The Brill Building Announces €1.1m Investment in the Future of Communications

Image credit: Leo Byrne

Above: The Brill Building team at the new building site, Siobhan Masterson CEO IAPI, Eleanor McCarthy head of operations, Niall Henry DDS Architects, Peter Snodden creative director, Roisin Keown CEO

​The Brill Building, the award-winning full service brand and creative communications agency has revealed €1.1m independent investment in Inchicore, as the company embarks on the next phase of its expansion.

Originally founded as a cloud based company in 2019, The Brill Building is now developing a first of its kind premises in the Irish industry.

As the marketing and communications industries worldwide undergo seismic changes, with mergers and challenges to the predominant large-holding company model and the self-serve promise of social media platforms, The Brill Building believes it has a new formula that will help more companies succeed in an increasingly complex landscape.

The company’s new premises in Inchicore will operate as the agency’s own creative studio and will also serve as a multi-use, open-access creator hub and collaborative production studio with virtual and hybrid capabilities.

Speaking about the role of the new premises, Roisin Keown CEO The Brill Building said, “Five years into the big adventure that is The Brill Building, having created many nationally and internationally successful marketing campaigns in that time, this is our agency's first investment in a physical space.

“It's a natural next step to invest in a production hub, rather than an office. However, we're thinking bigger than just the immediacy of production. We've always had the mantra 'scale is no barrier to ambition' - meanwhile dreaming on a larger scale than most. Until now, harnessing virtual production could only be accessed on the largest scale. Now with new technologies, you don’t need a huge footprint or a team of hundreds in-house to create world class work. It’s innovation and imagination in the one space.”

Situated in the heart of Dublin 8, the agency expects to support and benefit from the local creative community and Dublin City Council's ‘cultural cluster’ strategy for the south central area (Dublin 8, Kilmainham, and Inchicore), which is fostering growth in the historically rich area as an emerging cultural hub.

Announcing the investment on site was industry body IAPI president Siobhan Masterson and lord mayor of Dublin, Cllr. Ray McAdam who said, “This €1.1 million investment in Inchicore from The Brill Building is exactly the kind forward thinking Dublin needs. It brings new life, jobs, creativity and opportunity to a neighbourhood that has real potential. In my capacity as Lord Mayor, I am committed to ‘Celebrating Dublin’, so I warmly welcome projects that turn vacant or under-used spaces into engines for growth and innovation. This hub won’t just boost the creative economy; it will help build a Dublin where ambition meets action and where culture, commerce and community come together. I look forward to working with The Brill Building to champion this new chapter for the Irish advertising industry, for Inchicore and for the city as a whole.”

IAPI president Siobhan Masterson said, “This is the sort of development we are excited to see for our commercial creative industry in Ireland. At IAPI, we're committed to scaling the influence and reach of our members, not just nationally but internationally and to see the drive and vision of The Brill Building evolve with this great new step for the agency is proof an inspiring next chapter for Irish marketing and communications awaits.”

The Brill Building team believe their approach, partnering the creation of powerful brand platforms with cutting-edge production capability, is key to helping alleviate a key pain point for CMOs and CEOs at a seminal moment for brands and businesses. According to a 2024 research by Red C, 64% of Irish marketing executives said AI upskilling was a top need and the priority for one in three was getting skilled talent, asking ‘what else can you bring’ and ‘how can you lift this business’.

Continuing, Roisin spoke about the need for brands to connect to the potential of home-grown talent as well as their global network, “The creative and creator economy is about more than commerce. It's culture. There is a severe lack of both studio and creative spaces - for artists and influencers alike - in the city. Our plan is to open the doors for both once-off hire and a collaborative and reciprocal membership model that will inspire our own work by keeping us deeply connected to a community of inspiration and imagination and give our clients access to a network of the most exciting creators and creatives.”

Research commissioned by The Brill Building as part of their own repositioning confirms that brand owners and CMOs are facing increased pressure to achieve results. Many report increased competition and more media channels to share finite budgets across, as well as frustration with the traditional agency model of delivery as slow and formulaic.

In contrast to what Roisin calls the ‘one team fits all’ approach of established agency models, The Brill Building believe their formula for excellence is unique in the market, and pioneering in the industry: partnering the creation of a powerful brand platform with access to world class creativity, innovation, production and talent.

Asserting that, “excellence is customisation, not automation,” Brill Building founder and CEO, Roisin Keown is positive the agency’s new model will build the future of brands. “Our approach offers all the benefits, efficiencies and unlimited imagination that's possible now with the creativity, expertise and resourcefulness of skilled talent.”

“Technology has been key to our USP to date, as an agency that was established first in the Cloud,” continued the CEO. “Now, with this development of a collaboration and production hub, we have a way of bringing our global and local talent together with client teams in a creative space. This is agile excellence; de-risking the investment in ‘new’ and saving clients the workload and pressure of the ‘Do It Yourself’ model Meta and others are proposing, but one that still needs those with creative talents – writers, art directors, designers, and creators – to help them execute. Big international brands can afford the investment of budget and training in in-house teams. We believe everyone else would prefer that done for them, by those who are already the best in the business.”

Elaborating on the agency model, Roisin continued, “The Brill Building is a business accelerator for brands to keep them ahead of the curve. Brand is proven consistently to be the differentiator to take businesses to the next level of their growth. The latest report from McKinsey on the importance of brand for sustaining business and sales success only confirms what many of us have been practising for years. For the businesses that have worked with The Brill Building, that means breakthrough communications platforms, campaigns and activations that reverse decline, accelerate growth and build brill brands. More attention, meaning, fame, leads, salience, sales, market share and scaled revenue - even the potential of more lives saved. These are the results we have consistently delivered for our client partners.”

The agency credits their membership of Galway scaling incubator Platform 94 as giving them the belief that leading the new era of communications can be achieved by one of the industry’s newer players. A further production hub is expected in the West.