Sales Promotion
Updated 23 May 2026 · 13 min read
The brief is signed off. The mechanic is agreed. The campaign goes live in eight weeks. Then the agency calls to say they need three more weeks to set up the platform, that the terms and conditions have not been reviewed by a solicitor, and that prize fulfilment will be handled by a third party they have not worked with before.
If you have been in brand management for any length of time in Ireland, that scenario is not unfamiliar. Choosing the wrong promotions agency does not just delay a campaign. It creates legal exposure, damages retailer relationships, and produces consumer complaints that trail a brand for longer than the campaign itself ran. Choosing the right one means your campaign launches on time, with a mechanic that works, prizes that reach real winners, and data that gives you something to act on.
This guide is for senior brand managers and trade marketing leads at FMCG companies who are about to appoint an agency for a promotional campaign in Ireland. It is not a ranking of every agency in the market. It is a framework for making the right call before you send the brief.
Start with the scale of the challenge. According to Kantar Worldpanel data from 2025, around 20% of all Irish grocery value sales were bought through a promotional line. In a market where Dunnes Stores, Tesco, SuperValu, Lidl, and Aldi are each competing at scale, a promotion that falls short is not a minor misstep. It is a missed window.
An FMCG promotions agency is not a creative agency with a promotions brief pinned to its board. A creative agency focuses on brand identity and advertising output. A promotions agency delivers the mechanic, the campaign platform, the legal compliance framework, the prize fulfilment, and the post-campaign data. These are fundamentally different disciplines. When you take a receipt-upload promotion or a prize draw to a creative shop, you will spend the first four weeks waiting for them to locate a technology partner and the last four weeks chasing winners who have not received their prizes. The agencies that do this well keep both disciplines in house. Knowing the difference before you brief is what separates a smooth campaign from a costly recovery. Knowing how to test for it is the next step.
Evaluating agencies on presentation quality alone tells you very little about what happens when your campaign is live. Five specific capabilities separate the agencies worth appointing from the ones that will cost you time and budget to disentangle from.
Mechanic depth. The agency should have an active portfolio across at least four mechanic types: on-pack unique codes, receipt upload, prize draw, instant win, and collect-and-redeem. An agency built around one or two mechanics will default to those regardless of whether they suit your brief.
In-house technology. Every time a third-party tech partner is involved, you add latency and a new point of failure. Ask who builds and hosts the campaign platform, and who is responsible when it goes down on the evening your television ad runs.
Irish compliance knowledge. The Gaming and Lotteries (Amendment) Act 2019, which came into force on 1 December 2020, means product-linked prize draws are exempt from permit requirements only when the total prize value is €2,500 or less. Above that threshold, a lottery permit or licence is required with applications submitted at least 60 days before launch. Campaigns must also comply with the ASAI Code for promotional marketing, which requires independent judging for subjective competitions, publication of winners' names and counties, and prize delivery within six weeks of the promotion closing. An agency that does not know these rules will produce a compliance incident.
Fulfilment capability. Ask who ships the prizes and what their track record is. Physical prize fulfilment for high-value or personalised rewards requires logistics capability many agencies do not have and will not say so until it matters.
Post-campaign data. A well-run promotion returns consumer data you can use. Ask what format the data arrives in, what fields are captured, and what your rights are over the dataset. An agency that cannot answer this clearly has probably never been asked.
These five areas give you the starting point for any shortlist. The next step is making sure you give agencies on that list the information they need to respond properly.
A vague brief produces inaccurate quotes. Inaccurate quotes produce scope creep. Scope creep produces difficult conversations at the point when the campaign is already live and you have no leverage.
Before you send a brief, seven things should be confirmed in writing: the campaign objective (trial, repeat purchase, data capture, basket uplift, or a mix); the mechanic or the two or three options you are open to; the retail estate in scope and whether each retailer has approved the mechanic; the launch, closing, and fulfilment deadline; the prize structure and whether cost is fixed or redemption-linked; the step-by-step consumer journey; and the data format you need back at the end.
Any item left vague will be filled in by each agency with their most optimistic assumption. The quote with the lowest number will reflect the most generous assumptions on cost, timeline, and scope. That is not the agency you want running your campaign. Once the brief is right, what you are shown in response tells you the next part of the story.
Case studies are the primary evidence an agency has of its own capability, and most agencies curate them carefully to avoid showing what went wrong. Here is what to look for in the work you are shown.
Case studies without metrics are decorative. If an agency cannot tell you the participation rate, the redemption rate, or the sales uplift from a campaign they are showing you, either the campaign underperformed or the data was never captured. Either is a problem.
Generic sector references substitute for real capability. "We have FMCG experience" is not the same as a mechanic-level track record. Ask directly: have you run a receipt-upload promotion in Ireland? Have you run a prize draw under the Gaming and Lotteries Act? If the answer is no, and your brief requires it, that agency is the wrong choice.
Campaigns without compliance documentation are a warning sign. Any agency that has run a promotion in Ireland should be able to show you the terms and conditions they used and how they handled edge cases: duplicate entries, disqualified entrants, unclaimed prizes. If they cannot, they have either not done it themselves or do not know who did. The pitch gives you one more opportunity to test what the credentials do not show.
Most pitches are won on presentation quality, not on the actual ability to deliver. The questions that expose the gap between the two are the ones with no slide ready to answer them.
Ask: "What was the last campaign you ran that did not meet its objective, and what was the reason?" An agency that answers this clearly is either genuinely honest or well-prepared. An agency that responds with a polished non-answer has no intention of telling you.
Ask: "If our participation rate is twice the forecast in week one, what happens to cost and to fulfilment?" This tells you whether the agency understands variable-cost exposure. If they do not have a clear answer, they have not run enough campaigns with open-ended liability.
Ask: "Who will be working on this account day to day, and can we meet them now?" Pitch teams and delivery teams are often different people. If the person presenting will not be the person delivering, find that out before the contract is signed.
Ask: "Can you show me a post-campaign data report from a client in our category, with commercial details redacted?" A real report tells you more than any presentation about how an agency thinks about measurement.
Those four questions tell you more about readiness than any set of slides. Take them into the pricing conversation.
Promotional campaign pricing has four components: platform and technology, prize fulfilment, creative production, and management fees. The mistakes brands make are almost always in the fulfilment and management fee components, where the assumptions built into a quote are hardest to spot.
Fixed-fee pricing protects your budget when redemption rates exceed forecast. Variable or redemption-based pricing is more common in receipt-upload or cashback campaigns, where the cost is tied to actual participation volume. Both models are legitimate. Applying the wrong one to the wrong mechanic is the mistake.
Before you sign anything, ask about retailer integration fees (some platforms charge separately per retailer), GDPR-compliant data storage and deletion schedules, and winner verification costs for high-value prizes. Ask for a line-by-line cost breakdown. Any agency reluctant to provide one has costs they would prefer you not see until the invoice arrives. With the commercial model understood, it helps to see what that investment looks like when the brief is well-matched to the agency.
The best promotions connect a product truth to something consumers genuinely want. Two campaigns from our own portfolio at Brandfire illustrate what that looks like in practice.
For Glanbia Performance Nutrition's BSN brand, the campaign used a unique code printed on each product's neck tag. Consumers entered the code on a mobile-responsive website and received a branded Conor McGregor/BSN T-shirt. The mechanic matched the brand's ambassador relationship directly to the purchase moment, gave consumers a reward connected to the product, and returned data on Glanbia's most engaged purchasers across Ireland and the UK.
For Glenisk, a partnership with Disney Pixar's "Elemental" put movie-themed pack artwork in front of families at grocery fixtures. The grand prize was an all-expenses-paid family trip to New York City. The mechanic worked because the brand and the film shared a clear audience, the pack communicated the call to action simply, and the prize was aspirational without creating unpredictable fulfilment exposure.
Both campaigns share the same foundations: a mechanic matched to the brand, a prize structure feasible to deliver, and a consumer journey simple enough to follow from a supermarket aisle. That is the baseline for what good looks like. Before you commit to a long relationship with any agency, structure a test that lets you see whether they deliver it.
Committing to a long-term partnership before you have seen an agency deliver is a significant risk. Structure your first engagement as a single, bounded campaign with a defined scope, a fixed timeline, and agreed success metrics. Before the campaign launches, confirm in writing what success means: participation rate, data quality, fulfilment time, and budget adherence.
After the campaign closes, run a formal debrief. What went to plan, what did not, and what would the agency change? An agency that raises problems before you do is a partner. One that waits to be prompted is a supplier. The agencies worth keeping are harder on themselves in a debrief than you are. To make the initial selection process more objective, a structured scorecard helps.
Before finalising your shortlist, score each agency against the following criteria using a three-point scale: capable, partial, or not evidenced.
Any agency scoring "not evidenced" on more than two criteria is not ready to run an FMCG promotional campaign in Ireland. Use the same scorecard after a trial engagement to compare what you expected against what you got. The gaps tell you exactly what to address before committing further.
Choosing a promotions agency rewards care, not speed. The briefing process, the credentials review, the pitch questions, and the trial engagement structure all exist to reduce the chance of appointing a partner who performs well in the meeting room and poorly in delivery. In a grocery market where roughly one in five purchases is influenced by a promotion, the right agency gives you a real competitive advantage. The wrong one gives you a difficult conversation with your sales director and a campaign you would rather not put on the highlights reel.
We work with FMCG brands across Ireland on sales promotions from brief through to post-campaign data. If you are starting your evaluation and want to understand how we approach a promotional brief, get in touch through our contact page and we will set aside time to talk through your campaign.
Do I need a legal permit to run a prize draw linked to a product purchase in Ireland?
It depends on the total prize value. Under the Gaming and Lotteries (Amendment) Act 2019, which came into force on 1 December 2020, product-linked prize draws are exempt from permit and licence requirements when the total prize value is €2,500 or less. Above that threshold you need either a lottery permit (up to €5,000) or a District Court licence (up to €30,000), with applications submitted at least 60 days before launch. An agency that does not know these thresholds should not be running prize promotions in Ireland.
What is the difference between an on-pack code promotion and a receipt upload promotion?
An on-pack code promotion prints a unique code on the product packaging. The consumer enters it on a website or app to claim a reward or enter a draw. A receipt upload promotion asks the consumer to buy a qualifying product at any retailer and upload a photo of their receipt. Receipt upload suits multi-retailer campaigns where you cannot control the pack surface. On-pack codes suit single-retailer exclusivity or campaigns that tie the reward directly to a specific variant.
How long does it take to set up a promotional campaign platform in Ireland?
A straightforward prize draw with an established platform typically takes four to eight weeks from signed brief to live. Receipt upload campaigns with AI receipt validation generally take six to ten weeks depending on retailer integration requirements. Quotes significantly shorter than these ranges should be questioned before you accept them.
What data should I expect to receive after a promotional campaign?
At minimum: total entry volume, daily participation rates, entry source breakdown if multiple routes were used, demographic data (age, location, marketing consent status), and winner records with verification details. You should also receive GDPR-compliant confirmation of storage duration and the deletion schedule. Confirm all of this before the campaign launches.
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