The Irish people have refined the viral marketing to perfection. In 2011, it started with a viral game ‘the Ireland Town game“.At the time of the London Olympics people were invited to Ireland with the viral video”Escape the Madness“. Culmination of the campaigns was reached last year at the 100th anniversary of the Titanic’s proceeding to the sea. The core of the storywere viral filmson the history of Titanic on the website www.the-titanic.com.
Result was over a million visitors to the website and exceptional interest in the museum in Belfast, which was visited by over half a million visitors last year.
The story was effectively integrated into the marketing campaign and the result was over a million visitors to the website. All this has brought tangible results. Facebook fan base from 2010 until today has risen to 445,000 fans, which ranks it among the top five most successful tourist destinations on Facebook.
Mark Henry*, the father and the head of campaigns, is coming to the Travel Zoom 2013. At the moment, it would be hard to find a better specialist for destination viral marketing, which is successfully combined with traditional marketing tools. Last year’s campaign ‘Jump into Ireland’ by the agency Publicis included TV, radio and online advertisements and it took place at the same time on 22 markets with reach of some 200 million potential visitors to Ireland (musically the campaign was supported bySnow Patrol).
Last year they have also received several awards. DMA(Direct Marketing Association) have awarded them with a gold medal for the mystery tour of a British pair, who was followed on the trip via Twitter and Facebook.
I can hardly wait to see Mark live in Bled, where he will present us with the full story of The Gatheringthis year.
3rd Travel Zoom, International Conference on Strategic and Creative Marketing in Tourism, will be held from 26 to 27 March 2013, in Bled, Slovenia. For more information visit www.travel-zoom.si
* Tourism Ireland’s director of central Marketing.
