In June 2024, Birch Lea Strategies organized the 2024 Ireland Free Speech Summit in Dublin with a number of domestic and international partners. The firm was instrumental in event management as well as brand positioning and promotion.
Overview
The Ireland Free Speech Summit was an event collaboration between Free Speech Ireland and Birch Lea Strategies, supported by ADF International and Michael Shellenberger’s Public. For the previous year, the Irish Government’s Hate Speech Bill had neither progressed nor been scrapped definitively. With changes to government leadership and dwindling popularity of the bill, the event was designed to show support for scrapping the proposed law. The event took place on Tuesday 18 June 2024 in three stages:
- A private event in Leinster House, the seat of the Irish Government, hosted by Senators Rónán Mullen and Sharon Keogan. This event was open to politicians, government staff, and accredited media. It re-invigorated conversation within the halls of power in the Irish government.
- A public, ticketed event in Trinity College Dublin, a world-renowned university, with a capacity of 200. It is also the alma mater of Edmund Burke, a fierce supporter of free speech.
- A catered meet-and-greet reception for attendees in the College Green Hotel. This was a chance to meet with our speakers and to connect with each other to keep the conversation going.
Issues
There were three primary issues to tackle with the event:
- Reviving conversation about Hate Speech, which had decreased since the government’s leadership change in April.
- Increase international pressure on the government to scrap the bill.
- Attract the attention of potential donors to the cause.
Solutions
We built the solutions to these issues into both the event format and the promotion strategy around it.
The private event in Leinster House guaranteed the attention of decision-makers in the Irish government, especially since both houses of the Oireachtas (Irish legislature) were in session debating other contentious legislation: most representatives in government were in the building and aware of our presence during the day. The public event was held in Trinity College Dublin, a university with a staff and student population increasingly critical of wide-ranging free speech protections. The meet-and-greet facilitated our attendees to meet the speakers as well as other free speech activists, fostering an atmosphere of grassroots collaboration and encouraging them to independently organize against the proposed bill. Furthermore, we arranged for videographers to record the entire event along with interviews of the speakers later. This fuelled online conversation in the weeks after the event to keep the issue relevant.
In addition to arranging the event logistics, Birch Lea Strategies designed a promotion plan which involved both traditional media and paid and organic marketing. We secured three national radio slots to promote the event and invited a wide range of print media to the events. We encouraged the speakers to promote the event to their own audiences and selected some to record video messages for us to share and build a buzz online. This content aided our staggered speaker announcements and by the time we released tickets on the website, we had generated more interest than we had capacity. Tickets sold out within five days, with 32% of the paid media budget unspent.
Our international speaker promotion helped to raise awareness for the event outside of the potential attendees. Dr. Jordan Peterson, who was unable to attend as a speaker due to a conflicting tour schedule, endorsed the event with a number of tweets in the week leading up to the event and engaged in some of the online conversation around the Summit.
Results
The event was a success. The numerous journalists in attendance led to coverage of the event and the free speech issue in outlets such as The Irish Daily Mail, The Irish Catholic, Christian Post (and here), and Spiked. The public event sold out within five days of ticket release, with the theater over-capacity on the night. The event provided an opportunity to develop a lot of content, which was viewed more than 150,000 time in the month following the event, mostly in Ireland.
Speakers
Michael Shellenberger – Founder of Public; broke the ‘Twitter Files’
Rónán Mullen – Irish Senator (National University of Ireland)
Sharon Keogan – Irish Senator (Industrial & Commercial Panel)
Lorcán Price – Irish Barrister; Legal Counsel at ADF International
Dr. Eoin O’Dell – Associate Professor of Law at Trinity College Dublin
Graham Linehan – Irish Comedy Writer (Father Ted, IT Crowd, Black Books) and author of the memoir, Tough Crowd
Andy Ngo – Senior Editor at The Post Millenial; New York Times Bestselling author of Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy
Laura Perrins – journalist at Catholic Herald, Gript, and The Conservative Woman
Fr. Calvin Robinson – Host of Common Sense Crusade
Andrew Doyle – Host of Free Speech Nation (GB News)
Laoise de Brún – Irish Barrister; Founder & CEO of The Countess
Gerard Casey – Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at University College Dublin
James Orr – Associate Professor of Philosophy of Religion at University of Cambridge; Chair of Edmund Burke Foundation UK
Stella O’Malley – Psychotherapist; Author; Director of Genspect
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