Eavan Mulligan on navigating challenges and celebrating success at Nudge

This month, we are celebrating the amazing women who are an integral part of Crowe Ireland, which includes not only our staff but also the fantastic service providers we work with. We are shining a spotlight on their outstanding accomplishments and recognising their commitment to accelerating action in their daily lives.

In this interview, Eavan Mulligan, founder and Managing Partner of Nudge, shares her bold journey of launching the agency in July 2022. She reveals how she tackled challenges head-on and celebrated key milestones, and her unwavering passion for video content and forging strong client connections.

Tell us about yourself and your business.

I am the founder and Managing Partner of Nudge.

Nudge is a toddler in business years – founded in July 2022. We are a content marketing and production agency working with clients across various industries – professional services, energy, housing, sport, education and professional development, to name a few. We work with clients to put the right content in the right place to connect to their customers.

Our name comes from the Nudge economic theory. The theory suggests that placing small, practical stimuli or “nudges” helps us change behaviour or guides us towards an action. Good marketing in a nutshell.

Video content is my biggest grá. I have co-produced four documentaries since 2019, one of which won a Royal Television Society Ireland award.

What inspired you to start your business, and what challenges did you overcome in the early stages?

I was inspired by several things that aligned at the same time I think. From a young age, I always wanted to own my own business. I come from a family business background, and at some level I always knew I would work for myself one day. When I decided to start Nudge, I was MD of another agency and had a good sense of the market. I felt there was an opportunity. I then approached Paddy Murphy, my business partner, and when he was interested, I knew the time was right. Paddy and I had been talking about joining forces on another business a few years before, but it wasn’t the right time for me.

Like any new business owner, securing clients and revenue is always a worry, certainly in the early days. It was no different for me. I had left a good job, and the bills were always on my mind. Once we had our first client, who came to us before we were fully up and running (we were registered and legal, don’t worry), that fear eased a little. Until suddenly I realised we had to do work and do a great job of it to be successful. Worry then turned to panic for a while.

Were there any specific supports available to you as a female entrepreneur? Did you use them, and did you find them useful?

I believe there are several funds or grants available but I didn’t look into them at the time of establishment. I was obsessed with winning business. Then that turned into a sole focus on doing a great job for our clients, so things like that were put on the back burner.

I am hoping that Nudge won’t be an only child of mine, so I will for sure be looking into support in the future. Or for Nudge growth purposes.

There are also good female-in-business networks which I don’t tap into enough. I keep reading about allyship, and I would like to think that such networks provide that for female entrepreneurs and that we should be celebrating that type of support and those who give it. My door is certainly always open for any young women thinking about starting a business who might need a steer.

What is the best part about your job?

From a personal level, autonomy I think. Of course we are at the service of our clients, and we put that first. However, there is a freedom to owning your own business, which I love. I have been known to clear the do-to list by 1pm and sneak off to the IFI for some afternoon documentary viewing.

But overall, I am really proud of the work we do, and more importantly, the way we do it. With dedication, integrity, and developing a rapport with clients that maybe isn’t always typical. When we started out we said that we wanted our clients to be able to pick up the phone with any problem, commercial, operational, HR, and say “any advice here” or “it may not be you guys, but do you know anyone who can help”. We have that, and I think we have it through hard work, honesty, humility, and a lot of humour.

We have been lucky that we have for the most part been able to work with great people. Clients, contractors, and collaborators.

Despite the robot takeover, business is still about people for us.

What does the theme of International Women's Day 2025, "Accelerate Action", mean to you?

I hadn’t heard it. Either they need better marketing or I need to get out more. The latter I’m sure.

What jumped out at me instinctively thinking about it through a business and career lens was women's own action, which may be little controversial. The campaign talks about urgency and transformative change. I think women are more cautious about making big decisions in our careers – changing jobs, getting out of roles that don’t make us happy or fulfil us, or taking a stand.

Author and ex-CIA agent Evy Poumporous talks about kinesiology in life and career: “Make a choice, make a choice, make a choice. No matter how stuck you feel don’t sit still. Move, move, move.” That really resonates with me. It doesn’t always mean quit or move on but do make a choice, do something over doing nothing.

So “Accelerate Action” for me means everyone accelerating their own action. I can be guilty as anyone of not always doing that. And that is on me.

As a woman, how do you feel the media and marketing industry reflects gender equality? How can "Accelerate Action" be improved or made more visible in the media and marketing industry?

The marketing industry in Ireland has witnessed a good level of parity for quite some time, certainly in numbers. A lot of big brands have successful females heading up their marketing departments. A number of agencies also have females in senior roles. I think where we aren’t represented as much in agencies is in the highest creative roles, Creative Directors, and I am not sure why.

On the TV and film side of media/creative industries, we are seeing more and more female producers and directors. We still don’t have equality in numbers but there’s momentum.

From listening to their stories, what I love about these women is that a lot of them took action. They wrote, they created, and they got out there. It’s amazing and something that I need to give myself a talking-to about. They weren’t always given opportunities, so they created them. It would be great to see more female DOPs and crew in general emerging in the next swell of talent.

How can “Accelerate Action” be improved or made more visible in the industry… that’s a tough one and I am not sure I have an answer for it. But what I would say is, I think we need more women (myself included) to be brave. If we look to any women we admire, be it in our place of work or through history, one could argue they all have something in common – they didn’t stand still.