The Referendum Commission's Nice advertising campaign steps up a gear next week with a television and cinema advertisement showing images of Nelson Mandela walking out of Robben Island prison, the first free election in Cambodia and the election that ousted Milosevic.
The Referendum Act of 2001 widened the commission's brief to include encouraging people to vote. Its own research shows widespread apathy, particularly among young voters.
The results of that research will be announced on October 14th but meanwhile the commission's advertising agency, McConnells, has created the advertisement to galvanise the electorate into turning out on the day.
"The 'get out and vote' part of the campaign gave us a licence to be emotive," says Mr Kevin Barrington, copywriter at McConnells. News footage was bought from RTÉ and ITN and actor Vinnie McCabe reads the script, which is full of the usual anti-voting arguments counterpoised against the visual images of the power of a single vote.
"If anyone had suggested the typical backward baseball cap, self-conscious youth strategy, I wouldn't have been interested," he says. "What appealed to me was that we could be genuinely persuasive with this advertisement."
Other methods of reaching younger voters were examined, such as a text message campaign but this idea was dropped as permission would be required from each mobile phone user before they could be texted with a message.
There has been a great deal of media debate about the posters adopted by the various factions, most notably the No campaign's gun to the head poster and Fine Gael's "raunchy" Get Inside Europe poster, but the Referendum Commission's own "impartial information" campaign is proving unremarkable.
This is probably because the creative strategy behind the Nice referendum advertising is a direct replica of the abortion referendum. Then, an attractive but "drabbed down" looking woman gave the facts of the referendum in a deadpan voice straight to camera.
Broadcast journalist Ms Keelin Shanley featured in the campaign, also devised by McConnells. Both the agency and client were keen that she should also front the Nice campaign.
She was unavailable and instead Ms Cliodhna Ní Bhuachalla was chosen for her broadcast experience and background in journalism.
"I wouldn't say that this sort of approach is a referendum template because you can never say that in advertising," says Mr John Fanning, who is managing the account at McConnells.
"Both abortion and Nice are extremely complex issues, Nice maybe even more so, which is why we went for this simple, clear approach."
The commission's one-minute broadcasts will begin next week. These will feature Ms Ní Bhuachalla in a newsroom-type setting answering particular questions that have come into the commission from the public.
The only controversy surrounding the Referendum Commission's advertising so far has been at industry level where there is still disquiet that there was no public tender for the business.
The total spend, including printing and distributing the information booklets, will be €4.15 million.
Mr Tom Morgan at the Referendum Commission says the timeframe and the size of the job meant "few agencies would be in a position to clear the decks to handle it".
The Samaritans will re-brand to to give the public a better idea of what it does and to increase donations and volunteer levels.
The 50-year-old organisation has commissioned British brand consultancy Wolff Olins to reposition the organisation so that people have a better understanding of its role.
The first step in the re-branding has been to drop "The" and simply call the organisation "Samaritans". The old orange-and-black typeface will be replaced with green.
The Marketing Society has appointed Mr Maurice Cullen as its new chairman and Mr Gerard Cavanagh as vice-chairman. Mr Cullen is commercial manager with Bord Gáis.
Mr Cavanagh is a director of The Irish Times Publications Limited, and general manager of The Irish Field.
