Ireland Means Business

We recently worked with Tourism Ireland’s business tourism division to promote the meetings, incentives, conferences and events market in Ireland.

Tourism Ireland had set up an offers site, irelandmeansbusiness.com as part of it’s business tourism website irelandinspires.co.uk, which provides deals for corporate events buyers and meeting planners looking to visit Ireland. They had yet to find an effective way to market the website.

We worked with Tourism Ireland to develop an Ireland Means Business blog at blog.irelandmeansbusiness.com to provide quality content that would encourage people to visit the site and engage in conversation about Ireland’s business tourism product.

In order to do this we created a branded Ireland Means Business Twitter (@Ireland_MICE), Facebook Page, LinkedIn group and YouTube channel.

We started blogging straight away, covering topics as diverse as Guinness’ 250th Anniversary to sustainability in corporate events in Ireland. We also went to Dublin to interview some of the most influential individuals in the industry in order to create a series of six videos, which were subsequently uploaded to youtube.com/IrelandMeansBusiness. We released these videos on a weekly basis via the blog, linking from all the other social media outlets.

We also built our Twitter follower base to over 565 by engaging with other Twitter users interested in the subjects of events and business travel, often using the hashtag #eventprofs.

The traffic to the blog increased by 262% in our first month of work, and a further 404% in the subsequent month. The videos have currently accrued a total of 691 views.

Ireland Means Business, part one:

Ireland Means Business, part two:

Dermod Dwyer, Chairman, Convention Centre Dublin:

Cailin Keaney, Sales and Marketing Manager, Aviva Stadium:

The Ocean Hotel – new Butlins spa hotel is the talk of Twitter

It’s always great to have a client be the story of the moment, and today our client is just that.

Bourne Leisure, the company that owns Butlins (as well as Warner Leisure Hotels and Haven), employs us for their trade PR. So yesterday McCluskeyites Manty and Vanessa headed down to Bognor with a number of travel trade press for the opening of the Ocean Hotel – the new Butlins spa hotel. Yes, Butlins spa hotel.

The family hotel is the product of a £20 million investment, and though it follows in the Butlins vein of offering good value, the design led contemporary look is not what is normally associated with Butlins, and the spa is an entirely new proposition altogether. A pleasantly surprised Pippa Jacks (TTG Deputy Features Editor) said in her review that “Butlins has managed to pull off a fun new spa concept like nothing I’d seen before.” Praise indeed!

In an age when news is instantly spread across the web, it’s great to be able to capitalise on being the story of the moment. Fortunately Pippa and her colleagues at TTG are keen Twitterers, so we’ve seen the story spread across the Twittersphere already – all superb added exposure for a great positive story.

Social media can give media FAM trips added value

We helped organise a trip for TTG writer Paul Revel to Budapest at the weekend. Knowing Paul is a keen blogger and Twitterer, before he set off we asked him whether he would be Tweeting whilst away, and whether he would be using any of the trip for blog material.

Apparently he does plan to, and thanks to Twitter we already know he enjoyed Budapest, as do all his followers.

The travel trade media are all flocking to blogs and twitter, understanding it as another method to communicate to their audience (as well as building their own personal brand as journalists no doubt!). Just as the media are quickly learning they have to be involved in new media, so do the travel industry organisations these journalists are covering.

A journalist’s Twitter or blog is not only another way to communicate with them, but also can offer added PR value.

UPDATE: Paul has now posted about business travel to Budapest on his blog here. Thanks Paul!

Marilyn Monroe Facebook Event

It’s not too late to sign up on Facebook for the hottest exhibition of the year – the world’s biggest collection of genuine Marilyn Monroe memorabilia to be shown in one exhibition – in Jersey this year. You can register your attendance on Jersey’s Facebook page here.

The exhibition, to be held at the Jersey Museum from 25 March 2009, combines iconic costumes with accessories, jewellery, keepsakes and trinkets owned by Marilyn.

The Jersey Museum is open daily from 10am -4pm. The exhibition is expected to run until the end of December 2009.

New Mexico’s Facebook Frenzy

Way back in July 2008, we launched our very first client Facebook page, on behalf of New Mexico. In just six months, the number of fans rocketed to over 3,000!

You can see New Mexico’s Facebook page here. If you visit, you’ll also see that fans have uploaded over 200 photos, a video, have contributed over 70 wall posts, and made over 20 comments about movies filmed in the state.

We also decided to launch a dedicated Flickr group, and posted details of this on the Facebook page. Within minutes we had over 20 photos uploaded. It’s really encouraging to see such immediate results from a relatively simple social networking campaign. There have been so many positive comments from people who live in the state, those who have visited, and those who dream about visiting one day. We will definitely be continuing with our Facebooking, and look forward to seeing you there!

Veruca Salt: Still Demanding

Fans of Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory will love www.stilldemanding.com, a site created by Virgin Holidays. Virgin has enlisted Julie Dawn Cole, who played the original Veruca Salt, and sent her off to South Africa to make some videos.

It’s an innovative idea and we think it works really well. Although we might have suggested some additional activity around it – some podcasts, a Facebook page, put all the videos on YouTube…

Just as a footnote, while searching around for links to write this post I came across an article by Hank Williams (not this Hank Williams) who argues that by behaving just like dear Veruca, we are all responsible for the torrid state of the economy.

Ah well. Watch the videos on Virgin’s site and they might just cheer you up.

We Are Scientists get a right ribbing on Jersey

I recently took a group of music journalists over for Jersey Live Festival – our client Jersey Tourism is keen on promoting the event, which has grown exponentially in the five years it has been running. It now attracts not only some of the biggest acts, but the most in vogue too. Something worth shouting about for an island that has had a less than ‘hip’ image for a while.

On the festival site, it quickly becomes apparent to the media and bands that Jersey has more than its fair share of attractive young people, but what about the island itself? Most bands on the festival circuit fly/drive in on the day they play, spend one night in a hotel or their tour bus and are off again without seeing anything of the place they’ve just visited. So we organised for New York’s indie-pop chart botherers We Are Scientists to come out with our journalists on a rib (that’s rigid inflatable boat to non-seafarers) and see some of the Jersey’s beautiful coastline.

Aside from making a funny photo story and interview situation, with the results up on YouTube the band’s fans can see their heroes had a great time too. Prior to the trip the drummer was asking how long we would be out – I got the impression they may be a little too used to being forced into bizarre in situ interviews – but after we docked a good 45 minutes later than planned the whole band were in great spirits and nothing but grateful.

I asked bassist Chris Cain if they had been asked to do anything similar at other festivals – the answer was no, never, and that it was great to get to see something of the place they were playing. He also asked whether Guernsey was just as good looking, of course (being the loyal PR I am) I said it wasn’t. Perhaps I shouldn’t have gone into quite such detail about the friendly inter-island rivalry though…

Learning to Surf on Bondi Beach

I blogged last year about the decline in terrestrial TV opportunities for publicising travel in the UK. Although it’s coming back for a one-off special next week, gone are the days of Wish You Were Here…? and BBC Holiday.

I think the web is going to replace this pretty quickly. We recently helped arrange for Telegraph journalist Adrian Bridge to visit Sydney (New South Wales is a client of ours) and he took some time out to try and learn to surf. But he didn’t just come back and write about it, which would previously have been thye norm – this time he took a camera and produced a short film, which can be watched on the Telegraph’s website.

The film gives a good introduction to Bondi, and shows Adrian wiping out several times before he finally manages to stand up for a few seconds (with the aid of his instructor ‘Big Wave Dave’). And it’s all topped off with some informative voiceover and some twangy, Shadows-type music. Added to his article, it presents a richer impression of the destination and the experience.

The Telegraph has been producing these ‘Real Trips’ pieces for a few months now – another good example is the film showing Charles Starmer-Smith and Francisca Kellett racing to Paris to review the new Eurostar service from St Pancras. They’re an excellent addition to the mainstream travel articles, both in-paper and online.