Urban Brand Creative Shortlisted Twice at the 2026 Digital Media Awards
For a boutique, founder-led strategic growth partner that is small by design, being shortlisted alongside major national brands and some of Ireland’s largest agencies is meaningful validation of the standard of work UBC is delivering.
Not because awards are the objective, but because independent recognition provides another useful test of the work: put it in front of an external judging panel, alongside strong competition, and see how it stands up.
So far, The Coombe project continues to do exactly that.
1. Another independent vote of confidence
This is the second major awards programme to recognise Urban Brand Creative’s work for The Coombe in 2026.
Earlier this year, the project won Most Trusted Website of the Year and the overall National Website of the Year at the Digital Business Ireland National Digital Awards.
Now, the Digital Media Awards shortlist adds another layer of independent industry recognition.
For Urban Brand Creative, that matters. Client testimonials and long-term relationships will always carry enormous weight, but external judging adds something different: the opportunity for the work to be assessed outside the client-agency relationship and against some of the strongest work being produced across the industry.
2. Small agency. Big standards.
Urban Brand Creative has always believed that the size of the team should not determine the ambition of the brief or the standard of the outcome.
The agency model is deliberately compact and senior-led. The focus is on staying close to the strategy, close to the client and close to the work itself.
That means competing in environments where the organisations, brands and agencies involved can be substantially larger than UBC.
And that is fine.
The objective has never been to become the biggest agency in the room. It is to produce work capable of belonging in that room.
Being shortlisted alongside established industry leaders is useful validation that this approach can work.
3. The work has to earn the recognition
The Coombe project was not simply a visual redesign.
Urban Brand Creative worked with the hospital on a major digital transformation designed around a complex national institution, a broad range of audiences and a particularly high requirement for trust, accessibility and ease of use.
The finished platform needed to help people navigate healthcare information clearly, often at important or stressful moments in their lives. That meant thinking beyond aesthetics and treating the website as serious digital infrastructure.
The response from The Coombe has been equally strong. Secretary & General Manager Patrick Donohue has publicly praised the collaboration with Urban Brand Creative and the quality of the finished platform, describing the project as one The Coombe is proud of and highlighting the national recognition it has since received.
That client validation remains the most important part of the story.
4. Recognition from more than one direction
Good work should ideally withstand more than one test.
In this case, the project has now been validated through the experience of the client, through the people using the platform, and through separate independent awards programmes.
That combination matters more to Urban Brand Creative than any single trophy.
The agency has spent the last decade building its reputation through delivery, client relationships, 100+ completed projects and 100+ five-star reviews. Independent industry recognition now adds another layer to that proof.
It also reinforces the direction Urban Brand Creative has been moving towards for some time: larger briefs, more complex digital challenges, national institutions and organisations where the quality of the work has real consequences.
5. Proud to be in the mix
There are no assumptions about what happens next.
The Digital Media Awards recognise some exceptional work, and being on the shortlist alongside that calibre of competition is already something worth marking.
For Urban Brand Creative, the significance is straightforward: keep doing the work, keep raising the standard, and keep putting it up against the best.
The results will take care of themselves.
For now, UBC is proud to see The Coombe recognised again — and grateful to the team at the hospital whose ambition, trust and collaboration made the project possible.
Explore the full Coombe Hospital case study to see the strategy, digital transformation and work behind the recognition.
For organisations carrying a complex, high-trust digital brief, talk to Urban Brand Creative about Full Digital Growth Solutions or book a Clarity Call with Keith Bradshaw.
About Urban Brand Creative
Urban Brand Creative is a Dublin-based, founder-led strategic growth partner. Over the last decade, the agency has increasingly focused on more ambitious digital work for enterprise-level clients, national institutions, not-for-profits, and high-impact organisations where trust, complexity, and execution all matter.
This recognition reflects that direction clearly.
Teach Ruadh Foundation
This project was also partially supported through the Teach Ruadh Foundation, established by UBC founder Keith Bradshaw and his partner Sinéad in memory of their son Ruadhán to support not-for-profits and high-impact organisations.
Read the full case study
The awards are one signal. The strongest proof is still the work itself.
Read the full Coombe case study to see how the platform was structured, what challenges it solved, and what it demonstrates about delivering digital infrastructure in a high-trust institutional environment.
If this is your mandate, we should talk
If your organisation is carrying a digital brief where trust, complexity, and scale all sit inside the same mandate, we should talk.
Urban Brand Creative works with organisations that need more than a polished front end. We help build the kind of strategic digital infrastructure serious institutions can rely on.
