Southern Advertising celebrates its 52st year in business this year, making it one of the longest established agencies in Ireland, as well as cementing its position as the most prominent ad agency outside of Dublin.

The Munster Agency initially started life as O’Kennedy-Brindley (Cork) Ltd back in 1955, with offices located on Patrick St, Cork. At the time the agency was the Cork office of O’Kennedy-Brindley Dublin, but when Saatchi & Saatchi London bought OKB. Dublin in 1979, it was the opportunity for the current directors to take over the local business, through an amicable buy out, a move which paved the way for Southern Advertising to become the agency it is today.

Mallow native Manus O’Callaghan played a pivotal role in the companies transformation. Having joined the agency in 1968 he became Director/General Manager in 1978, and a year later he led the buy out along with some colleagues. He soon went on to open a Limerick office and established a client base in Dublin following these earlier successes. 

“Our Agency philosophy is based on a strong belief in creativity and an accountability which isolates the effect of advertising on sales and attitudes” says O’Callaghan. “We encourage our clients to view us as a natural extension of their marketing and sales operations and we like to work very closely with them. Our business is always about information and influencing our clients target audiences, so we are very much an industry of creative and marketing people with ideas that sell.”

Southern Advertising currently has a team of 30 professionals at its Cork and Limerick offices turning out advertising in all media, print design, branding and corporate identity voluntary work. “Pat Lemasney at Southern leads the team that deals with advertising in newspapers, magazines, radio, TV, cinema and outdoor. Frank Dowling leads the creative team that deals with print design and corporate identity. The resilience of newspapers as the preferred advertising medium for many advertisers is amazing despite the new media coming through all the time. People trust their local paper and like local news, which must be good news for Cork Independent.”