Advertising campaign to entice Americans to Ireland

Tourism Ireland is spending $1.7 million on a five-week TV campaign in the American market which is expected to reach more than 70 million people. The ads – "Fill Your Heart With Ireland" – will air on major networks, including NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox, in Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Minneapolis and Philadelphia. They will run for two weeks over the Thanksgiving period and will be back on air from December 9th until the end of the year, timed to coincide with the Christmas period.

For the final week of the campaign, the ads will also air in Seattle, San Francisco and New York; the week between Christmas and new year is a key holiday-planning period for Americans. The ads will air around popular entertainment programmes with big audiences, such as the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, various New Year’s Eve countdown shows, as well as Saturday Night Live, Access Hollywood, Live with Kelly and Ryan and Entertainment Tonight .

Priority market

It is believed there will also be digital advertising, which is expected to generate 4.3 million impressions. Tourism Ireland has prioritised North America as a market which offers a strong return on investment, in terms of holiday visitors and expenditure.

Alison Metcalfe, Tourism Ireland’s head of North America, said: “Our five-week TV campaign gets under way this week, targeting US travellers who’re now considering where to go for their 2020 holiday. We’re confident that our extensive programme of high impact campaigns and promotions, targeting people with the greatest potential to travel to Ireland, will continue to grow US visitor numbers to the island of Ireland.”

The spend on this campaign in the United States comes from the additional funding allocated to Tourism Ireland in Budget 2020, in response to the Brexit challenge for Irish tourism. End-of-year kick-start promotional campaigns will also be rolled out in Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and the Nordic countries.