LAURA SLATTERY
The Irish Times
7 January 2012

WITH THE slo­gan “Jump into Ire­land” and a sound­track cour­tesy of Snow Pa­trol, Tourism Ire­land launches its 2012 over­seas ad­ver­tis­ing cam­paign on Mon­day when a se­ries of tele­vi­sion ad­ver­tise­ments will de­but in the sub­dued but crit­i­cal Bri­tish mar­ket.

The three 30-sec­ond ads will also air in the French and Ger­man mar­kets, while a 60-sec­ond spot is des­tined for Bri­tish cin­e­mas later this month.

For Mark Henry, di­rec­tor of cen­tral mar­ket­ing at the all-is­land body, the ad­ver­tise­ments are the prod­uct of al­most a year of con­sumer re­search, agency pitches and con­sumer test­ing that cul­mi­nated in the film­ing of the cam­paign in 12 lo­ca­tions across Ire­land in Oc­to­ber.

Tourism Ire­land’s re­search sug­gests “brand Ire­land” hasn’t been dam­aged by neg­a­tive head­lines from the EU-IMF bailout, but con­vert­ing in­ter­est in vis­it­ing Ire­land into ac­tual tourist num­bers is ham­pered by a lack of time-spe­cific draws.

“The in­ter­est in Ire­land over­seas is not about a lot of spe­cific things, like the Eif­fel Tower in Paris or the Statue of Lib­erty in New York. It’s about green land­scapes, it’s old world – not in a bad way, but it’s not a par­tic­u­larly vi­brant im­age that says ‘visit now’,” says Henry.

“It’s green and it’s go­ing to still be green in 10 years.”

The Bri­tish can keep its do­mes­tic tourism busi­ness up by point­ing to sim­i­lar “old world” land­scapes in Scot­land, Wales and else­where, he points out. “We need stronger com­pet­i­tive dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion, a new nar­ra­tive for Ire­land.

“Peo­ple want to feel a sense of won­der, they want some­thing stim­u­lat­ing and im­me­di­ate. ‘Joy­ful im­mer­sion’, that’s the jar­gon. At the same time, it has to be gen­uine, it can’t be false.”

The three ads were cre­ated by Publi­cis UK and shot by the award-win­ning mu­sic video and com­mer­cial di­rec­tor Daniel Wolfe. Direc­tor of pho­tog­ra­phy on the shoot was the Ir­ish cin­e­matog­ra­pher Rob­bie Ryan, re­cently lauded for his work on An­drea Arnold’s film Wuther­ing Heights.

A Snow Pa­trol al­bum track with the some­what awk­ward ti­tle of Ber­lin plays un­der­neath the voiceover. “We wanted to steer away from tra­di­tional mu­sic,” says Henry. “That’s been done al­ready.”

One of the three ad­ver­tise­ments fo­cuses on Con­nemara, fea­tur­ing the in­side of an Ir­ish pub and the line “meet some of the lo­cals ... eat some of the lo­cals if you want”, as the cam­era cuts to a close-up of the lo­cal crus­taceans.

“Real” Con­nemara fish­er­men and pub-dwellers, rather than ac­tors, were used while, to com­ply with var­i­ous ad­ver­tis­ing reg­u­la­tions, par­tic­u­larly those in France, there is no ac­tual al­co­hol in the pub scene. “There’s a few glasses, but no al­co­hol.”

Pro­fes­sional cy­clists, styled in “dad” clothes, were em­ployed for the sec­ond spot, which show­cases ac­tiv­ity hol­i­days in Kerry, while the third ad­ver­tise­ment fo­cuses on North­ern Ire­land, which is set to have a big year for tourism pro­mo­tion in light of the cen­te­nary of the Ti­tanic’s sink­ing.

The an­niver­sary is al­ready gen­er­at­ing nu­mer­ous op­por­tu­ni­ties for vis­i­tor-lur­ing events, me­dia spin-offs and mar­ket­ing hooks. Yes­ter­day, for ex­am­ple, Ti­tanic Belfast, the ship­build­ing ex­hi­bi­tion due to open in March, launched an “au­di­tion-style” re­cruit­ment drive – dubbed “the T-fac­tor” – to find 70 front­line em­ploy­ees.

As a re­sult, the North­ern Ire­land Tourist Board is in­creas­ing its con­tri­bu­tion to Tourism Ire­land’s to­tal mar­ket­ing bud­get, which is ex­pected to come in a lit­tle shy of last year’s €45 mil­lion.

Within this, the ad­ver­tis­ing spend – tele­vi­sion, ra­dio, print and on­line – will be ap­prox­i­mately €15 mil­lion, ac­cord­ing to Henry. That’s not enough, for ex­am­ple, to pay for tele­vi­sion ad­ver­tis­ing in the US but it’s still enough to put to­gether a cam­paign that’s es­ti­mated to reach an au­di­ence of 200 mil­lion.

“We’re fairly con­fi­dent the cam­paign will help vis­i­tor num­bers turn around. In­deed, they have al­ready turned around,” says Henry.

Early es­ti­mates sug­gest 7.4 mil­lion peo­ple vis­ited Ire­land last year, up 7 per cent from 6.9 mil­lion in 2010 and ahead of Tourism Ire­land’s ex­pec­ta­tions. In 2012, it has a tar­get of 7.8 mil­lion, or a fur­ther 5.5 per cent in­crease.

The Jump into Ire­land cam­paign is Tourism Ire­land’s first in three years and is des­tined to evolve over the next three years to fea­ture Derry – set to be the UK’S City of Cul­ture in 2013 – and pop­u­lar land­scapes such as the Cliffs of Mo­her. Shoot­ing re­sumes in April.

While the cam­paign has scored bet­ter in “like­abil­ity” tests than its pre­de­ces­sor, Go Where Ire­land Takes You, fu­ture eco­nomic con­di­tions in Ire­land’s main tourist mar­kets re­main the big un­known that could put the ki­bosh on all the thor­oughly re­searched mar­ket­ing mes­sages.

“Although we grew ahead of the global tourism mar­ket last year, short week­end breaks from the UK are down. Our big­gest chal­lenge is our big­gest mar­ket – Bri­tain.”