With the eyes of the world focused on Ireland on St Patrick’s Day this week, IDA Ireland rolled out a global campaign to woo foreign direct investors to these shores.
Created by BBDO Dublin in collaboration with the media agency Zenith, part of Core, the campaign coincided with top level meetings held by senior Irish Government members and IDA CEO Martin Shanahan with potential FDI candidates as the country looks to build on its strong track record in securing inward investment.
The new campaign ran across digital, print and broadcast platforms and aimed to capitalise on the goodwill towards Ireland that exists across the globe on March 17th. Alongside the digital-first campaign, it also included TV-advertising on Bloomberg and CNBC throughout the week as well as full page ads in the Wall Street Journal, the Australian Financial Review, The Economic Times in India, The Economist, The Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune and The Scranton Times-Tribune.
In what is a media first, The Financial Times also published a special IDA wraparound in which plantable seeds were embedded on the cover.
“We were able to bring innovation to bear by embedding seeds into the Financial Times cover wrap, which when planted will grow into flowers. We love this idea as it speaks to IDA Ireland’s strategy regarding transformation, sustainability and green recovery. Ultimately the IDA are here to attract business to invest in Ireland, to effectively lay down roots. This idea perfectly captures this and we’re delighted to be first to do this with The Financial Times,” says Declan Kelly, deputy managing director of Zenith.
According to Neal Davies, CEO, BBDO Dublin: “ St Patrick’s Day is a global day of celebration when Ireland is everywhere. That gave us the perfect opportunity to engage our global investor audience with a message that celebrates Ireland’s hugely successful business story and invites them to be part of that story, too.”
“Saint Patrick’s Day is the most important day of the year for IDA Ireland – the whole world thinks of us – and we’ll be encouraging them to do business here in our new campaign. The market for foreign investment is fiercely competitive, so in order to maintain our pipeline, we need to ensure that IDA’s brand is seen by our target audience in the premier business media organisations across the world. Over Saint Patrick’s week, our investor audience will see Ireland in TV ads, they will read about doing business in Ireland in their papers and they will see our digital takeovers when they open their favourite news provider,” adds Kevin Sammon, director of global communications and marketing IDA Ireland.
