About me

It is only eight years since he created Sherlock Communications alongside business partner Alasdair Townsend, operating initially out of a small office in São Paulo with no Portuguese language skills and only one other full-time employee. Since then, while Patrick's português remains básico, Sherlock Communications has grown into an agency that is anything but. As of 2023, it is now one of the leading PR companies in Latin America, with 152 consultants, a physical presence in every country in the region except Venezuela and Cuba, and a well-established reputation for helping international organisations operate multi-market campaigns across LATAM.

In the past 12 months he opened new offices in his adopted home city of Rio de Janeiro, as well as Lima, Peru . He has helped recruit some 47 new personnel, including senior hires in Chile and Mexico, to record a 45% increase in staff, and was instrumental in the creation of Broadminded, a new business division of the agency that provides enhanced research and better market insights. Such are the exceptional relationships Patrick and his agency have established, and the outstanding results and award-winning campaigns they consistently deliver, Sherlock Communications has gained more than 60 new clients in 2023, ranging from the European Union and the Government of Finland to mobile scooter providers and even a cartoon cat called Talking Tom. It is on track to close the financial year with a YOY revenue growth of just under 50%.

Patrick's vision for Sherlock Communications adopted a green hue in 2023 as he took increasingly close involvement in promoting sustainable finance initiatives in Latin America, largely through the agency's support of international financial services clients such as Janus Henderson Investors, AXA Investment Managers, and Finance in Motion. As they issue loans to Latin American financial institutions to support sustainability initiatives, Patrick and the agency have promoted leading eco-funds, focusing on priority areas for loans: Forestry to fishing, farming to eco-tourism. Acknowledging the impact of green finance can spread far wider than the world of banking, and taking a comms lead on funding and sustainability as a whole, Patrick last year helped produce and promote not only Sherlock's own research report on the issue, Green Finance - A Guide to Sustainable Finance in Latin America, but supported a wide range of clients in the sustainability sector, including the Carbon Trust, Ellen MacArthur Foundation, and sustainable energy generators such as Ecoflow, Aggreko, and BorgWarner. He continued to drive the narrative in the Latin American media, as well as in international press through his regular leadership columns on the Forbes Agency Council website.

Patrick has always led the push for Sherlock Communications to publish its own research studies and the past 12 months saw the agency hit a milestone of 10,000 downloads for its various thought-leadership ebooks, including the fourth edition of its annual Blockchain Report - Latin America, cementing the agency's — and Patrick's — role as an expert in the field. It has become the go-to resource for people interested in the LATAM ecosystem, with a Google search for "Blockchain Latin America" producing Sherlock's ebook ahead of media outlets such as Bloomberg and Forbes. Patrick also recruited a specialist for Sherlock who audits and weeds out potentially 'dodgy' clients - leading to him turning down hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of fee work in the past 12 months. Sherlock also remains the only agency in LATAM to accept payment in crypto.

Tangible Results: In 2023, Sherlock generated tens of thousands of pieces of media coverage while Patrick led on and helped manage events and activations with an incredibly diverse range of creators and ambassadors, ranging from micro influencers to some of Latin America's largest sports and media personalities.

- Patrick continues to encourage a results-focused culture built on trust, teamwork, and taking responsibility. The result is a dynamic environment that promotes innovation while valuing flexibility and lifelong learning. It provides staff unrestricted leave, opportunities to work from home, and a monthly, agency-wide, wellbeing payment that the team can spend on a physical or mental health service of their choice. Patrick is just one of the 80% of the team that participate in its free foreign-language programme, run as part of a pro-bono partnership with Abraço Cultural, an NGO that helps refugees settle in Brazil by providing employment as language teachers.

Work
Articles
Achievements
Activity

Patrick's achievements

Site Achievements

Contributor:
Patrick has been a Contributor since 25th November 2015.

Invitex3 Contributor

Creativepool Annual

Listing of award wins in Creativepool's awards

Annual 2024

Top 100 Creative Leaders

Judging

Patrick O'Neill has sat on the Creativepool Annual jury.

Annual 2024 Judge PR Agency of the Year

OOPS - LOOKS LIKE YOU HAVE JAVASCRIPT OFF. THIS SITE WON'T WORK WITHOUT IT.
NEED HELP IN TURNING IT ON? YOU CAN FIND INSTRUCTIONS HERE FOR YOUR BROWSER.