A PR tale

The largest PR campaign I’ve ever run.

There’s something a bit embarrassing I have to admit before I get into this.

For years, I’ve been that person in the room rolling my eyes at marketing short-termism. The one quietly judging CEOs and CFOs who every Monday morning open with “so, what are the numbers?”. You know the situation. I’ve written about it. Brand building takes time. Trust in B2B takes time. Not everything that counts can be measured. All of that.

And yet. Here I am, nine days after launching the biggest PR campaign we’ve ever run, refreshing Meltwater, GA and LinkedIn dashboards. Click.

So yes. Let’s talk about the numbers. And then let’s talk about why they actually matter.

Seven years in the making. Three days in the spotlight.

We decide to call the campaign “Europe’s First Microgrid“. Short, easy to remember, direct. Built by AVK, in partnership with the hyperscaler Pure Data Centres, at their campus just outside Dublin. Three on-site Energy Centres. 110 MW total capacity. A 20 MW battery energy storage system. Dual-fuel engines. Operating entirely off-grid, independent of the national electricity network.

For those not familiar with the world of energy for data centres, let me put this in context. What we have built is something unique, the first of its kind. In a world where data centres and AI infrastructure are among the fastest-growing sources of energy consumption, this is a data centre that doesn’t rely on the national grid. It generates its own power. Think of it as declaring energy independence. And it goes further: when there’s surplus, that power can flow back to the grid, to the community, heating local homes, schools, and buildings. No interruption. No dependency. Full control.

It took nearly seven years to build. We had three days to tell the world about it. The event ran 10-12 March 2026 in Dublin. Press. Analysts. A McKinsey keynote. Institution from the UK and Ireland. Site visits. The whole thing.

The bit nobody sees

Here’s what a campaign like this actually looks like from the inside.

I spent six months trying to convince the customer, the data centre operator. But the timing wasn’t right. Ireland was going through a moratorium on new data centre construction, and public opinion wasn’t particularly favourable either. When the situation relaxed, we found common ground: announcing the first energy-independent data centre in Europe was the right move. Then it took months of alignment before a single press release got drafted. Coordinating messaging between two companies with two comms teams, two PR agencies, and two sets of brand and narrative guidelines. Writing content for press, for LinkedIn, for internal teams, for the board, all simultaneously, all saying slightly different things to slightly different audiences.

The McKinsey keynote was a deliberate choice. We needed the credibility. When you’re making a claim like “Europe’s first data centre microgrid,” you want an independent market analyst in the room who can validate the value of the story. Philippe Diez of MicKinsey is a great keynote speaker and a critical third-party voice.

The collaboration between AVK’s and PureDC’s Dublin engineering on-site teams and the London marketing team made the content happen. Im addition, people on site helped with the logistics, ready to welcome forty people on a construction site and a data centre.

There are a lot of people behind a campaign that looks seamless from the outside.

What happened when we pushed the button

CNBC requested exclusivity. We agreed. They came to Dublin, filmed the data centre and the energy stations for two days, and streamed live on Wednesday on CNBC+. And the numbers did something I genuinely did not expect.

Hundred mentions and articles in less than 24 hours, running at 50+ per day against a normal average of one. A potential reach of 273 million (today, ten days later, nearly 360 million), at 45 times our normal daily rate. LinkedIn impressions at nearly double our average. Hundred new followers, growing at more than twice the usual pace. Web traffic up with 45% coming directly from search. One day later, RTÉ, the local irish broadcaster, did the same, going live from the data centre. Then we had the Financial Times. At that time, the story was out everywhere.

CNBC (live coverage and main story). RTÉ. Financial Times. Data Centre Magazine. Microgrid Knowledge. Modern Power Systems. Tech Capital. AI Magazine. Coverage across multiple markets and across languages.

And then Search.

Type “microgrid” into Google, ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini. Type “microgrid data centre.” Type “microgrid europe.” AVK and Pure DC are there. Number one or close. Owning the conversation. Not through paid search. Through PR and earned media.

That’s not a vanity metric. That’s the next prospect doing their research. That’s a journalist looking for context. That’s a policymaker who wants to understand what’s possible. Search dominance is not a number, it’s a position.

And here is the situation ten days after the announcement (from 10 to 20 March):

• Mentions & articles: 222 (22/day, typical average is 1/day). A 22x increase. This includes multiple articles on CNBC, FT, RTÉ, The Irish Times, The Business Post, etc.
• Potential reach: 390,970,292 views (32.7M/day, typical average is less than 900,000/day. A 36x increase.
• Google & AI search: ranking 1st for “microgrid” “europe microgrid” “data centre microgrid” and many others.
• LinkedIn impressions: running at 3x our daily average.
• LinkedIn followers: a 2.5x increase vs. our daily average.

What this tells me about branding

Here’s my reflection.

These results didn’t (just) come from the campaign. Clearly the role of PR and the relationships between the PR agency and the press was key. But they mostly came from many years of building something real and a powerful story. You don’t land CNBC and FT coverage because you wrote a good a press release. You land it because you have a great story, with real proof points, with independent validation, that you’ve been patiently building toward.

The KPIs matter. But they’re a consequence of brand and storytelling work, not a substitute for it.

And that’s the distinction I’ve been trying to articulate for years. Short-termism is focusing on the immediate numbers at the expense of the story. What we did here was building the story until the numbers became inevitable.

I’ll allow myself the refresh button. Just one more time.