Brussels Economic

Ireland, a country of fantastic sceneries

Games of Thrones props – including dragon eggs and three-eyed ravens – have been appearing in surprising locations around Belfast and Northern Ireland over the past few weeks, as part of a new Tourism Ireland campaign created in partnership with HBO.

Tourism Ireland is once again joining forces with HBO and its smash hit TV series Game of Thrones, to promote Northern Ireland around the world in 2015. The campaign will run for 14 weeks and will build on the hugely successful campaign of 2014 – which generated almost one million clicks, comments and shares and reached about 100 million fans across the world. It aims to once again leverage the incredible success of the HBO brand and the huge global popularity of Game of Thrones and its strong associations with Northern Ireland – the physical home of the production for the series and where much of the filming takes place.

As well as extensive advertising on the two social media sites, Tourism Ireland will also target its own active fanbase – posting and tweeting to its almost 3 million Facebook fans and 226,000 followers on Twitter globally. The ads will direct fans to a specially-created section on Tourism Ireland’s international website, Ireland.com.

Niall Gibbons, CEO of Tourism Ireland, said: “We are delighted to continue our partnership with HBO in 2015, to highlight Northern Ireland and its beautiful landscape – through the exciting events of Game of Thrones – on the global stage. We aim to build on the success of last year’s campaign, reaching out to the show’s global fanbase and demonstrate the spectacular scenery of Northern Ireland. Game of Thrones fans worldwide will see these ads, spiking their curiosity about the landscapes and location featured in the series and inspiring them to come and explore them for themselves.”

A second phase of the campaign will be rolled out by Tourism Ireland in the coming weeks – with even more surprises in store.