 after more than 10 years’ experience in TV, radio, print and multimedia. Before pursuing a career in public relations, Sinéad worked as a reporter and broadcast journalist with many of the country’s top media organisations, including TV3, Newstalk, Today FM and UTV Ireland.

She also wrote for the Sunday Times’ Sunday magazine and regularly produced and presented features for The Pat Kenny Show.

Like many journalists, Sinéad cut her teeth in local and regional media.